Dune Road by Jane Green: Review & Interview

Dune Road is titled Girl Friday in the U.K .
(June 11 & 16, 2009 release)

Last fall author Jane Green and I partnered up to nag each other to write and to celebrate progress, like two friends training for a marathon. Creative writing is tough. You sit alone with only your imagination for company. As a working mother, there are always competing claims on your time.

Like Kit, the protagonist of Dune Road, Jane was recently divorced and juggling work with raising her children. What made Dune Road hard to write also made it good. Kit feels real. Here we have a single mother going through a rough transition and an ex-husband who isn’t letting go. Kit has to rework her friendships in a coupled community and reenter the dating scene in middle age.

Kit craves romance, but she also needs financial independence. She finds work as an assistant/Girl Friday for a reclusive bestseller author with a troubled past. Robert McClore writes suspense thrillers but otherwise sounds a bit like a male version of Jane Green. This double entendre is caught on paper:

"As a writer Robert often puts his own life into his books, often without realizing it…."

Anyone who followed Jane’s blog will have witnessed how life becomes material. For example, last Christmas Jane blogged about over-the-top decorations, which then appeared in Dune Road. Fictional Highfield, Connecticut sounds very similar to the posh suburb that Jane, an expat Brit, now calls home. Dune Road is not a memoir dressed up as fiction, but it is a novel that springs from life experience. This makes it ring true.

Dune Road also feels real for its backdrop of current events. Usually a novel takes more than a year to write (I’m still working on mine) and then takes another 6-18 months to go from a completed manuscript to a published book. Jane writes at lightening speed, and her publisher, Penguin, has performed a miracle in getting this book out in June, only 3 months after it was completed. Dune Road may be the first novel set in the post stock market crash world. It is very much a book of our times where even the wealthy are not immune to reversals of fortune.

For me the most interesting parts of Dune Road were the descriptions of writing from the author Robert McClore’s perspective:

"Never has a book been easier to write. It is as if he is writing on auto-pilot, the words flowing from his fingertips in a way they haven’t since –well, probably since his first novel.

"Writing was so creative back then, but of late it has felt more and more like a business. He has contracts to fulfill, books to write: one book a year, whether inspiration strikes or not.

"It has become a job, and one that he is starting to find dull.

"The business of outlining, of researching, of sifting through to decide which bits are relevant and which bits are not, used to fill him with passion.

"The moment when characters you thought were pivotal suddenly become irrelevant, when others, supposed to have been bit parts, end up driving the plot, taking over the book, filled him with pleasure."

It filled me with pleasure to read a well-crafted novel that captured both the art of writing and the challenges of balancing career and family. You won’t find beautiful blocks of prose in Dune Road. Jane employs the understated style of a former journalist in which simple writing facilitates the story telling.

Jane's focus is on relationships: family, friends, lovers and colleagues. Her work is a fine example of commercial women's fiction with many strong female characters of all ages. Tracy, the yoga instructor with a murky past, was especially fun. Jane is at her best when employing character-driven narrative. She weaves together multiple plot lines seamlessly.

Dune Road isn’t flawless. The Annabel plot line seemed unnecessary and took attention away from the mystery plot. I would have rather heard more about Robert McClore, the most intriguing character. We eavesdrop on his thoughts and memories, but Robert rarely says or does anything. The characters and their interwoven relationships worked better than the mystery itself.

I also preferred the Nantucket Island setting of The Beach House, Jane’s last novel, to the moneyed suburbs of Dune Road, but that’s just me. Some women are scared of big cities or the wilderness. I’m suburbaphobic.

I still enjoyed Dune Road very much and will happily grab another Jane Green novel when I head to the beach or board a plane. Reading her books is like traveling with a chatty girlfriend who knows how to make you laugh. Dune Road is classic Jane Green with a touch of mystery.

Jane's personal story has a happy ending. In March Jane finished her 11th novel and married Ian Warburg, creating a "Brady Bunch family" with her 4 children and his 2 children. Jane will still publish as Jane Green but has changed her name to Jane Green Warburg.

Photo of Jane Green Warburg by Tracy Ketcher

MY INTERVIEW OF JANE GREEN WARBURG

Sarah Laurence: What is special about Dune Road/Girl Friday? How is it different from your other novels?

Jane Green Warburg: This was my first attempt at a mystery, and it felt very different to write it – far more plot driven, and far more complex. Ultimately, I think I probably prefer my character-driven novels, but I’m glad I wrote this, although it won’t, as I had planned, be the first in a series of three. One was enough…

SL: Do you have a Girl Friday? Does she assist you in a similar way as described in your novel?

JGW: I do. I have my wonderful Sparkly Assistant, Elise. I could not live the life I do without her, because I am the most hopelessly disorganized person on the planet, mostly, I suspect, because I spend vast amounts of time inside my head. She does all the things Kit does, and so much more, besides.

SL: What are your sources of inspiration? How do you start?

JGW: I always have an idea of the theme, and then I spend time on the characters, because once I have the characters right, they have a tendency to tell their own stories. I will plot the book in thirds, because generally, by the time I finish the first third, the story will have changed entirely.

SL: Who are your favorite authors? Which ones have influenced your writing?

JGW: I love Dani Shapiro, Ann Patchett, Armistead Maupin, Jonathan Tropper. I’m not sure that authors as such have influenced my writing. I try to stay true to my own voice, because it is generally hard to remain consistent for an entire book in a voice that is not your own, or that is trying to be like someone else.

SL: Have blogging and twitter affected your writing? Which blogs do you follow?

JGW: They only affect my writing in that I spend an inordinate amount of time on them. Blogging is wonderful, and time-consuming. It is gratifying to have an outlet to write about things that you may have strong opinions about, but difficult to think of subjects about which to have strong opinions on a daily basis… I adore Twitter though, love the quickness of it, and that it enables me to stay connected without too much thought. I don’t follow any blogs religiously, but when I have spare time, will browse around and find things I like, although my secret shame are the gossip blogs…

SL: What is different in writing for an American vs. U.K. audience and how do you bridge the gap?

JGW: I probably write more for an American audience these days, and I suspect my books are far more ‘touchy-feely’ than they would have been had I remained in England. We English tend to be a little more sarcastic and self-deprecating, and I have definitely lost that edginess living here eight years. When I go back and flick through Straight Talking, my first novel, I can hardly believe I wrote it. Of course the language is different too, as you, my friend, rightly pointed out: petrol instead of gas, etc etc. Mistakes that weren’t picked up for the first edition, but will be changed for the second!

SL: What is your next project?

JGW: The Practice Marriage has already started gestating. I am starting to make notes about my characters – three sisters, and I am excited.

SL: If you could be anything other than an author, what would you be?

JGW: I am obsessed with all things creative to do with the home. I could have been a chef, a gardener, an interior designer…

Sarah Laurence and Jane Green Warburg

Blog Watch: Recent Jane Green Warburg interviews are at Laura Reviews, at All the Best and at bobvila.com. No other book reviews have been posted yet. If you review Dune Road/Girl Friday, come back and leave a comment with the URL. Be sure to visit other book review club posts from the link button below.

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@Barrie Summy