In her latest novel, No Two Persons, Erica Bauermeister reveals how books can affect us in the most beautiful and unexpected of ways—and how we are all more closely connected to one another than we might think.
Audible: How did you choose the 10 characters in this novel? Are they based on people you know or different aspects of yourself, or are they each a kind of archetype? All the above?
Erica Bauermeister: I don’t base my characters on myself or people I know, but there are often emotional connections—a fear, a love, a moment of insight. And I often find upon completing a story that the character has taught me something I needed to know.
As for where the characters come from, it varies widely—but usually it comes from a question. What kind of person dives without supplemental oxygen? What could you learn if you were trapped in a ghost town in a snowstorm? What could bring a mother and daughter together after decades of miscommunication? Once a character steps forward into the question, I let go of the reins and it becomes their story.
Did you think about the audio as you were writing—imagining separate narrators for each character?
Each character was so distinct in my mind, I always felt as if they would have different narrators, but that requires so much work I couldn’t believe it would ever happen. Then, to have a hand in choosing the narrators and to hear each one of them give such perfectly empathetic readings—well, that’s every author’s dream.
What do you hope for the listener to learn from getting into the heads of these different characters?
The structure of the book immerses you deeply into the worlds of an author and nine readers, separated by time and geography. My hope is that readers will walk away from their stories with the realization that we all see things differently, and yet we are more connected than we will ever know.
