John Wray. - Review - book review

Interview, April, 2001 by Emily Jenkins

A NEW NOVELIST ASKS WHAT MAKES MEN BRAVE?

"Men have a huge spectrum of failings," notes first-time novelist John Wray. "And one that's not much discussed is the tendency to desert." In The Right Hand of Sleep, due out this month from Knopf, he fearlessly examines the inner life of a WWI deserter from the Austro-Hungarian army who returns to his homeland after a long exile in the days before WWII, then must decide whether his country's and lover's embrace of fascism mean he should desert once again. "I wanted to write about how desertion can be good. It was really the bravest thing many people could have done when the Third Reich invaded."

Though Wray is only 29, much of the book is autobiographical. Period details are mined from family lore and the central romance fictionalizes his own first love. "I gave my own affair to this 36-year-old guy suffering from shell shock--actually a pretty fitting description of how I felt at the time," Wray laughs. "I had a really bad adolescence." Young adulthood wasn't much better. For two years, Wray lived and wrote in a basement band-rehearsal space with "no windows, no heat, no telephone, no shower and no private bathroom. 200 square feet, one human being, and at any given moment, three monster rat."

Eventually, he sold his novel and fortune smiled. Now, Wray spends his days above ground, writing in a Brooklyn apartment on one of his 16 typewriters. And if the talent revealed in The Right Hand of Sleep has any staying power, he won't be leaving anytime soon.

Emily Jenkins is the author of a new children's book Five Creatures.