Celebrated author comes to Delaware County on reading tour
Joyce Maynard has written 12 novels, as well as three memoirs, short stories, true crime stories, and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, but she has never written a sequel to a novel before.
Her new novel, “How the Light Gets In,” picks up where the 2021 bestseller “Count the Ways” left off.
Count the Ways follows heroine Eleanor through decades of her life, including a move to rural New Hampshire, the beginnings of a career as an artist, a young marriage, three children, a tragic accident, a divorce, a move, and much more.
How the Light Gets In begins where the previous novel ended, in 2009, with 54-year-old Eleanor grappling with life as a mother of grown children, changes in her personal life and career, and a possible new romance, and follows her up to the present day.
“When I finished ‘Count the Ways,’ I thought I was completely exhausted. Readers told me otherwise,” said Maynard from France, where she was visiting friends before starting her current reading tour.
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“Almost immediately after the book came out, I started getting really passionate letters from readers. Some of them were quite angry. They said, ‘You can’t just leave us here,'” Maynard said.
“They were also upset about my character Eleanor and the way she always sacrifices herself for everyone else. It seemed important to take her to the next stage of life, which I understand a lot about because I’m in it myself, where you finally turn around and the kids are grown and you have space to think about what you need for yourself.”
“And then I still didn’t write the sequel for about a year because I love this character so much. I had to think really long and hard about what her next chapter should be.”
The novel is written in such a way that it can either stand alone or be considered a continuation of the earlier novel. However, readers who do not want to be spoiled should start with the first part.
However, writing did present certain challenges.
“If I had known I was going to write a sequel, I would have put some things into the first one,” Maynard said.
“When I write, I either have a huge white board almost as big as my wall or – because I often did this in my little cabin in New Hampshire – a wall covered in Post-it notes. I had to keep track of all the characters – how old they were, what was happening in their lives and the world and each other over the course of more than 50 years.
“More than anything, I wanted to paint a realistic picture of the troubles of the world and the troubles of life and love, while still maintaining a sense of optimism and joy that I really feel in my own life. I really wanted a hopeful ending. I knew it wasn’t going to be some great man galloping along on a big white horse and sweeping her away. I wanted to give her some love and some passion, but I didn’t want a man to be the only answer.”
Among the heartaches Eleanor endures along the way is long-term estrangement from one of her adult children and, by extension, her grandchildren.
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“One of the things that’s important to me as a writer is to talk about things in my stories that we don’t always get to talk about. In the last 10 years of teaching memoir writing, I’ve probably gotten to know and heard the stories of 50 women who have a dearly loved adult child they no longer speak to and grandchildren they don’t know,” Maynard said.
“We don’t hear this story; people don’t talk about it, perhaps because it is associated with enormous shame and guilt. So many women suffer tremendously from it. And they suffer alone.”
Although Maynard will be busy with her book tour for a while, she is looking forward to getting back to writing afterward.
“There are two books that are very close to my heart. For the first time ever, I want to write about writing. So I’m going to write a book that I see as a hybrid: a book about my life as a writer and one that I hope will also help people who want to write,” she said.
“And the other is a sequel to the novel ‘The Bird Hotel’, which came out between these two books. When I finally land, I’ll have given myself a whole month where I have no obligations whatsoever except the obligation to sit at my desk, and we’ll see what happens.
“It can be a whole new cast of characters that haven’t even come to life in my head yet. I’m often surprised, and I love that.”
At a glance
Maynard will appear at an event sponsored by the Friends of the Delaware Library at 6 p.m. on July 10 at the Dempsey Event Center, 123 Hyatts Road, Delaware.
The cost is $55 and includes a copy of the novel, a conversation between Maynard and writer Lee Martin, book signings, wine and charcuterie, qigong, singing bowls, crafts, and a tour of the herb garden.
For more information, visit delawarelibraryfriends.org.
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About The Author
