Karen Glick lives outside of Philadelphia. She is a clinical psychologist whose other interests include writing, painting, and acting. When not feverishly engaged in these pursuits, she enjoys spending time with her four children, husband, cavalier king charles spaniels and cats.
Karen has just published her first novel, Questions in the Silence.
Visit her website at http://www.bellalunavoicecompany.com/.
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Q: Thank you for this interview, Karen. Can you tell us what your latest book, Questions in the Silence, is all about?
I always wanted to write a novel and had many false starts where the idea or the characters just didn’t sustain my interest. Finally, the idea for Questions in the Silence emerged from two of my life passions: (Don’t ask about the others!)psychotherapy and a spiritual approach to life. The protagonist, Ari Rothman, is a young Jewish woman whose childhood is flavored by unusual dreams and visions. Some of her dreams are derived from her Jewish education, but others are more mystical and cryptic. These experiences inspire her to become a seeker of spiritual truth, not limited to her own religious upbringing. At the same time, she is driven to find her life purpose and feels she may find it in helping people through psychotherapy.
Questions in the Silence chronicles Ari’s personal growth from her childhood when she feels like an outsider because of her precocious approach to life, to her search for a life partner, and her attempts to initiate a mature relationship with her parents. At the same time, in her professional life, Ari faces mounting conflict when she tries to integrate her traditional training as a psychologist with her intuitive abilities. Her struggles come to a head when she treats her first long-term client whose problems resonate deeply with some of her own issues.
Q: Can you tell us a little about your main and supporting characters?
Ari Rothman is a sensitive dork who really doesn’t fit into her peer group very well. Her loneliness reinforces her interest in the spiritual world and she spends a lot of time searching for meaning in life and worrying constantly whether she will ever find her true purpose. Since she spends so much time living in her head, her real relationships sometimes suffer. Once she decides that she can best fulfill her purpose by becoming a psychotherapist, her next challenge becomes balancing the advice of her supervisors and her strong intuition about patients.
The supporting characters include a neurotic but loving mother who teaches Ari about the importance of boundaries in relationships, her boyfriend, Evan, who starts out as a study partner and becomes the key to Ari’s discovery about meeting her own needs, and James, Ari’s first long-term client, who comes from a very different background, but whose therapy forces Ari to question her own family relationships.
Q: Do you tend to base your characters on real people or are they totally from your imagination?
There are some components of my characters that are drawn from my life. To some degree, Ari’s struggle to incorporate things she knows intuitively into her work mirrors my own. I must emphasize she is truly a fictional character, as are all of the other characters in the book, although I am fortunate enough to have experienced people who may have added some of the dimensions to the characters. In particular, some of Ari’s experiences such as her Jewish education, meditation adventures, and training as a psychotherapist were suggested by some of my own experiences.
Q: Are you consciously aware of the plot before you begin a novel, or do you discover it as you write?
My writing began with a strong sense of the fictional characters, their backstory, and their current struggles. Each day as I wrote, I felt that the plot should be driven by the way the characters would interact, knowing them as I do. When I was finished with the first draft, I had a better vision of the plot and my revisions were all about cutting out a lot of writing that didn’t further either the plot or key knowledge about the main characters.
Q: Your book is set in Philadelphia. Can you tell us why you chose this city in particular?
I love the Philadelphia area and have lived here since college. Philadelphia is a great city for the exploration of ideas like spirituality and psychotherapy. My familiarity with attending college and graduate school here provided a strong foundation for Ari’s development.
Q: Does the setting play a major part in the development of your story?
Not really. Much of the story really takes place in the minds of the characters.
Q: Open the book to page 69. What is happening?
Ari, the main character, has just attended her first college party. In her attempt to reinvent herself, she overindulged and is suffering the consequences. On page 69, she is filled with remorse and is worrying how her overdrinking may have affected her relationship with her roommate and with her romantic interest, Charlie.
Q: Can you give us one of your best excerpts?
Saturday morning. Ari rolled on her side to read the time on her clock…six thirty five. She groaned. Why was she awake? She peered at Evan who was sleeping so silently she watched the sheet over his chest to make sure it rose and sank with each breath. His face was totally relaxed, and she loved to look at the way the early morning light played with the golden highlights in his wavy hair and his long eyelashes. The stubble on his chin seemed so dark, forming a blue gray contrast to his pale skin. She lay quietly next to him, trying to match the rhythm of his breathing, wishing to fall back asleep and to share his dreams, he looked that peaceful.
But sleep wouldn’t come. So, she slipped out of bed and walked over to the couch. Pulling a soft old afghan around her shoulders, she sat down and closed her eyes to meditate, a form of Sabbath observance for her. She immediately felt as though she were drifting in a downward pathway, but she was able to maintain a relaxed, detached posture and she did not pull back from the sensation of slowly falling. As she descended, she became engulfed in a glowing indigo light. She sensed another presence with her and curiosity briefly coursed through her mind. She heard a voice answering her unspoken question…Eliyahu. And then there was complete silence. Ari’s old blue afghan had grown to encompass the entire universe and everything was wrapped in its comforting softness. At some point, when she opened her eyes, Ari wasn’t sure how long she had meditated, or even if she had fallen asleep. She patted her blanket with affection, thinking how much she loved the color blue. She could hear Evan stirring faintly in the alcove, so she went to investigate.
Thank you so much for this interview, Karen. We wish you much success!
As The Pages Turn 