By Michele Karlsberg–
Michele Karlsberg: Joshua Kent Bookman’s debut novel,Close to Elsewhere: Stories of Translocation and Whimsy,was well received by critics. His long awaited second novel, To: All The Friends I Killed (LYS),is now available. In this coming-of-age novel, we are faced with the life choices of the millennial generation, the postponement of traditional benchmarks in our twenties, and the queer or asexual attitude towards contemporary loneliness. Bestselling writer Stephen McCauley wrote, “A memorably original work, full of mystery, madness, and wicked laugh-out-loud humor.” Novelist Sarah Hollister recently sat with Joshua to discuss his book. Please enjoy an excerpt from their conversation.
Sarah Hollister: When I saw the title of your book, I wondered if it was a thriller. Now that I’ve read the book, I sense it’s more a metaphor for loss. Can you tell us what the title means to you?
Joshua Kent Bookman: It’s a provocative title, for sure. I think you put it nicely. There’s a lot of loss in this book. But I think a sense of humor, too. It’s easy to take loss too seriously. It can be freeing, and wild, and, well, insane. It doesn’t make total sense why some live, some die. I mean that as a metaphor—if some people live more freely, some live with a wicked illness.
Sarah Hollister: You write, “We live in one place at a time, but the impressions of many remodel what’s considered the present. I could describe it like fog, which is both ground and atmosphere, or as an open vault, where memories, like prized possessions, never get entirely stored away.” Can you expand on that?
Joshua Kent Bookman: I think “be in the present,” “stay in the present,” a quote like that (which we hear about a lot from health gurus and meditation experts) is slightly misleading. Like, I’m all for higher quality, higher vibrational life (my Los Angeles voice for an instant), but our present is a collection of past experiences. Some good, some bad, many of the bad that stick, resurface; many of the good that tan, like nostalgia. What I also mean to say is that if you’ve lived in more than one place—a city, a village, a different country—you get the sense that you can’t take everything with you. The food is different, the friends, the weather—so the language we use to describe the present isn’t fair when the present city we live in can’t carry the sum total of our many lives we’ve killed off.
Sarah Hollister: Was this the story you set out to write?
Joshua Kent Bookman: I struggled after my first book. I was excited to have finished something, to have been given a chance by Sofi (my editor) to set out and execute a long piece of fiction. [It was a] huge emotional letdown after it was published. Didn’t have an agent or publicist, didn’t understand the publishing industry. That was brutal. Not because I wanted success, but because there were specific things I was “supposed to do.” I was supposed to have an agent. I was supposed to fit a genre. I was supposed to have a traditional narrative people could follow. I’m saying this as context only because the path to becoming a writer was simultaneously unplanned and unnecessarily complicated. The investment was imaginary. That’s all to say that I didn’t know what to write. Not just because of the content, but because I felt this need to evolve my writing and to elevate to a level that people would understand.
I’m not someone who just writes for myself and thinks, if you like it, great, but if you don’t, that it’s somehow your fault you don’t get it. So, when I started writing this, I knew that I wanted to write something that was relevant. It took three years to write. I think the search for home, the search for meaningful friendship, they’re both things that matter to me. Now that I’ve lived in so many places, I no longer live in one place. I’d like to think that marriage isn’t the only option, that even if that’s a right that’s accessible, it doesn’t mean it’s my highest aspiration. I wonder what’s happened to my childhood friends, my friends in my twenties, what’s happened to the lives I could’ve lived, with or without them. It’s something I couldn’t find from looking them up on the internet. It’s something I had to write.
Joshua Kent Bookmanwas born in Boston, Massachusetts, and reformed by life and work in Sweden, France, and Italy. Previous published works include “Fruits of Mer” (Paulette Éditrice), “close to elsewhere,” “Hitom,” and “Some Reverse American Dreams” (LYS Förlag). “To: All The Friends I Killed” is Bookman’s second novel. https://www.joshbookman.com
Sarah Hollisteris an American novelist and playwright living in the Swedish archipelago. Her plays “Sisters’ Dance” and “Relative Truth” have been produced in New York, and she co-authored the Nordic noir thriller, “This Land Is No Stranger” (LYS Förlag). Hollister is a member of the Dramatikerförbund (Sweden’s drama guild) and has been the recipient of several residencies at the Henning Mankell House in northern Sweden. https://sarahhollister.com
Michele Karlsberg Marketing and Management specializes in publicity for the LGBTQ+ community. This year, Karlsberg celebrates 33 years of successful marketing campaigns. For more information: https://www.michelekarlsberg.com
Published on June 22, 2022
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