From the first paragraph you know you are in the hands of a veteran writer.

 

So much is given to the reader in those first three sentences. We already have the introduction of three characters, inimitable visuals, smells and the dynamic humor of the author. The novel envelops us, lets us infiltrate the deepest, hidden recesses of the laugh-till-you-cry, Stein family that has us continually looking back at our own childhood experiences, finding communion with this bewitching household.

 

Drinking Closer to Home is written in alternating chapters of flashbacks from the 70’s and 80’s and the present, 1993, when the three adult siblings all convene at the hospital with their father, Buzzy, after their mother, Louise, has had a heart attack.

 

We have pot-smoking parents growing weed in the backyard, the oldest daughter, Anna, who’s out to shtoop every guy, snort every drug and attempt to control the uncontrollable on the home-front, Portia, the middle child, unhindered by her parents lack of interest in being the so-called authority figures, who wants to raise her younger brother, Emery, who is the over-achiever, the youngest, the one they deem “Noble Citizen,” who makes judgment calls on what is wrong with this whacked-out household full of bird-shit, illegal drugs, cigarette butts, dishes piled high and then the illustrious grandparents, Bubbe and Zeyde, who show up rarely, but pack a punch, spewing out anything that comes into their heads.

 

You have the sense that it’s survival of the fittest, but when the times get really rough the humor is what brings the Stein family back together. You know they’re having a damn good time in the midst of chronic chaos.

 

The characters in this novel are vivid individuals. Each one has a distinct voice and personality that sets them apart from the rest.

Louise, the mother has a cigarette or a joint dangling from her lips at any time. She is first and foremost a poet and artist, goes to the nude beach every day, spends most of her time at home on the couch reading and decides when the kids are eleven, eight and three that she is giving up as a housewife and the two daughters can take care of the house and their younger brother.

Anna, the oldest daughter is the instigator, the wild card, drug addict, sex addict, adrenaline addict who needs to live on the edge and manage the household. She and her younger sister, Portia, are two opposing forces.

Emery, the youngest, is always trying to figure out what’s happening with the rest of the family and why.

The structure of the novel is ideal. We begin with the siblings as adults sitting around their mother’s bed in the hospital, and then rotate through the early years, watch each character develop, through family interactions and quarrels, their particular neuroses, intermixing their present circumstances of divorce, affairs and Louise’s illness with the past.

 

The metaphors and similes are flawlessly rendered, noteworthy, and add so much to our understanding of the inner workings of each character.

The characters see themselves as “others” in a world of “conformers” and they battle between the awkwardness of being different and embracing this part of themselves. This is truly the captivating theme that allows us as readers to get close to this family and identify with their plight. We can vicariously commune with the Steins and all their idiosyncrasies and find comradeship through our own shortcomings and dire, familial humiliations.

 

In the end, it is the candid, fearless language that Blau uses that pulls us into that hospital room or next to Louise on the couch or out with the girls for the night or with Emery as he explores his sexuality. The book is written in third person, which allows each individual to reveal their own story, but there’s never any distance from these characters and we find ourselves lured into the house with them feeling their pain, their vulnerabilities, their frustrations and their unbounded love of the ludicrous that calls to mind some of Sedaris’ stories of his family life.

Drinking Closer to Home is a blast of hysterical brilliance that will find you running back to read Blau’s first book-sensation, The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, while waiting in line for her next explosive novel.

 

 

I think that in memoir the author has a certain responsibility to get things right—to be accurate.  And that responsibility is to the people who show up in the book and not necessarily to the readers (although the hordes of people who were pissed off at James Frey after Million Little Pieces would certainly disagree with me!).  I mean, what reader really cares if the sister in a story was a drug addict for two years or for three years? Who cares if she went to rehab in Arizona or rehab in Camarillo?  In fiction you can adjust the truth so that it works better for the story. My work is based on my life, but much of it is made up, or played down, or exaggerated in order to make the novel better.  Telling a great story was my priority when I wrote Drinking Closer to Home. Telling the whole truth wasn’t even on my mind.

 

When I write fiction I never have those moments.  On occasion I write essays and blogs, and I am much more aware of my reader when I write those.  I don’t want to belittle anyone, or mock anyone, or humiliate anyone.  I don’t want to expose people who don’t want to be exposed.  For that reason, I find fiction much more fun to write—you can do and say whatever you want!

 

 

Yes, both The Summer of Naked Swim Parties and Drinking Closer to Home had a start in short stories.  Well, Naked Swim, really started with a sentence I had written.  But when I figured out what I wanted to write, I pulled out a short story I had written in graduate school and used that character in that point of her life as the basis for the novel.  Drinking was based on a short story I wrote that was published in The Sun Magazine called, “Home for the Heart Attack.”  The story is essentially the present day chapters of the novel, spread out and lengthened.  The novel I’m working on now is also based on a short story I wrote.

 

Yes, definitely. Currently, I’m writing a novel, but within the time that I’ve been writing this novel I’ve stopped and written a screenplay, a short story, and a few essays.  But I think of the novel as what I’m mostly working on.

 

 

I suppose I was writing seriously when I was living in Canada and I wrote a few hours every day.  Almost all of that work was lost when I put it on a disc, gave it to my then-husband to print out for me at his office and he lost the disc.  Nothing was backed up (I use drop box now and I own a printer!).  I didn’t consider myself a serious writer (although I was obviously writing seriously) because I never showed my work to anyone.  It was like my secret, I was almost embarrassed about it—the fact that I sat at a computer and wrote every day seemingly for the simple pleasure of writing.  I didn’t really start thinking of myself as a writer until I was in graduate school.  My first story was published the year before graduate school.  It was a shock to me.  Really.  I was stunned.  But it gave me the courage to keep writing.

 

 

I think every writer I’ve ever loved has influenced my work.  And I’ve loved different writers at different times.  When I see a book I’ve read and loved I have this small rush of feeling, like seeing an old friend.  I usually can remember where I read the book and what I was feeling at the time I was reading it.  I just saw Erica Jong’s name on Facebook yesterday and I immediately flashed on reading How to Save Your Own Life on a train in Spain when I was nineteen.  My girlfriend and I read chapters aloud to each other.  And I remember leaning my head out the train window, with that wonderful clackity train noise all around, the wind blowing my hair back and the book in my hand.  I had a thought just then that it would be incredibly cool to write books.  So in a way, you could say Jong was the first person to influence me.

 

 

I’m in the middle of Caroline Leavitt’s Pictures of You on my Nook.  Since I started that book, I’ve read three other books in order to interview people.  The first was Michael Kimball’s US, the second was Jesus Angel Garcia’s bad bad bad (the book is loaded with sex so I’m doing the Six Question Sex Interview for The Nervous Breakdown with him). And the third is Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (I haven’t written up that interview yet).  The three books I read for interviews before all these were Madison Smartt Bell’s, The Color of Night , Ron Tanner’s Kiss Me, Stranger, and Francine Prose’s My New American Life.  I completely enjoyed, and usually loved, each of the books I read for interviews.  I couldn’t interview someone whose book I didn’t like—that would be an awful feeling.