Incompatible Desires: A Guest Post by Rebecca Fallon

Do we ever really know our parents? After Susan’s sudden death, her grown children delve into the mysteries of their unconventional mother’s life. Read on for an exclusive essay from Rebecca Fallon on writing Family Drama.

There was a period in my life where I was certain I would become an actor. I never felt as alive as I did when inhabiting a character, transforming, giving myself over to story. But adulthood arrived in a new country, complete with financial demands and visa requirements and insecurities. I never took the plunge. For a long time, my love of the theatre felt a dream deferred, waiting to emerge in some other expression.

Enter Susan Bliss. A woman who is simply unable to give up on her passion for performance, the thing that makes her feel most free, most like and unlike herself. She is the star of Family Drama, and my perfect conduit for all of the trade-offs that a woman must make in her life, especially if she wants a family, especially if there are obstacles towards her ability to create. Unlike Susan, I’ve been very fortunate to have an emotionally supportive partner—otherwise, the years-long journey she took to arrive on the page would have been an impossibility.

Many readers are surprised to hear Family Drama rather began as the story of her children. Their struggle to understand their mother probably (a psychologist might tell me) reflected the distance from my own creative life at that time. Susan’s twins, Viola and Sebastian, take up different positions on their mother’s work; for Sebastian it is sacred and important, and for Viola it is irresponsible and wrong. Both of them misunderstand her in critical ways, and their attempts to know her more fully give shape to the book. It was only after a few years of developing their storylines that I wrote a chapter in the voice of Susan. My brilliant agents immediately identified her as the heroine.

As this novel enters the world now, I’m in quite a different place in my life. For a start, I’m heavily pregnant—my first child is due just days after Family Drama launches across America. While there is certainly a sadness at not being able to make it stateside for a launch, something feels immeasurably right about my son entering the world in the same month as this book. They too are twins. And yes, the irony of the title is not lost on me.

It does also now feel particularly audacious to have written about motherhood before becoming one. But for me, Susan’s story has served as an elaborate thought experiment, a way for me to puzzle out what it might mean to be a working creative and support a family. I’d like to think she left me more prepared, but only time will tell. In either case, I hope she inspires you to make the most of your own precious time, and to allow your heart all of its incompatible desires.