Not so long ago, author Chris Pavone found himself in, of all places, Luxembourg. His wife was offered a job there, so the former book editor essentially became a house husband, taking care of their young children. In his spare time, he wrote at a local café. Over many drafts, his writing gradually morphed into the thrilling spy debut now known as The Expats.
The book garnered a slew of good reviews, including a write-up in the New York Times, and eventually won both the Edgar and Anthony awards for best first novel. Subsequently, it was optioned for the screen, and has now been translated into more than a dozen languages.
In the interim, Pavone moved back to his native New York and has just released his second well-received thriller The Accident. Just before his arrival at the 14th annual Hong Kong Literary Festival, Pavone talked to Coconuts about his newfound writing success.
You’re coming to Hong Kong for the Hong Kong International Literary Festival. Do you have any expectations?
I’ve never before been to Hong Kong, so I’m very much looking forward to this trip, though not to the flight from New York! I’m not sure what to expect out of Hong Kong, but I imagine it’s a vibrant, exciting city, and I’m excited to explore it.
Your café writing in Luxembourg eventually morphed into a full-fledged novel. It seems as though it would take a lot of time and effort to think through all the twists in the novel.
I’d been fiddling around with the story for a couple of months before I decided to turn it into a thriller, at which point I stopped writing and started outlining – figuring out what was going happen, to whom, when, why.
The plot evolved into something very complicated, with all the major characters lying to one another about extremely important things. Then during the revision process, the plot got even more complicated, and in the end I spent more time revising than I had writing the first draft. Complicated plots make for complicated writing. At least for me.
Why did you decide to base the story around Kate Moore, a woman? What made you want to take that perspective?
The Expats is a story about someone who sets aside a career to follow a spouse’s job abroad, to stay at home with children, to make a new home abroad. That’s what I did. I did it as a man, but nearly all the other expats having the same experience in Luxembourg were women.
I wanted to write from a perspective that would be easy for readers to relate to, and I thought that would be best accomplished with a female protagonist, creating a situation in which any reader could imagine himself or herself playing one role or another.
A male protagonist would’ve made that much more difficult, and it would have been a different type of story, a less relatable story about themes that were not as familiar to most readers. I didn’t want to fight that type of uphill battle.
How difficult was it getting the book from the finished manuscript stage to publication?
My journey was a lot less difficult than many first-time novelists’, because I had friends within the publishing industry who were willing to read my work and help me improve it. But on the other hand, when my agent submitted the manuscript to publishers, nearly everyone we sent it to was someone I knew. This is sort of like being compelled to ask out everyone in your class on a date, one after another, in public. The discomfort and the potential for humiliation were immense.
What about your latest novel? Was it easier the second time? Do you feel your writing is improving?
The Accident is a much more thrilling thriller than The Expats – the peril is clearer, earlier, and the tension is higher throughout. And while writing this second book, I think I made fewer large writing mistakes – characters who didn’t belong, plot tendrils that would end up needing to be deleted, et cetera, of which there were a lot in the drafting of The Expats. So my process has gotten more efficient, which is one way of saying better.
Did you find it hard to move back to the US after all that time spent in Europe?
I probably would have found it hard if I’d moved to [anywhere else in] the US, but I came home to New York, which I think is very different, more like a European city than an American one. It’s also where I’m from, where I lived for nearly my entire life. So no, it wasn’t difficult for me when we arrived back in New York. But it was a bit hard to leave Luxembourg. It’s hard to leave anywhere, isn’t it?
Read more about the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, which goes on until Nov. 9, here!
