Joanna Goodman's "The Inheritance"

Joanna Goodman's novels include the #1 national bestseller, The Home for Unwanted Girls, which was on The Globe & Mail’s Fiction bestseller list for more than six months, as well as The Forgotten Daughter and The Finishing School, both national bestsellers. Her stories have appeared in The Fiddlehead, B & A Fiction, Event, The New Quarterly, and White Wall Review, as well as excerpted in Elisabeth Harvor’s fiction anthology A Room at the Heart of Things.

Originally from Montreal, Goodman now lives in Toronto with her husband and two kids.

Here she dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, The Inheritance:

If When they make The Inheritance into a film, I would love to see Brie Larson in the lead role of Arden. I always envisioned Arden as being beautiful in an understated, unfussy way, and yet with the quality of not knowing how beautiful she is. Brie Larson as an actress brings that same sense of humility and vulnerability. She is certainly beautiful, but she’s also comes across as “real." In other words, her beauty is muted and restrained, without any pretension whatsoever. Having seen Brie in Room, I know she can play a mother. She brought so much strength to her character in that role, and given how much Arden has suffered - a traumatic upbringing, the loss of her husband - I’m confident Brie Larson would bring that fierce protectiveness to the character in an authentic way. There’s a certain fragility about Arden at face value, and yet beneath the surface, she is courageous and full of grit. By the end of the novel, Arden becomes empowered and independent, and we know Brie Larson has the star power to play a superhero. I think that best encapsulates why I see Brie Larson in the lead role; it’s the combination of vulnerability, intensity, and authenticity that she brings to her characters, which is exactly how I’ve always seen Arden.

In the role of the male protagonist, Joshua, there is only one choice: Henry Golding. Having just watched Henry in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen, all I kept thinking was, This is my Joshua. As a writer, I’ve always got “the movie” of my latest book on my mind, and so there’s a part of my brain that is quite literally always casting when I’m watching a show or a movie. For this book, The Inheritance, my mind has already cast Henry Golding! Aside from the obvious - the man is gorgeous, sexy and charismatic - Henry Golding is also oozes quiet intelligence with just an edge of cockiness. That is exactly Joshua: a smart, slightly arrogant lawyer with a chip on his shoulder and a lot to prove. As an added bonus, I happen to think Brie Larson and Henry Golding would have amazing chemistry.

The Inheritance tells the story of a mother and daughter, cutting back and forth between both their stories, and so I also have to cast the other lead character of Virginia, Arden’s 65-year-old mother. I have always seen Alison Janney in the role of love-and-sex-addict Virginia. Suffice to say, Alison Janney can play an addict (Mom); but Virginia is so much more than her addiction. At times hysterical, insecure, overtly sexual, brave, hilarious, humble and humiliated, Virginia’s character goes on a raw and uncomfortable journey over the course of the novel. In Alison Janney’s masterful acting, Virginia would come alive.

Visit Joanna Goodman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Inheritance.

--Marshal Zeringue