New novels from Emma Knight and Anita Desai explore the dual identities of mothers

Summary

NPR's Book of the Day: Exploring Dual Identities of Mothers in Contemporary Novels

Episode Title: New novels from Emma Knight and Anita Desai explore the dual identities of mothers
Host: Mary Louise Kelly
Release Date: January 24, 2025

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Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of NPR's Book of the Day, host Mary Louise Kelly delves into two compelling novels that explore the intricate dynamics of motherhood and individual identity. The featured books are Emma Knight's debut novel, "The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus," and Anita Desai's latest work, "Rosarita." Both authors examine the dual lives led by mothers—the balance between personal aspirations and familial responsibilities.

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Emma Knight's "The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus"

Overview

Emma Knight's debut novel is a poignant coming-of-age story centered on Penelope, affectionately known as Pen, a new student at the University of Edinburgh. The narrative intertwines themes of motherhood, female friendship, and first love, using the octopus as a central metaphor for early motherhood.

Key Discussions

• Character Development and Setting: Mary Louise Kelly introduces Pen as an overachieving 18-year-old from Toronto who aspires to be a magazine writer. Pen is skeptical about marriage, evident from her deliberate choice of nickname, "Pen."

  "Her real name is Penelope, but she goes by the on the nose on purpose nickname, Pen."
  (03:06) – Emma Knight

• Plot and Relationships: Pen senses that her parents are concealing something from her. Determined to uncover the truth, she attends the University of Edinburgh seeking adventure and aiming to reconnect with her estranged father’s friend, Lord Lennox—a renowned Scottish mystery writer.

  "He is one of those fortunate people who found the right job for his talents."
  (04:07) – Emma Knight

• Themes of Motherhood: Knight employs the octopus as a metaphor for the self-sacrificing nature often expected of mothers. The creature's lifecycle mirrors the challenges of balancing personal growth with maternal duties.

  "The octopus in real life is famous for spending a large portion of her life brooding over her eggs... this creature works very hard to make it to adulthood in a difficult world."
  (08:07) – Emma Knight

• Notable Scenes and Insights: The conversation highlights a beautiful scene between Pen and her father, emphasizing the theme of unspoken truths and the growth that comes with age.

  "Pen the child is with her father, and Pen, the adult, is observing the questions that young Pen has for her father that he can't quite answer."
  (05:55) – Emma Knight

• Humor and Joy: Knight brings humor and joy to Pen’s experiences, particularly in scenes like the Reeling Ball, where Pen navigates the complexities of young adulthood and relationships with characters like Fergus Scarlet Moore.

  "There's a lot happening at the Reeling Ball... the characters not knowing exactly what it is they want."
  (07:20) – Emma Knight

Notable Quotes

• On Motherhood and Identity:

  "A mother just has to carry on being herself."
  (09:52) – Emma Knight

• On the Novel's Title:

  "I can say that the octopus in this novel is a metaphor for a kind of Loch Ness monster that I tortured myself with in early motherhood."
  (08:07) – Emma Knight

Conclusion of the Interview

Mary Louise Kelly wraps up the discussion with Emma Knight by highlighting the novel's exploration of maternal identity and personal authenticity.

"That is Emma Knight, very much herself, talking about her debut novel, the life cycle of the common octopus. This was a delight. Thank you."
(10:06) – Mary Louise Kelly

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Anita Desai's "Rosarita"

Overview

Anita Desai, a three-time Booker finalist, presents "Rosarita," a novel that delves into the theme of dual identities, particularly focusing on the often-suppressed individual lives of women beneath their familial roles.

Key Discussions

• Plot Synopsis: The story follows Bonita, a young Indian woman studying languages in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Bonita encounters a stranger who claims to have known her mother, Rosarita, implying that her mother had a vibrant life in Mexico—a life Bonita was unaware of.

  "Bonita remembers a sketch in pastels that hung above her childhood bed. Is it possible that her mother had another life, not just before, but apart from her family?"
  (11:05) – Narration

• Character Dynamics: Desai explores the tension between believing in the stranger's story and the doubts arising from Bonita's lack of knowledge about her mother's purported past.

  "She can't escape it."
  (12:38) – Anita Desai

• Themes of Suppression and Duality: The novel articulates how women often lead dual lives—balancing personal aspirations with family responsibilities. This suppression can lead to hidden secrets and a fractured sense of self.

  "They lead their own individual lives, and they lead the lives of their families as well. So part of them is divided anyway."
  (14:52) – Anita Desai

• Mystery and Self-Discovery: Bonita's journey is one of uncovering truths about her mother, challenging her understanding of identity and the sacrifices made by those who come before her.

  "She is almost persuaded, not certain to the very end."
  (13:59) – Anita Desai

Notable Quotes

• On Fiction's Purpose:

  "I think fiction should be used to tell the truth. Sometimes one can't tell the truth for various reasons."
  (15:34) – Anita Desai

• On Emily Dickinson's Influence:

  "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant."
  (16:21) – Anita Desai

Conclusion of the Interview

The discussion with Anita Desai underscores the novel's exploration of hidden identities and the complexities of maternal roles.

"Anita Desai, her new novel, Rosarita. Thank you so much for being with us."
(16:35) – Scott Simon

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Final Thoughts

NPR's Book of the Day episode masterfully navigates the intricate themes of motherhood and personal identity through the lenses of Emma Knight and Anita Desai. Both authors offer nuanced portrayals of women striving to maintain their individual selves amidst familial obligations, inviting readers to reflect on the delicate balance of dual lives.

"A mother just has to carry on being herself."
(09:52) – Emma Knight

"They lead their own individual lives, and they lead the lives of their families as well. So part of them is divided anyway."
(14:52) – Anita Desai

This episode serves as a thoughtful guide for anyone interested in contemporary literature that tackles the profound questions surrounding maternal identity and the sacrifices inherent in it.

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Produced by: Danica Panetta and Chloe Weiner
Edited by: Megan Sullivan and Petro Mayer
Executive Producer: Yolanda Sanguini

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For more insights and discussions on the latest and greatest in literature, subscribe to NPR's Book of the Day and stay engaged with stories that resonate.

Transcript

[Andrew Limbong]

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. My mom had a whole life before I came around, and she continues to have a life outside of me. In fact, there's probably a whole side of my mom that I've never experienced. That's one of those stupidly obvious things that takes a while to sink in for me and for a lot of people. And it's the running theme between the two books we've got for you today. In a bit, we'll hear about a woman trying to unfurl the mystery of her own mother. But first, Emma Knight's debut novel is a coming of age story about a young woman named Penn who is a new student at the University of Edinburgh. It's titled the Life Cycle of the Common Octopus. And in this interview with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly, Knight talks about how the octopus is actually a metaphor for early motherhood. That's ahead.

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[Mary Louise Kelly]

In the opening pages of Emma Knight's debut novel, she describes a typical student breakfast at the University of Edinbur, Scotland. Scrambled eggs too puffy to be true, she writes. Also, baked beans with a faint aftertaste of ash, pliable triangles of potato bread and something darkly sausage like. I had to smile reading this, having been a student at a British university myself back in the 90s. Along with breakfast, Knight's novel takes on subjects of motherhood and female friendship and first love. The novel is the life cycle of the Common Octopus. Emma Knight, welcome.

[Emma Knight]

Thank you for having me. It's a joy to be here.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

And I have to congratulate you on the alarmingly accurate description of the darkly sausage like food as you're describing the cafeteria offerings for students in Britain. Is this a delight you experienced firsthand?

[Emma Knight]

It absolutely is. Although my favorite was the porridge, which.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

They do quite well.

[Emma Knight]

Extremely well.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

All right, so tell us about your protagonist. Her name is Pen and she has just arrived as a student in Edinburgh.

[Emma Knight]

Yes. So Pen is an overachieving 18 year old late bloomer from Toronto. Her real name is Penelope, but she goes by the on the nose on purpose nickname, Pen. She aspires to be a magazine writer and she doesn't really believe in marriage, so she's cut off the elope.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

I didn't even catch that as I was reading, but that's great.

[Emma Knight]

Yeah, go on. So she, throughout her childhood, could sense that her parents were hiding something from her. And at age 18, she decides that she's going to find out what.

[Anita Desai]

Yeah.

[Emma Knight]

She goes to the University of Edinburgh in part to get far away from where she grew up and have adventures, but also because she wants to find an estranged friend of her father's.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

This is a man named Lord Lennox, and he is also an elusive Scottish writer of mysteries. Tell us more about him and his family, who we get to know quite well.

[Emma Knight]

Yeah. So Elliot Lennox has been dubbed the peerless peer by the press and he is a well known author of detective fiction whose series of novels have been gripping the world for over a decade by the time Pen tracks him down. And he is one of those fortunate people who found the right job for his talents. He grew up in a beautiful crumbling castle on the east coast of Scotland and he is extremely welcoming toward Pen to a degree that surprises her. He invites her to spend the weekend. She writes him a letter through his literary agent, not even really expecting a response. And he writes back inviting her to come on the train and spend the weekend. So she does, and she meets his seemingly perfect family, his captivating wife, Christina, and his his son Sasha. She keeps tugging at the thread of this family secret that she knows exists, but she doesn't know too much about it. And he does just about anything to make her feel welcome, except for answering her direct questions.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

She does do a lot of growing up in that one year. You write one beautiful scene between her and her father, who has shown up out of nowhere. He decides he's gonna appear and take her out to dinner. And you describe him, among other things, as knowing how to wield silence. And you write that Pen in Contrast was too young still to know how not to fill the silence. Tell me what you're playing with there.

[Emma Knight]

This is definitely something I'm still learning.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Yeah.

[Emma Knight]

Part of it is about the sort of the dramatic irony that exists when one gets a bit older and is able to look back on one's younger self and see all of the knowledge gaps that are glaring. Pen the child is with her father, and Pen, the adult, is observing the questions that young Pen has for her father that he can't quite answer. The older narrator views with a lot more empathy and understanding of the position that he's in.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

You also bring so much laughter and joy, just pure joy to the scenes of what it's like to be 18 years old, 19 years old, out in the world for the first time. There's so much banter and silliness and flirting. That must have been a just total delight to write.

[Emma Knight]

I had way too much fun writing the Reeling Ball.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Give us a taste of that one.

[Emma Knight]

Well, there's a character called Fergus Scarlet Moore. He was actually the first character who came to me. He sort of strode into my brain wearing trousers the color of smoked trout and a melancholy frown and started heckling Pen. There's a lot happening at the Reeling Ball, but one of the things that's happening is a kind of mating dance between Fergus and Pen. The characters not knowing exactly what it is they want.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

There's something Jane Austen about what you're describing there.

[Emma Knight]

Oh, that's very kind of you. I love Jane Austen. I love Jane Austen. I mean, Evelyn Waugh writes funny college scenes very well. And young people thinking that they're sophisticated.

[Scott Simon]

Yeah.

[Emma Knight]

I mean, Jilly Cooper. Jilly Cooper does such a great job of writing about the mating dance with a sense of humor.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Yeah, well, and there's something so perfect and obvious. But writing about an actual dance, as the mating dance is taking place in between the steps, it all comes together. Alert listeners may be wondering what on earth an octopus has to do with any of this. So explain your title, the Life Cycle of the Common Octopus.

[Emma Knight]

So I don't want to give too much away, but I can say that the octopus in this novel is a metaphor for a kind of Loch Ness monster that I tortured myself with in early motherhood. And I don't think I'm the only one. This concept of the perfectly self sacrificing mother for whom independent life and ambition cease to exist. Now, the octopus in real life is famous for spending a large portion of her life brooding over her eggs. So this creature works very hard to make it to adulthood in a difficult world. And then after mating, stops eating and begins to waste away while taking care of her eggs. And this beautiful brooding process is quite tragic. It is something that we as humans should not aspire to. Our children need us to be our authentic selves. They need us to continue living and to show them what it is to be a truthful person in this world.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

I think you just ventured toward answering what was going to be my last question, which was the question that Pen poses to herself. Does a mother have to choose between being selfish and being eaten alive?

[Emma Knight]

Oh, goodness, It's a daily question, isn't it? Yeah. No, no. A mother just has to carry on being herself.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

That is Emma Knight, very much herself, talking about her debut novel, the life cycle of the common octopus. This was a delight. Thank you.

[Emma Knight]

Thank you so much, Mary Louise.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Foreign.

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[Andrew Limbong]

In a lot of ways, mothers lead dual lives. There's the life of the family and the life of the individual. And according to novelist Anita Desai, sometimes that individual identity gets squashed, hidden away somewhere. She plays with this theme in her novel Rosarita and tells NPR Scott Simon that when that individual identity is suppressed, well, that's when secrets happen.

[Scott Simon]

Bonita, a young woman from India, sits in a park in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, when a stranger approaches to say that she looks just like her mother, whom she calls Rosarita. The woman says they studied art and partied together in Mexico decades before. Bonita, who is in Mexico studying languages, says that's impossible. Her mother never went to Mexico. Her mother never painted. The woman must be mistaken or a trickster, as she begins to call her. And yet Bonita remembers a sketch in pastels that hung above her childhood bed. Is it possible that her mother had another life, not just before, but apart from her family? Rosarita is the latest novel from the three time Booker finalist Anita Desai, who has been writing acclaimed novels for six decades. She joins us now from Cold Springs, New York. Thank you so much for being with us.

[Anita Desai]

Thank you for having me.

[Scott Simon]

This woman almost flings herself on Bonita. Why doesn't Bonita just Say, nope, you're wrong. Can't be my mother.

[Anita Desai]

Well, when one is traveling, one has these strange encounters. They're not easy to dismiss. They're exactly what you came to find, to discover and to explore. So she has left India behind. She had not expected to find anything from India and Mexico. Yet here she is in Mexico and she finds India all around her. She can't escape it.

[Scott Simon]

Please tell us about the picture above Bonita's childhood bed. It's of a mother and child, right?

[Anita Desai]

Yes. Well, it's something that Bonita, as a child, never paid much attention to it. It was simply there. Certainly she never connected it with her mother or with herself. But now in Mexico, with the words of the trickster in her ears, she begins to wonder if there was such a connection. That's what leads her on this path, not forwards, but backwards.

[Scott Simon]

I notice you refer to the woman as the trickster. Does that settle the issue? Is that what she is?

[Anita Desai]

I leave it unsolved and up to the reader. There are times when she behaves like a trickster. She says things which seem so totally unlikely. And at other times, the narrator has glimpses of her which reveal a very real person with very real feelings and a past. And in fact, they do go and visit a bit of her past. Also, I'm not sure if she's a trickster or just a fantasist. To some extent, we all are, especially when we travel. We can invent our lives.

[Scott Simon]

Does Bonita recognize the person this woman says is her mother as the mother she knew?

[Anita Desai]

No, she didn't. She never knew that her mother was a painter or never knew that she ever went to Mexico. These things were never spoken of during her childhood in her home. So she has an entirely new picture of her mother which had never occurred to her. There was no hint of it. And now the trickster's trying to persuade her. And in a way she's almost persuaded, not certain to the very end.

[Scott Simon]

Your novel might make a reader ask, do a lot of people, and women especially, have dual lives that never quite came to be? I said women not to exclude men, but to try and recognize that there are still in this world a lot of women who subordinate themselves to the lives of men?

[Anita Desai]

Yes, I agree that women have to do so, because in a way, they do lead dual lives. They lead their own individual lives, and they lead the lives of their families as well. So part of them is divided anyway. And sometimes that individual life is allowed to exist, and very often it is not and has to be suppressed. Or hidden. And in that way, yes, there are secrets there, too, just as they are in this book.

[Scott Simon]

What do you think fiction can do for people these days?

[Anita Desai]

I think fiction exists for many different reasons and for many different writers. But I think fiction should be used to tell the truth. Sometimes one can't tell the truth for various reasons. It begins to sound polemical. It is not acceptable to some readers as it is to others. And that's why I choose to tell my truths through fiction. There's a wonderful piece of advice given by an American poet, Emily Dickinson. I wonder if you know her lines and she says, tell all the truth, but tell it slant.

[Scott Simon]

Success in circuit lies too bright for our infirm delight. The truth's superb surprise, right?

[Anita Desai]

I think this is just the perfect message for a novelist, for a writer.

[Scott Simon]

Anita Desai, her new novel, Rosarita. Thank you so much for being with us.

[Anita Desai]

Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it.

[Andrew Limbong]

That's it for this week on NPR's Book of the Day. Let us know what you think. You can write to [e-mail] I'm Andrew Limbong. The podcast is produced by Danica Panetta and Chloe Weiner and edited by Megan Sullivan, our founding editor, and Petro Mayer. The show elements for this week were produced and edited by ryan Bank, Ed McNulty, Emiko Tamagawa, Todd Muntz Deparvaz, Fernando Naru Roman, Samantha Rafelson, Grace Griffin, Katherine Welch, Justine Kennan, Lauren Hodges, Elena Torrek and Martha Ann Overland. Yolanda Sanguini is our executive producer. Thanks for listening.

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