Phyllis Schieber: Willing Spirits
Book Club Chat

Book Club Chat: Interview with Phyllis Schieber

This book speaks volumes about the bond between women. Do you have a bond with a female friend like that of Gwen and Jane?

Yes, of course I do. I have several very close women friends. These women are the touchstones for my sanity. They help me navigate my world. I feel unconditional love from them, and I like to think that I return that love. I take my friendships very seriously. Each relationship I have is unique, and each friend gives me something different. I like that about my relationships. While I have a good number of close women friends, I would say there are four women I consider my closest friends. My friend Bette, one of the two people to whom I dedicated Willing Spirits, passed away twenty years ago. She was my sister/friend, and I continue to acutely feel the loss of her presence.

Book Club Chat: Interview with Phyllis Schieber

Book Club Chat: Interview with Phyllis Schieber

Gwen had a very difficult relationship with her mother. What is/was your relationship with your mother like?

I can't say that I had a "difficult" relationship with my mother. It was a complicated relationship for sure. My mother just recently passed after a very long and hard few years. The last six months were especially painful. My mother was a Holocaust survivor. She was driven out of her home in Romania together with her parents and four siblings. They survived the Transnistria Death March, an event that took the Jews of Transnistria on a forced months long march across Europe in the thick of winter to the Ukraine. Two-thirds of the people died along the way, either from the cold, starvation, exhaustion or from the arbitrary decision of a German soldier. Once the survivors reached their destination, they were forced into a camp where the brutality continued. My grandparents and my mother's oldest brother died there. My grandparents died of typhus, the scourge of the camps. My mother and her sisters took their parents' bodies to a mass grave. The horrific stories I grew up hearing certainly made an impression on me and shaped my relationship with my mother. I felt compelled to make sure she was happy, and that is a lot for a youngster. It is a tremendous responsibility, and I took it to heart. I felt that she had been through enough.

My mother was a beautiful and loving person, but she was understandably scarred. Nevertheless, she was able to show love and to be a present and concerned parent. Children of parents who survived the Holocaust are called the "second generation survivors," and we share a distinctive bond. We know that we are living proof that our parents were able to thwart Hitler's plan to annihilate European Jewry. We are the reasons our parents survived. I knew how fragile my mother was and at an early age, I was the caretaker—a role that would follow me to her death. Nevertheless, I always felt loved and treasured. I enjoyed my mother. I loved to go shopping with her. I valued her impeccable taste. I trusted her judgment. There were times her emotional limitations were frustrating, but I always, always knew how much she loved me. She wanted me to be happy, and she was proud of my accomplishments.

Even at the very end, after months of not speaking and seeming not to recognize anyone, she tried to do the right thing. After the death of her oldest sibling, I went to see my mother as I did several times a week, and I told her that it was time to "let go." I held her and wept, and she opened her eyes and looked at me with such unbearable sadness that my heart ached. I knew she was sad because she felt my pain, and it hurt her so much to hurt me. My mother was a survivor. She knew how to put one foot in front of the other and move on without complaint. She needed me to tell her that it was all right to let go. I had to reassure her that she had done her job. Her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were all well. I told her that I loved her and that she had been a good mother. Three days later my mother died in my arms. Her aide phoned early in the morning to say that my mother's breathing was very shallow. My mother waited for me to arrive and died peacefully. She was a good mother. She never said an unkind word to me or raised her voice. I know that she always did her best. One of the most wonderful things she ever said to me was that she learned how to be a better mother by watching me with my son. I will always remember those words.

Book Club Chat: Interview with Phyllis Schieber

Book Club Chat: Interview with Phyllis Schieber

"For it is from other women that women are nurtured. It is from other women that they hear what they hope to hear from men." Although this is sometimes true, both Gwen and Jane still needed men in their lives, why is that if they had each other?

Well, it's difficult to be heterosexual and not need men in your life. I enjoy men. I am married and the mother of a son. Nonetheless, I am more likely to turn to the women in my life for conversation and illumination. That is simply the way it is for most women, at least for the women I know. I think women struggle to have relationships with men that are more like the relationships they have with the women in their lives, and it just isn't possible. We are so different. I think that once we accept those differences, once we acknowledge that it is more than likely impossible to have the same sort of relationship with a man, we can be happier. Anna Quindlen wrote a wonderful essay, "The Company of Women" in which she describes her attempts to have a conversation with her husband in the same way she might have a conversation with a female friend. Of course, the results are disastrous. Women and men are just different, or as Ms. Quindlen surmises, "He was oxford cloth, I embroidery. We simply weren't in the same shirt." Women can love and need men, but we have to accept our differences in order to survive. We simply do not share the same sensibilities.

Book Club Chat: Interview with Phyllis Schieber

Book Club Chat: Interview with Phyllis Schieber

What is the significance of the news articles that Theodore sends to Gwen?

I love those news articles. They fascinate me. Esoteric bits of information always get my attention. I think the point is that Theodore does not communicate with Gwen, but the articles he sends her are a way of intimidating her and also keeping her attentions. The news articles are pieces of a puzzle that Gwen tries to solve so that she can make some sense of her relationship with Theodore. He is the most dangerous kind of man, a charismatic and brilliant fellow who seduces women with his intellect and his individuality. He is so narcissistic that he is hateful. The news articles are so troubling, yet so fascinating that Gwen wants to understand their meaning.

Book Club Chat: Interview with Phyllis Schieber

Book Club Chat: Interview with Phyllis Schieber

Towards the end of the book, Gwen "hears" her mother's voice say, "You are always running away from what you should be running towards." What have you run away from that maybe you shouldn't have?

I think I've "run away" from my love of solitude. It is a conundrum to be a woman artist. How many women artists have ever up and left their families to pursue their art the way that male artists have historically done? Very few, I think. The alternative is to constantly play a balancing act. I think if I had run toward that side of me instead of marrying and becoming a mother, I might have been able to write a great many more books. Still, I have no regrets. Motherhood has enriched me in so many ways that I don't believe the alternative would have necessarily helped me to produce better work, just different work, for sure. Still, I think that I continue to struggle with my need for solitude. I have never had the experience of being able to write for weeks at a time without any interruption. I plan to go to a writer's colony some time in the future, just for a few weeks, just to know how it feels to do nothing but concentrate on my work.

Book Club Chat: Interview with Phyllis Schieber

Book Club Chat: Interview with Phyllis Schieber

What was the importance of Ernesto's character in the book?

Importance? There was really no importance. He was simply an aside, an interesting diversion. I just like him.

Book Club Chat: Interview with Phyllis Schieber