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- [00:03]
Ann Kavolik
As a raider scavenging a derelict world, you settle into an underground settlement. But now you must return to the.
- [00:11]
Holly Gattery
Surface, where arc machines roam.
- [00:16]
Ann Kavolik
If you're brave enough, who knows what you might find. Arc Raiders, a multiplayer extraction adventure video game. Buy now for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S and PC rated T for Teen Every holiday shopper's got a list. But Ross Shoppers? You've got a mission like a gift run that turns into a disco snow globe, throw pillows and PJs for the whole family. Dog included at Ross Holiday Magic isn't about spending more, it's about giving more for less. Ross, work your magic.
- [00:45]
Holly Gattery
This episode is brought to you by Nespresso Gift Magical Mornings with Nespresso Vertuo Pop Compact and stylish, Vertuo Pop is made to meet every morning coffee craving, from espresso to coffee, hot or iced at the click of a button and celebrate the season with Nespresso's limited edition coffee flavors. Sweet almond and hibiscus, cinnamon and candied tamarind and festive double espresso Magic in the making Shop the Holiday Gift collection exclusively@nespresso.com.
- [01:16]
Ann Kavolik
Welcome to the new Books Network.
- [01:21]
Holly Gattery
Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I'm your host Holly Gattery and and I am really excited to be joined today by Ann Kavolik, who has a wonderful book out which the opening scene of this book completely blew my mind. It's called Count on Me and it exposes how a family can fracture when aging parents grow frail and debts from the past resurface. It is a gripping story of elder care and elder abuse and how money can make, break and shape a family. Ann, welcome to the show.
- [01:58]
Ann Kavolik
Thanks for having me.
- [01:59]
Holly Gattery
It is such a pleasure to have you. So a little bit about Ann. Ann lives in Western Quebec, where she writes fictions and essays. Her work has appeared in Canadian Architect, cbc, First Person Event, the Fiddlehead, the Globe and Mail, Grain, Prism, International Room, Subterranean, and the anthology this Place a Stranger, which was released with Catlin Press, Today's Parent and elsewhere. Her writing has been listed for various literary prizes and awards, including winning the 2017 Little Bird writing Contest. Her stage play, a climate comedy, won Best in fest at the 2013 Ottawa Fringe Festival. And let's dive right in. And I do want to get you talking about that opening scene in the book, but before for that and I mean I don't feel like I'm giving anything away because it's like the first page so no spoilers. But I want to ask you first where this book began for you, what was the nucleus of this book? And I'm also curious. It's kind of a two part question, which I understand is technically two questions, but I'm going to put them both on you. It's really unfair to do that, but I'm going to lose track because I have so many questions about this book if I don't get these both out at once. Which is what was the nutrilist of this book and was it one of those impetuses that you found really quick? Or was this, did it, did it materialize over a longer period?
- [03:24]
Ann Kavolik
Second first and then first. So definitely a slow burn. For over 20 years I've had this bizarre little fascination with love and money and tensions between the two. And when I was in grad school for economics, you know, my friends would make fun of me for it and like, oh, I was trying to come up with a grand theory about love and money and that wasn't quite it. And I experimented, you know, writing with that in mind early on, but I concluded I couldn't quite find the hook and I thought this is maybe something I'll tackle when I'm a more mature writer. And then the novel is fiction, but my parents were in nursing homes. And the thing with nursing homes is you see fights spill out in the hallway, things blow up between families and all the drama is kind of laid out before you.
- [04:12]
Holly Gattery
And.
- [04:12]
Ann Kavolik
And I realized, and it is often about wills and money and fairness and inheritance and those things. And I realized, wow, okay, this is one place where those tensions really manifest. And so it went from there. So that's sort of the nucleus, curiosity about love and money.
- [04:30]
Holly Gattery
I was curious about this book the moment I heard it was about love, money and parents getting older and the children stepping into caregiving roles because without going into some long winded personal story, which is something I want to do at any given moment, I will, you know me and I will say that I think a lot of people like me will relate to this, even if we haven't been through it ourselves. I think a lot of people have seen it and I've seen it a lot in my life. Just this ugliness come out of it that whenever it comes to wills and inheritance, I consider it poisoned money. That's been my experience. I actually would rather burn it in the backyard.
- [05:22]
Ann Kavolik
So that's so interesting. Yeah. And you know, so this is such a common experience and yet we don't talk about it. Right. And I was quite, you know, in the context of applying for a Grant to write the first draft, I had to sort of systematically research, you know, what else is out there. And there's so little out there in terms of, you know, our, like, even movies, but also books. And what does deal with it, you know, has very cliche things like literally one novel had the butler did it, literally. Or, you know, the nurse or something. Right. Yet if you look at the stats in Canada, there's, you know, millions of people who are taking care of, you know, their aging parents, you know, 2 million are in the sandwich generations. They have little kids and elders to take care of, and yet we don't talk about it. And so people feel very alone when they're struggling with this to any degree. Right. And so I do hope actually that, you know, this novel will be awareness raising. People who are going through it hopefully could feel less alone. And people who aren't going through, you know, who have better situations can maybe appreciate it. But also hopefully a good dose of prevention because there really are things that people can do to prevent the worst outcomes and whether that's just facing up to the things we don't want to face up to. Right. Like nobody wakes up and says, oh, today's a good day to get my will in order or gather my adult children for a tough conversation about, you know, what my intentions are, or figuring out, you know, retirement home options. But doing that could really, really add a lot of peace to this world. So if people are listening, whether or not you read the book, you know, if there's that thing you've been meaning to do but been putting it off, I don't know you, but I'd like to set a one week deadline to do one thing. It really can make a difference.
- [07:08]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, absolutely. After my third child was born, I made a appointment with a lawyer and got our affairs in order, so to speak. Not that I have any intention of doing anything. And then my fourth child and I would go back and make sure that everything stood when I had the fourth, but it was deeply depressing. And then I just went out for ice cream after. And I know that sounds so silly, but I, like, I made a fun thing out of it for myself because I knew I was gonna hate it, and I did. But I feel better now that it's done and I don't ever have to think about it for a while at least, because I know things also need to be changed, which is something that is discussed again in this novel. And I mean, one thing that the experience really made me think about deeply with Tia and her Brother Tristan is that even Tristan, who is a deeply unlikable character, but not as unlikable as his partner, I still felt for him. There's humanity in everyone. Nobody really felt like a shallow foil for somebody else. Again, I'm not saying that the girl, Tristan's partner was a girlfriend partner was a foil, but I just had almost no compassion for her whatsoever. And I do want to get to her. But one of the things that I, I really thought about very deeply after reading this novel is that thinking about this generation that's in the sandwich generation and you know, about the parents of the sandwich generation being part of the baby boom and how there were so not everybody, but there was a lot more generational wealth in that generation. And I thought very deeply about how as much as I did not like Tristan, Tristan's character, and as much as I found him a little bit money grubbing, I can also sympathize. Like I'm sitting here saying, I burned the money in the backyard. It's not like I can afford to be burning money at all. At all. That's not it. It's just I. I've seen things that as a child, I've seen things in disputes and seen family fractures that still bother me to this day. And what I thought about Tristan, though, is that I can also understand how impossible it is for this generation for my. I'm in my 40s for, for the generation, the sandwich generation, how, how really impossible it is to make ends meet and how quickly, despite how much you love your parents, things can get ugly. And that is, that is something I, I don't have an answer, but I thought a lot about after, after reading this. And my question for you is about how you put people in the situation. You put people in this story very intimately. And what I mean by that is we are we the first Paige. We. We're in there where Tia's watching her mother get her private swiped by a nurse. And there's this. I remember you talked about the sound of the scraping of. That sounds violent to everyone. But we're talking about like cloth over pubic hair, that sound. And that is how intimately we are dumped. And I do mean dumped. And, and I loved it. I was there for it. Because these are things people don't talk about and they need to be talked about. And not because we need to hear about somebody's butt being wiped or privates being white necessarily, but this is what happens when parents are put in long term care facilities. This is the reality of it. And I'D love to hear about your choice to start with that scene. Because I was like snapping like, yes, yes, yes. And this is how you do it. This is how you push us into this book.
- [10:38]
Ann Kavolik
It's so funny. You keyed into that. So there's a story with that opening. It was that way more or less through most of the drafts of the novel. But I got a lot of feedback, like, oh, that's a bit harsh on the reader. You should work into it. One person said, your novel has a bit of an ick factor, so why don't you just try and write something else? I got it so often. Some people loved it, but I got it so often as a writer, you always have to tease out, okay, what is your intuition telling you? But if there's overwhelming feedback in one way, do I have to take this in? So I did change it. And the version that Guernica accepted had a different beginning. But then when I. When I was only. That was just okay. And then my editor said, you know, your beginning's fine, it's great, but I don't know, something's just sitting funny with me. And I told her how it used to start and she said, we're going back. And I super appreciate that she did that because it is, it is, you know, a hello, here we are. But it's also a bit like, you know, that, you know, sign on a roller coaster, it said, like, you must be this high to get on this ride. Like, if the mere mention, because it's not particularly graphic, it does mention that there's, you know, a sound of a vulva being wiped and an old woman's vulva being wiped. But if that, you know, if that's too much for you, then this is maybe not a book you're going to enjoy. But when aging comes for you, don't say, I didn't warn you. I also find it a very interesting response because writers will write novels about wars or post apocalyptic hellscapes. They'll start, you know, a novel will start with like a soldier dying on the battlefield. And people will call this gritty, but, you know, start with the mention of an old hoo ha, and those same brave soldiers are like, no, it's too much. So, you know, the novel does not shy away from some of the realities of aging. At the same time, the question I get the most is, you know, will I get depressed reading this? Is it a hard slog? And I definitely, you know, was aware of that and built in, you know, I was mindful trying to write it ultimately as a hopeful novel, and people particularly see that in terms of the cycle breaking and the positivity in the subsequent generations. Right. But I do think, you know, soldier on the battlefield, gritty thing. We can distance ourselves from that on some level. When it comes to families and aging, for our family members or for ourselves, we know that hits closer to home, and we kind of don't want to look at it. That's totally understandable. But we end up actually creating, like, anything you avoid. We end up creating a lot more problems by not staring it in the face. Um, so that's what I try to offer the reader.
- [13:22]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, I love the opening. I thought it was great. Um, I. I was like. I said, I was like, yes, let's talk about. I mean, you're also talking to someone who's mentioned cervixes in two out of four of my book. It's at length. You know, like, obviously you fit your ideal reader. But I think it's. I think it is because. Exactly. That is what you said, is that. What are we so afraid of? Somebody, you know, probably has a vulva, and if you're lucky, that person will live a long, healthy life and at some point get older and have an older vulva. How many times can I say vulva in this sentence? We'll. We'll find out. But my point is, I think it's important not to look away from that. I mean, I'm not saying that people have to, you know, lay in the middle of the street, spread eagle. But what I am saying is, I mean, I preferred nobody did that. But what I am saying is that, like you said, what are. What is bothering you so much? And I think people's reaction to the opening scene says far more about them than it does about the book and about the story. And so.
- [14:28]
Ann Kavolik
Oh, yeah, and keying in what you said earlier, I mean, you know, we're all. Whatever parts we have, you know, should we be lucky enough to live long enough, someone's going to be wiping them. And I tried to in for all the characters, you know, for. And came back to what you said about Tristan and his, you know, shadowy girlfriend. I mean, I did try to write it to have compassion for everyone, even if they are behaving very poorly. I did try to sort of build in compassion for them and understanding, you know, how did they. How did they get to this point? How. How do you get to the point where you feel entitled to someone else's money? Because we sure see that in many manifestations, in many different Ways. And this is one manifestation within a family. But, yeah, how do you get to that point? And so the writing process was really tricky. Volume control of, like, showing, you know, where the person's coming from, but not so much that you think it's an unreliable narrator and that, you know, so it was a real balancing act, but hopefully arrived at something. Gloria, I will say quickly, is a bit shadowy. She's the one who's filled out the least. And that's intentional because. And I did get some criticism for that, but I did not want to write a novel that was an instruction manual for elder abuse. So you see, and no, you know, no. Shame on novels that kind of get into the mind of, you know, someone who's. Who's. Who's doing things and shows them doing it. But I didn't want to do that. And so you see the effects of it, and you see that maybe Gloria really has, like, a being sort of outside of the family coming in as, you know, the girlfriend of Tristan, the brother. You see the effects of what she does, but you don't actually see how she insinuates herself in. And that was intentional. So she had to be kind of shadowy. And again, some people said, you know, oh, I wanted to, you know, understand her better. That's also a criticism I'll just live with because I didn't want to get into exactly what she's doing.
- [16:24]
Holly Gattery
Okay, yeah, give me their names. I'll fight them. Because I felt exactly what you said. And I do mean this. Like, I was not curious about this person at all. First of all, this seemed like it was a narrative that was so deeply rooted in the immediate family that I was not interested in Gloria, who was like, Olympic, you know, or, you know, one of those barnacles that attaches itself to the hull of the ship. Like, it's. I was not particularly interested in her. I was interested in her because it was fascinating to see how she influenced Tristan. But other than that, I wasn't particularly interested in her basic. And, like, Tia doesn't even really know her. And Tia is one of the perspectives they want the driving perspective in this book. So why would I know about her? Like, he's kept it. She's kept at a distance from Tia because the brother is distanced from Tia. So she's like two degrees of separation from the. From the perspective that we're getting. So I was not curious about that at all. Again, I think that's a reader malfunction, not a writer malfunction. So that's just that's just me. My opinion. And again, when I say I'll fight them, I mean, we'll have strong words at end.
- [17:31]
Ann Kavolik
The. I'm okay with it. I don't intend to write a book that's for everyone. It would. It would be pretty weak tea if it tried to be everyone's cup of tea.
- [17:40]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, let's talk a little bit about Tristan before I ask you to do a reading from the book. So Tristan is someone who, again, you know, it's not like I want to go out for coffee with him, but I actually had a lot of empathy for. Because he and Tristan's mother is. I mean, I'm. I'm going to armchair psychologist for a minute here. And I don't particularly like it when other people do it, but these are. These are fictional characters. So here I go. She's a narcissist. She feels that way, like she drove me bananas. But I do have interactions with people like her in my life. So she was also felt very familiar. The mother felt very familiar to me as well. And that is not something that brings me joy to say, but I could understand. You had a beautiful job. I could understand completely why Tristan would feel the way he felt now. I. I don't understand acting on it. I don't understand not taking that feeling and realizing that even though these things happen to you in your life, even though you're mistreated, even though you were given a ton of responsibility to parent and a ton of responsibility as a child that you should never have had to bear, that just still does not give you a right to their money. But I understood why he'd feel that way again. Don't. I don't agree with his actions because I feel a lot of ways, but I feel a lot of ways about a lot of things, but that doesn't give me the right to act certain ways about those feelings, if you can. So I was wondering if you could talk to me about Tristan and about. Tell our listeners maybe a little bit about Tristan. Because to me. And I will talk about this because I thought the ending was just Chef's kiss. Perfect. But to me, Tristan broke my heart. I felt so bad for Tristan, and I'd just love for you to tell our listeners a little bit about him.
- [19:31]
Ann Kavolik
Sure. Thanks. Thanks for that. I feel so seen. So Tristan is about 10 years older than Tia. He, as I think is often the case. He's the sibling who struggled a little bit more. You know, he struggles to keep a job. He probably had some. He was probably a bit parentified. And when, you know, Tia came along as a baby, you know, the grandmother had just died. And so, you know, Tristan, at the tender age of like say 12, kind of loses the person who was maybe his main attachment figure and is back to this mother who's very damaged and then also has a baby Tia who's, you know, taking her limited attention. Totally not Tia's fault she was a baby, but that was the situation. And so thank you for that. I really did try to sort of. It's a really tricky balance to show. You understand why a character is a certain way, but making it pretty clear that does not excuse it or condone it, but you understand how they got there. And, you know, he's having an imperfect reaction to his situation. I didn't want to write a novel that had kind of the stereotype of, you know, we imagine this sweet old person, you know, vulnerable and, you know, someone comes from outside and, you know, abuses them and they totally didn't deserve it. And that could happen. And that's horrible. But I do think the more realistic is that we're dealing with humans. And humans are imperfect and parents are going to be imperfect to varying degrees. And some are going to be good enough parents. I'm a parent as well. I'm imperfect. I hope I'm a good enough parent. But some parents are not good enough. They've made mistakes and those have impacts on the kids emotional and development. And that was the case for Tristan. It was again, tricky balance to sort of show that, okay, you understand why a child would have a bit of a debt or vendetta against their own parent, because that can be very hard to understand if you come from a good enough, stable family. But again, he's not handling it well. So Vera is a very imperfect mother. She was negligent. I'm not a psychotherapist, so, you know, I don't know if narcissist or not would fit the bill. You understand also why she is the way that she is, but you understand the actions of that negligence too. But hopefully it's in the context, without getting preachy about it, that it's clear that that doesn't justify it. And so in response, Tia also struggles, right, because her mother was difficult with her too. She felt very unseen. And you know, her mother, she was let down in some very fundamental ways and unprotected in some very fundamental ways. And so she feels that tension too, of like, I should take, you know, I should protect my mother, maybe even more so than she was protected at a young age. These are kind of the complex dynamics that that make that are the breeding ground for this kind of thing to happen. This episode is brought to you by Rumchata, a delicious creamy blend of horchata with rum. It's best enjoyed over ice or in your coffee, delivering vacation vibes any way or anywhere you drink it. Find out more@rumchata.com drink responsibly Caribbean rum with real dairy cream Natural and artificial flavors. Alcohol 13.75% by volume 27.5 proof. Copyright 2025 Agave Loco Brands Pojoaaukee, Wisconsin. All rights reserved.
- [23:16]
Holly Gattery
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- [23:41]
Ann Kavolik
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- [23:42]
Holly Gattery
Get award winning scam detection today. McAfee.com Keep it real.
- [23:47]
Ann Kavolik
So good, so good so good Score.
- [23:50]
Holly Gattery
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- [23:59]
Ann Kavolik
Cause there's always something new.
- [24:00]
Holly Gattery
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- [24:15]
Ann Kavolik
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- [24:46]
Holly Gattery
Yeah and it was it's just like this perfect storm of intense insidious like small insidious personality traits. Like the father who doesn't Tia's father who just doesn't really get involved. It's not his problem. He's. He's not going to get involved. He's every now and then he'll he'll extend the tiniest morsel of support to Tia, but it's like never enough. It's just never enough. He's one of those very hands off baby boomer fathers. And it's really frustrating for me to watch. Vera was very frustrating because she'd ask for Tia's help and then when Tia helped, she'd be like, oh, I don't know why you always have to make things so difficult when Tristan matter. And I was like, God damn it, Vera, you're infuriating me. But I mean, there is also memory issues happening. There's cognitive decline happening as well. But while that's happening, it's also made clear that maybe Vera was a little bit of a toxic personality for, for that too. You know, is it a chicken or the egg situation? We'll never know. But it's, it's nobody is like outright evil. It's not that. It's just that everybody. These personalities are conflicting constantly. And it was a really like a perfect storm of nobody, no puzzle pieces fitting nicely together. And it was a. Like I said, part of the reason that that made the read for me so, so just absorbing is that it felt so real. You don't have people who, you don't have these great stories of, you know, trauma. Like there are. There isn't sexual violence there. Like you said, there's no people perishing violent deaths on battlefields. It's not that, like I said, it's so much more insidious. It's like it's everyday insidiousness. And it was fantastic to read, but living it would be awful.
- [26:43]
Ann Kavolik
So I do want to say before any listeners get too depressed at the prospect of reading this too, that, I mean, so thank you. And I did try to map out those dynamics, but as I said, I also wanted it to be hopeful. And so I wanted really to have a cycle breaking storyline in there too. And that's where the, the protagonist, she's sandwich generation. She's got a young baby, but she starts off swinging to the opposite direction, you know, like she had a neglectful mother and as is often the case, you swing to the other extreme and she's like a total attachment parent, helicopter parent, really overdoing it. But then when she comes to understand where she comes from, what's going on, she does that hard work of breaking the cycle and, you know, not swinging to the other direction with her own child and finding a better balance. And that's where I think I wanted to ultimately write a hopeful story. I wanted to expose these tricky dynamics. But I wanted to show a way out too. And so that's the part that I think readers really respond well to too. Of like, okay, like it is possible. And so you see that in the end it doesn't without spoilers. The novel doesn't tie everything up in a bow. It doesn't make everything okay. But you do see that, you know, something positive is happening going forward and that. That those cycles don't have to keep going. But it's hard work to break a cycle.
- [28:08]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, we. I have about three questions for you after you're reading about the humor in this book. So don't worry, we're going to get to t. Don't worry about that. Yes, it is absolutely not a book. That's just pure frustration. Trust me, I wouldn't have finished it if it was. I already have enough frustration in my life. I don't need to buy the novels. Yeah. So don't worry. It's absolutely not. And I am someone who does not finish books if I do not want. There are too many wonderful books to read if one is just if I'm not the person or if I'm not in the place to read that book, I don't finish it. I don't feel any great obligation. So, yeah, we're going to talk about humor and about Tia and her daughter. And we're in a gesture towards the ending without giving anything away, because like I said, I think the ending was chef's kiss. But first I would love for you to read to us from your book. So again, we're listening to Anne A. Kavolik, talk of Talk. Read from her book Count on Me, which was published by Guernica editions in 2025.
- [29:03]
Ann Kavolik
Thanks. I'll do actually a very short reading. So this is one example of I could do something about the sort of cycle breaking. But what I will give instead is one of the examples of the little sort of yellow flags or you're not sure if the yellow flags or red flags that I sprinkled in about is there elder abuse happening or not? Because it could be tricky to discern in a family. So here's one, sort of in the. In the earliest part of the book. And again, Tia is the protagonist, her brother is Tristan, and Tristan's girlfriend is named Gloria. Over that fall and winter, I periodically drove my car to my mother's bank to get printouts of her account activity. The papers looked like they'd been spat out from the first computer system the bank had ever owned with courier font and complex codes. More than a Month after Tristan and Gloria moved in, I got a second printout and saw that my proposal to pay down most of her credit card debt had happened. Maybe they were being responsible. Maybe I was paranoid, policing the accounts like this. But the payments for heat, electricity and phone bills were still being withdrawn, even though my mother said Tristan and Gloria had promised to take over those payments once they moved in. Several weeks later, already in the area, doing some Christmas shopping, I got a third set of printouts. The utility bills were still being withdrawn. But what worried me most was a new series of withdrawals. Bi weekly payments to a Dodge dealership. Mom, I asked on the phone, did dad get another car? No. Why? I just saw something on your account. Something about car payments. We don't need one. Tristan and Gloria have one. Their car was a Dodge. Did you give them permission to make their car payments from your account? I feared her reaction, but she stayed neutral. I don't know. Go ask them what's going on. I didn't try to explain why. That would be about as productive as hugging a snapping turtle. By the way, I thought they were supposed to pay the utility bills. They aren't. They said they were. Anyway. Why are you so bothered? Okay, mom, just asking. And we change the subject. So I'll leave it there.
- [31:27]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, thanks. And as you were reading again, I was thinking about the Maybe this wasn't supposed to be funny because it was maybe in a I don't laugh, I'll cry kind of way, but that the jewelry exchanges. Yeah, that was a lot. Right? Like, and I think that. That. That part, that frustration that Tia feels, and it really like, to me, again, maybe you didn't mean it to be funny, but it's funny in the way that this is never going to end until one of them dies. Is it, like, kind of way? I would love for you to tell our audience about the jewelry exchange and why you use that to show the tension and some of the problems between Vera and Tia.
- [32:15]
Ann Kavolik
So Vera went through World War II, and many people have this kind of a story where currencies are useless in a war. And so people revert to things like cigarettes or stealing food from other people's fields. And so at a young age, Vera learned to be very enterprising to survive. And that was a really good survival skill. But sometimes we latch onto certain survival skills that worked in wartime that don't work as well in peacetime. So she is very transactional. And I've always been curious about that word, transactional. Right. Because if we use it to describe A relationship that's not a compliment, right. Yet transactions in the market, you know, giving and receiving, there's, you know, nothing wrong with that. And we give and receive to each other. We give and receive in, you know, a parental relationship and a friendship relationship. That. That's just the nature of being human and having needs. And we exchange things. Yet again, if you call it transactional, that's no longer a compliment. So what's the boundary there? I've always been curious about that. And so I made Tia Avira, the mother, the senior mother, very transactional. So, you know, it's kind of. She proves her love with things, so she's always kind of like, you know, testing her daughter's affections by, you know, she's had this jewelry that was, you know, the only thing that was inequitable in the inheritance. Everything was supposed to be split between the two siblings, except the jewelry was supposed to go to the daughter. And that's one of the first things that Tristan, you know, leaps upon because it was an inequity, right? And then that jewelry just keeps, you know, getting taken. Getting, you know, moving from. From hand to hand. It goes back to Tia, but then the mother keeps asking for bits of it, but, you know, not really. It's. It's a market exchange that doesn't belong, you know, that's. It doesn't belong in an intimate relationship. That's not how you prove someone's affection, whether they will bring you a piece of jewelry or not. But, yeah, I was playing with that. That. That idea of being. Of being transactional.
- [34:34]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, I. I really enjoyed that. I mean, I enjoyed it insofar as every time it came up, I would just, like, that exasperated laugh. You know, I'm like, oh, my God, Vera. I found it amusing, but like I said, I found that amusing in a very dark way. Again, like you said, that's not how things should work. Vera. I understand why Vera is the way she is, but it was. It was definitely, like, a frustrating exchange, but that was also kind of funny. But let's talk about things that were just purely funny. Now. Let's. Let's move on to the lightness of the situation. And I understand that I'm finding things funny that maybe other people.
- [35:11]
Ann Kavolik
Oh, people. I tried to build in funny bits, for sure. Yeah.
- [35:14]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, absolutely. So, obviously, there's these really tender, lovely, light moments with Tia and her daughter, which are just wonderful, like these. This helium lightness to it. And you. You see, during the. The last. I'd say, like, third of the book, you see the daughter grow up quite quickly, you know, the. The acceleration and appropriate acceleration of time as the narrative moves towards its end. And when I say end, I mean the story continues in the reader's head. But towards the end, what I found really interesting about and what I found very light about it was just how much Tia's daughter adores her and how much. How much Tia has worried and is just such a lovely mother. I mean, despite all the. The weirdness, overproductiveness. And I would love for you to talk about, you know, maybe where that realistic, because it's not a sunshine and lollipop situation. Tia is a single mother there. The father wants nothing to do with anything, so we get a little bit of information on him, but he's basically not there. And I don't care. I don't miss him. I'm like, good, you're gone. I don't have to deal with you. But I was wondering if you could talk about building that relationship between them, which, again, has that beautiful lightness that's, you know, if I could put a smell to it. Be like the smell of cherry chapstick. It's a very light, like, childhood smell to me. That's how I feel when I think about them. But it's not like it was perfect. She's tired sometimes. Tia's tired. She's tired. She's a tired mom. But her daughter just so obviously adores her. Even as her daughter gets older, just adores her. In the ending, I would say, while there's one image that I'm not going to mention and not on air, but there's an Will give too much away, but there's an image of Tristan at the end. I'll just say that that, like, really broke my heart for him, but I'd say it's a happy ending. Overall. I would say Tia's in a good space. Her daughter's in a good space. And I would love to hear about creating that relationship between them and how you did it realistically without making it, like, so diametrically different than everything else that's happening.
- [37:19]
Ann Kavolik
So it's interesting. So I am a parent, one biological son and three step kids, but I was not a single mother when I was writing this book. So I. And I did a lot of research, mostly interviews. So I interviewed all kinds of people from the political, from, you know, the. In the care professions. But I also interviewed, you know, single mothers to kind of get the flavor of, like, okay, so, you know, what are those, like, crunchy details that I wouldn't get. So, you know, I use that to sort of inform, you know, some of those early scenes. And then, ironically, when I started writing this, I became a single mother, no longer to a baby. But I was like, oh, well, people will think this is me now. But all that research I did is sure coming in handy. So it was actually life imitating art in that sense. But, yeah, I really wanted to show. I've long been fascinated with cycle breaking, and I don't want to write a story. I want to write a story that has a way out, that shows a way out. And so you do see that Tia is able to sort of. And there's therapy weaved in through here in very solicitous ways. Therapy is a very hard thing to write in a novel. But this is also not just a hero's journey. Right. It's a heroine's journey. There's a community there, and I think that's more realistic that people transform. But we transform in relationship and in community. And I. From multiple stories of people having the experience of, like, parenting can. Parenting will bring up anything from our own childhoods that is unhealed, but that actually can also be an opportunity to heal those things if we have the support and if we know how to do it. I have actually one. Just one paragraph of kind of that scene where they're. I could read if we have the time, but if you know, where they're, like, building couch forts without work.
- [39:24]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, absolutely. That'd be wonderful, if you wouldn't mind.
- [39:26]
Ann Kavolik
Okay. So in this thing, you know, they've just started, you know, building a couch fort with pillows, and they're crawled in, inside, scooched in. And just before they've, you know, Tio's having something at the daycare that evokes the idea of boundaries and safety and having inside and an outside. So they're inside, and Tia whispers to her daughter, zoe, shall we have tea? No. Dinner. I scooched back out, grabbed some carrot sticks from the fridge, and wormed my way back in. How I love the feeling of being contained with my child in a hideaway. Off limits. Yes, indeed, Zoe. We are inside. This is your fort, and I am your guest. No one else can come in right now. Through my daughter, I held a passport to the land of happy childhoods. And so I could see wisps of ghosts in the corners, spirits who suddenly panicked, as if my statement of safety was, to them, an invective. They fled through gaps between pillows, wiggling smoky tails behind them. Why had I let them linger for so long. It was so much quieter now without their persistent low level trilling. So that. That just sort of encapsulates that, you know, through, you know, the passport, the land of happy childhoods, is how Tia heals herself and in, you know, improving the relationship with her own daughter.
- [40:52]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, that's. That was a really. I still remember that scene. As someone who does love a great fort and has got to. Has got to relive my childhood. Many times I constantly say to people, I mean, when everyone's talking about getting older, getting older, I'm like, I'm still growing up, man. I don't know about the rest of you. You can say getting older if you want. I'm growing up. There's. And as a perpetual thing for me, it's never gonna happen. Thank goodness. My next question for you, because I. It's a question I actually know the answer to, but I thought it might help our audience understand why you were such an ideal person to write this book. And I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about your professional background.
- [41:30]
Ann Kavolik
So I'm an economist, an environmental economist, and, you know, Tia in the novel is an accountant. They're not the same thing that they are, but I realize, you know, that part of my professional world, you know, I enjoy. I enjoy, and I think it's important and it's wonderful. I'm glad I'm there. But I realized afterwards that I think from my own personal history, just different from the novel, I understand why I became fascinated with discerning the difference between human exchanges in a warm context versus what is transactional. So many of us live this, right? Like, I think we can think of friendships or other relationships where we have to sort of. It's a trick to discern what people's motives are because things can look very giving and loving, and sometimes they really are. That's wonderful. But sometimes there's a different quality there. So I think in retrospect, I probably was interested in economics because sometimes when you're trying to study what a thing is, sometimes it's useful to study what it isn't, right? Like the near enemies or the things that masquerade as it. And so, you know, there's absolutely nothing wrong with market transactions in a market, you know, you go, you buy your widgets, you change. It's great, Good. All good. Not so much when it's in an intimate context. And so I understand, you know, international trade and market dynamics and microeconomics, all fine. And then I can recognize maybe when things are Transactional in a human relationship versus the mysterious nature of what can go beyond that. And that's the. What we all, of course, hope for in our, in our relationships.
- [43:23]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, I found that so interesting when I found out because, you know, economics are something that affect, you know, touch so much, touch every point of our lives, really. But people like me who live this very ethereal, you know, kind of skipping through the daisies kind of life. Well, I mean, I, I don't. That's what I try. I aim to the daisies. I often end up in the ditch, but I'm always trying to get to the daisies. I, I really thought, wow, like, this is. I want, like, yes, I want to talk about this. I want everyone to talk about this because, you know, it's really is like what happens does. What's transactional relationship, what's not. I mean, I talk about this all the time. You've probably heard me in Literary Citizenship. It's like, it's not transactional. Just do stuff because you love the books and stop at it. Just do it because you love the person. Don't expect anything ever in return. Just do it for the love of it. And I mean, I feel that way about books, I feel that way about people. That may seem like a very strange correlation, but if you love books, you'll understand.
- [44:25]
Ann Kavolik
No, but it's fundamental. So Lewis Hyde talks about that, the Gift, that book, his book called the Gift, I recommend to everyone. But he goes through indigenous gift economies and he argues that art belongs more in a gift economy. And we have a market economy. And so selling a book and what we're doing right now, promoting a book, is trying to shoehorn in this gift economy, this thing that belongs in a gift economy, and make it deal with the market economy realities that we have to deal with. Right. It's always going to be an uncomfortable fit, but, yeah, art, Art is a gift to this world. If it's. If in, in my view, if it's. If it's good, if it's good art, it's in the nature of a gift. And how you, you know, reconcile those two is just, it's not easy.
- [45:11]
Holly Gattery
No, it's like me trying to get into low rise jeans in the early 2000s. Like, that's what, that's why with the picture in my head, it's like, yeah, it shouldn't be there. We shouldn't be forcing it there. There's nobody. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh, God, I still have a pair. They're like, I still fit into them, but I Refuse to wear them. My. My daughter thinks they're hilarious because I say I still fit into them. That's not necessarily a brag. That's because, like, my four kids have literally taken my life force away. So it's. It's not a brag at all.
- [45:40]
Ann Kavolik
There's hope if you can fit into those jeans. There's hope that art can survive in a market. There we go.
- [45:45]
Holly Gattery
I fit into them. How they look is completely interesting.
- [45:48]
Ann Kavolik
Sorry. Still a win.
- [45:49]
Holly Gattery
Take the win. Yeah. How they look. Oh, it's so funny. But, yeah, that's what you're talking about. That I'm like, yeah, it's like me in those damn low ride jeans. Yeah. So I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. And I have one final question for you, and that is, what are you working on now?
- [46:04]
Ann Kavolik
I should probably work on another novel. I don't want to work on another play. But the form, I get captured with something, and then the. What I'm interested in dictates its own form. I find playwriting tough, but I'm captured with something that is. That needs to take the form of a play. So I'm. I seem to be doing that again.
- [46:27]
Holly Gattery
Well, I look forward to it. I love. I love plays. I love reading plays. I've never written a play, but I love reading plays for dialogue. I think reading plays make me better at dialogue because they can mimic better. I feel playwrights have this gift for mimicking what conversation. Dialogue sounds like through art. Because, of course, dialogue, like play dialogue, script dialogue, is not how people actually talk, but it's a. It's. It's a representation of how people actually talk that works within the art form and that makes sense within the art form. So I love it, and I can't wait to read whatever play comes out of your beautiful brain. I'm sure it's gonna be good. And thank you so much for coming and talking to me on NBN about your marvelous book Count on Me, which was published in October 2025 with the phenomenal Guernica editions. And thank you again and have a wonderful rest of your day.
- [47:29]
Ann Kavolik
You too, Holly. Thank you so much. That foreign make their holiday unforgettable with a gift that says it all from Pandora Jewelry. A gift that tells a story and shows, you know, theirs that doesn't just sparkle but speaks. This season, give a gift that's perfectly theirs. Whether you're shopping for a shiny surprise for your significant other, matching bracelets to celebrate your friendship, or a heartfelt gift for a family member. Say more this holiday season with pandora. Shop@pandora.net or your local Pandora store.