Novelist Evia Karr is in Cyprus writing her third novel. Her second has just been published
WHEN reading a novel of any kind, the reader is often left wondering how the author came up with such an idea and what kind of imagination must they have to complete it.
Talking with Evia Karr, author of Heart in a Jade Bottle, it is possible to understand the thought process that leads to such a book and the meaning behind it. This is her second novel and she is currently living in Cyprus working on her third.
Heart in a Jade bottle centres on Doris Knight, a character who seems to have it all; she is smart, rich, successful, and beautiful. However, she is also vulnerable and prone to self doubt and of the belief that a family and relationship could solve all her problems. This dream begins to come true when she is stranded on a Caribbean island in the path of a dreadful hurricane. She forgets all about her insecurities and manages to fall in love with Henry Satori, a renowned Chinese barrister.
Nonetheless, once the hurricane is no longer an issue the lovers have to go their separate ways to resume their lives. All is not lost, however, because in the name of true love, Henry manages to track Doris down in Paris. Unfortunately, removed from the life-threatening situation, Doris’ fragility and self doubt re-emerge and manage to divide the lovers emotionally. The more obsessed Doris gets, the more Henry withdraws. Their love, turned hate, stretches over countries and even continents, becoming more and more dark and intense. To thicken and intensify the plot almost beyond belief, there is a subplot about a vanished ship.
The idea for the novel was born when Karr found herself in a similar predicament to that Doris finds herself in. While holidaying on a Caribbean island, Karr was warned about the possibility of a hurricane. Confined to her hotel, she began to wonder what would be her last wish if she were to perish then and there. Having left a man behind in England, she was sure that falling in love would be her last wish. Partly scared and partly bored, with no one to fall in love with, she began to observe the people around her with a new perspective; the relationship between men and women. This led her to create a fictional love affair in her mind and within four days she had the makings of a novel.
When writing the novel, Karr was greatly influenced by Graham Green’s The End of the Affair. However, she has made her book more realistic, with more conflict. Karr said that she wanted to illuminate the fact that more often than not, the girl doesn’t get the guy, or at least if she does she doesn’t know how to keep him. She wanted to show how men and women perceive everything differently and what obsession and rehashing can do to relationships. “Miscommunication is one thing, obsession is another. Rehashing afterwards, who said what and when, after things have soured, will not bring lovers together. In my view it will deepen the hurt and widen the gulf between them and both will be back to square one sooner or later,” she said. This is evident in the novel when Henry quotes the Chinese poem ‘My Heart is a cold slice in a Jade Bottle’. He says this to signify that he wants to nurture a pure heart, as if it were being kept safe in a jade bottle, whereas Doris understands it to mean that her poor ‘bottled’ heart is struggling against its confines. Her thinking is restricted by her extreme love for Henry and she finds herself a victim to her emotions.
On her novel, Karr says “both men and women should read this so as to know how to avoid the pitfalls of love”. Once she had established the themes for the novel, Karr had to visualise the characters. She created Doris easily because, as a woman, she could relate to being swept away by emotions, and she created Henry through observing her own and other people’s relationships. She saw how men and women reacted to each other and why, and using that as a basis, was able to have vibrant characters for her novel.
Evia Karr was born and raised in Germany. At eighteen she went to study in Paris and later moved to London where she worked as a free-lance journalist and on international publications. After this, she moved to New York and travelled the world. She later returned to London to study language, literature, and creative writing. She has written three novels, a children’s story, and a movie script. Heart in a Jade Bottle is her second published work and she is now finishing The Absence of Music, a bittersweet family portrait, which is set in Germany during the holocaust and focuses on dealing with the oppression of the Second World War.
l Heart in a Jade Bottle published by Vanguard press is available at Moufflon Bookshops for %12.99
