{"id":1097,"date":"2021-01-26T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-27T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/?p=1097"},"modified":"2021-01-27T07:49:13","modified_gmt":"2021-01-27T14:49:13","slug":"character-interview-aglaia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/archives\/1097","title":{"rendered":"CHARACTER INTERVIEW: AGLAIA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Let’s have a conversation with Aglaia<\/strong> (aka Mary Grace Klassen), main character in the book <\/span><\/em>The Third Grace<\/span><\/a>. She’s a designer at Incognito Costume Shop (rentals for parties, stage, and screen) in Denver, but she grew up in small-town Nebraska and her author (Deb Elkink) has finally allowed her to visit Paris . . . <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you so much for this interview, Aglaia.  Now that the book has been written, do you feel you were fairly portrayed or would you like to set anything straight with your readers?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks for inviting me here. You can call me Mary Grace, if you find it easier to pronounce than ah-glay<\/u>-ah. I go by both names now. I used to hate the name my hayseed parents gave me, so the summer I was seventeen, I decided to change it\u2014and myself!\u2014into the personification of grace. Aglaia is the name of a Greek goddess, you know.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As to your question, I think I wasn\u2019t portraying myself<\/em> very honestly to begin with, rubbing shoulders with influential Dr. Chapman like I was some sort of diva, and ignoring my boss\u2019s careful warnings and my childhood friend\u2019s overtures. But in self-defense, I\u2019d worked hard at erasing my rural past, and\u2014what with this work trip to Paris coming up\u2014the last thing I needed was another reminder about that long-ago affair.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actually, the author was brutal with me. She forced me to take a look at who I really was and where I was heading. And she caused me a great deal of pain when she flooded me with non-stop memories of that long-ago summer of love and loss.    <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you feel the author did a good job colorizing your personality?  If not, how would you like to have been portrayed differently?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What a loaded question! Wouldn\u2019t we all like to come across as something we\u2019re not? My boss put it well when he said, \u201cI spent so many years fearing I\u2019d be discovered for the fraud I really am.\u201d And he\u2019s one of the most genuine people I know! It\u2019s rather ironic that he\u2019s in the business of disguises, isn\u2019t it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for myself, I deliberately left the Nebraska farm girl far behind when I moved to Denver, and I\u2019ve been climbing the ladder to success in the posh world of the arts ever since. So when Dr. Chapman\u2014Lou\u2014was up in my apartment that evening sipping wine with me, and my backward mother barged in with the smell of the barnyard and her ridiculous request, I almost choked with embarrassment. I think the author did me a service in the end, though. You see, I wasn\u2019t facing myself. I\u2019d been denying an aspect of my real personality that she insisted on showing me by putting me in some very uncomfortable\u2014albeit exciting\u2014situations.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you believe is your strongest trait?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Definitely my creative imagination! It\u2019s what\u2019s taken me to an international level in artistic accomplishment despite my lack of academic credentials. I was born into a religious environment that looked down on \u201cvain imaginings.\u201d My dad didn\u2019t even like to hear my brother and me sharing our nightmares at the breakfast table, for Pete\u2019s sake, and I had some doozies\u2014not to mention my conscious daydreams! Of course, sewing was valued at home, and early on it became my main outlet for expression. But I harbored a rich inner fantasy life, especially once Fran\u00e7ois entered the picture with his own storytelling, whispering in my ear and filling my heart with a yearning for something more.   <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worse trait?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, I\u2019d have to say my creative imagination. The flip side of the coin has been that I\u2019ve almost drowned in my reveries, my soul overflowing with emotions and saturated with a dark obsession over mythology, sensuality, and troubling thoughts about God. I mean, with all these voices going on in my soul, who\u2019s to say which one I should listen to, anyway? That\u2019s the question I had to ask myself throughout this novel.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you could choose someone in the television or movie industry to play your part if your book was made into a movie, who would that be (and you can\u2019t say yourself!)?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think Drew Barrymore would be able to represent the conflict between my two selves, the country girl Mary Grace and the sophisticate Aglaia. Barrymore plays glam with a sort of self-conscious naivet\u00e9, doesn\u2019t she? There\u2019s a humility and rootedness about her. Also I think she\u2019d really enjoy the food she\u2019d get to eat in the movie\u2014foie gras<\/em> and cream sauces and French cheeses and even some good old Mennonite fare that still makes my mouth water! (For all her flaws, Mom\u2019s a fantastic cook.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have a love interest in the book?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll say, though he\u2019s lived mostly in my mind. I mentioned him already\u2014Fran\u00e7ois, the French exchange student my brother invited to the farm that summer fifteen years ago. Boy, he was a breath of fresh air! All the girls in the village were crazy about him, but he chose me<\/em> over any of them. I least, I thought so . . . Anyway, that summer ended very badly and I\u2019ve been mourning on several fronts ever since. So I was so thrilled\u2014and anxious\u2014for the chance to actually look him up again.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At what point in the book did you start getting nervous about the way it was going to turn out?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything was going fine with my life until my mother pushed that Bible onto me. She had the silly idea that I could hunt Fran\u00e7ois down in Paris after all those years and return it to him. Ludicrous! I could have shut her up by just dumping the thing\u2014like I\u2019d burned my own copy back on the farm when I decided to push God out of my life.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when a museum postcard fell out of that Bible, picturing The Three Graces that Fran\u00e7ois had been so hung up about, and then when I noticed his very own handwriting penciled into the margins of that book\u2014well, I couldn\u2019t resist checking it out. The first two of his phrases, noted right there in Genesis, read, \u201cIn the beginning, the gods created\u201d and \u201cNaked and we felt no shame.\u201d Did I blush! I grabbed that book and kept it away from prying eyes until I had time to look through every one of those margins. My suspicions turned out to be right: Fran\u00e7ois had jotted down many snippets that brought to vivid recollection all the seduction of that summer, step by delicious step!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you could trade places with one of the other characters in the book, which character would you really not<\/strong> want to be and why?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Definitely Joel, my brother. He\u2019s dead.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t want to talk about it . . .<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you feel about the ending of the book without giving too much away?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, put it this way: I\u2019m satisfied that everything was neatly tied up. I sure was surprised at the turn of events in several of my relationships, though, and can\u2019t say that I\u2019d have written this book the way the author did. I\u2019ll say this in her favor: She did allow me to have a good time in Paris (she loves that city, you know), and she let me take great satisfaction in my craft of costume design (she\u2019s done her fair share of that, as well). Also, if I\u2019d been left to my own devices without the author\u2019s invention, I\u2019d never have figured out the mystery behind the Three Graces! <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What words of wisdom would you give your author if s\/he decided to write another book with you in it?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d beg her to bring back Eb\u2014I\u2019m talking about Mr. MacAdam, manager of Incognito Costume Shop. That man is so wise, even if he does remind me of a funny little Scottish garden gnome! And I think the author should send me on another exotic trip. I hear she\u2019s writing up another book now with some fascinating foreign destinations! <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you for this interview, Aglaia\u2014or, I should say, Mary Grace.  Will we be seeing more of you in the future?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, sorry but I\u2019m too busy with my current successes.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Adapted from an interview first appearing at Beyond the Books<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s have a conversation with Aglaia (aka Mary Grace Klassen), main character in the book The Third Grace. She’s a designer at Incognito Costume Shop (rentals for parties, stage, and screen) in Denver, but she grew up in small-town Nebraska and her author (Deb Elkink) has finally allowed her to visit Paris . . . […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[80,79,4,55,76,53,78],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1097"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1166,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions\/1166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}