Thursday, March 26, 2015

Jeannette de Beauvoir's "Asylum"

Jeannette de Beauvoir is a novelist, poet, and playwright whose work has appeared in 15 countries and has been translated into 12 languages.

She explores personal and moral questions through different literary genres and is the author, under various pseudonyms, of mystery novels, historical and contemporary fiction, an award-winning book of poetry, and a number of produced plays, as well as teaching workshops and classes in writing.

Here de Beauvoir dreamcasts an adaptation of her  new novel, Asylum:
This is really difficult, as I don't work with visuals much, at least in terms of people. (I do it far more with places: in this series, for example, it's important to me to give readers a real sense of the neighborhoods and ambiance of Montréal.) I guess I'd be drawn to a Diane Lane sort of actor: someone who comes across as fairly ordinary but finds resources inside herself that she didn't know about. The same could be said for Kristin Scott Thomas. And I realize that in mentioning both those names I'm rather dating myself! Okay: if Michelle Dockery could manage a French-Canadian accent, I could see that working. I write plays as well as novels, and have always been pleasantly surprised by what directors and actors do with my words, often taking them places I didn't think of going, and giving the story a perspective that I never saw when writing it. So were Asylum be made into a movie (and wouldn't that be lovely?), I think that rather than impose my take on who should be in it, or how it should be directed, I'd let it become whatever a talented cast and crew saw in it. After all, I wrote the novel, I've already had my say!
Visit Jeannette de Beauvoir's website.

Writers Read: Jeannette de Beauvoir.

--Marshal Zeringue