When thinking of aesthetic pleasure, one seldom considers a book. Michelle Huneven was hooked from the moment she was first read to. The love for the crafting of a written piece, inside and out, has driven her passion for writing from the start.
Huneven’s roots are in Southern California; she lives in Altadena, and she said its “landscape and all that inhabits it gives rise to everything [I] write.” Her third novel, Blame, is a continuation of the author’s natural curiosity about her surroundings.
She will read from Blame at 7 p.m. Friday at Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St.
Blame is the story of a young woman whose poor choices land her in the position of making every effort to atone for what she has done. Inspiration for the novel’s plot came from the story of a man who, while in a drunken blackout, was arrested for the murder of his wife. He agreed with police, despite remembering nothing of the incident, and was released as the result of an alibi. This episode sparked Huneven’s creative juices.
“What if he’d gone to prison for a crime he didn’t remember? Or a crime he didn’t actually commit? Why was he so willing to think himself a suspect?” Huneven said. “Such questions got me thinking about crime and consciousness, guilt and atonement.”
She has delved into different writing styles throughout her career. In addition to her work as a fiction writer, she has plenty of experience in journalism. The two worlds collided for Huneven as the ultimate goals to tell the truth and to construct a compelling piece was always there, even in a fabricated reality.
“To extract the right detail, catch the exact glints of irony and tenderness, light on the telling comment — these are the essential tasks of both fiction and nonfiction writers,” Huneven said.
During the editing of Blame, Sarah Crichton of FSG Publishing found herself in the rare position of her job being both incredibly easy and difficult at the same time.
“I’d get so caught up in the story itself that I would forget how to do my job,” she said. “It’s easier when things are a mess. When I did find things to edit, it was great because she’d see what I was getting at and come back with wonderful improvements.”
The concept of Blame, while rather heavy, is exactly the reason Huneven wanted to tackle it. In spite of its dark nature and the grim world of the novel’s protagonist, there are several moments of levity throughout. As the main character’s life starts to make a turn for the better, the writer said, she could feel her own world “brighten.”
This connection to what she does is testament to just how much the written word has become a part of her being, and it would only be a positive thing if others did a bit of the same.
“I hope that readers take away from my book that most glorious of commodities — literary pleasure,” Huneven said.
