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"   Photo: Europa Editions  In her American debut, The Art of Losing, British novelist Rebecca Connell weaves love, grief, and suspense into a delicately-wrought web. The story follows two narrators: Louise, who at the age of five lost her mother to a tragic accident; and Nicholas, her mother&amp;#039;s lover, who for 18 years Louise steadfastly blamed for her death. Now, as a young woman, Louise takes up a new identity\u2014and her dead mother&amp;#039;s name\u2014to become &amp;quot;Lydia,&amp;quot; and stalk Nicholas for answers, before finally infiltrating his new, seemingly picture perfect family. At its most thrilling, The Art of Losing comes tantalizingly close to Single White Female melodrama, but the novel&amp;#039;s greatest charms lie in its intricately plotted character studies. By alternating between Louise and Nicholas, and jumping between their pasts and presents, Connell explores the crushing weight of grief, the fragility of memory, and the corrupting power of infidelity. The author talked to ELLE about the beginnings of her complicated psychodrama, the morality of adultery, and writing from a man&amp;#039;s perspective. ELLE: The novel has two narratives told in two very distinct voices, both travel back and forth between past and present. How did you even begin to conceive of all that?RC: The first thing that came to me was the scene quite near the beginning, where Louise follows Nicholas on the street. I had this image of a woman following an older man, and I wasn&amp;#039;t quite sure what it was going to turn into. Was it sexually-motivated? Menacing? But once I had that scene in my head, I started developing those two characters from there. ELLE: When you&amp;#039;re developing those characters, do you ever feel protective of them, or guilty for hurting them? Because, boy, you put them through the wringer.RC: In my novels people do tend to get hurt quite a lot, which is a shame. I&amp;#039;m quite cold about it, but I believe the characters are there for a reason. They either get hurt by other people or, through their own actions, hurt themselves. That&amp;#039;s just a reflection of real life. ELLE: A lot of readers and reviewers see the novel as a parable against adultery. Is that how you see it too?RC: Well, I wanted it to be morally ambiguous. While it&amp;#039;s a novel about how adultery can cause a lot of damage, I also wanted to create the sense that Nicholas and Lydia might have belonged together in some way. I can see an alternate scenario where they had gone off together and actually built a very good life. So the novel is partly about the randomness of life; it&amp;#039;s about how the decisions you make can have results you couldn&amp;#039;t foresee\u2014that things can go very wrong. And I wanted to portray people as having motivations and feelings that they know aren&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;right,&amp;quot; but are nevertheless irresistible. Logic and reason don&amp;#039;t always come first. ELLE: Male authors are often met with the criticism that they fall short of writing a realistic, true-to-life female character. You don&amp;#039;t hear that as often for female authors. But you spend half the book in Nicholas&amp;#039; shoes. Was that difficult?RC: To be honest, I find it easier writing male than I do female voices. When I was growing up, I read a lot of male writers and got used to that voice. In fact, I think I drew Nicholas&amp;#039; character fuller than I did Louise&amp;#039;s, partly because Louise is meant to be an enigma. For Nicholas, it was important to understand what sort of man he was, that he isn&amp;#039;t totally evil, as Louise initially believes. ELLE: Which authors inspire you? Are they all men?RC: I like the work of Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, and David Lodge. But I&amp;#039;m also very keen on Maggie O&amp;#039;Farrell. I read her novel, After You&amp;#039;d Gone shortly before I started writing The Art of Losing. That was what inspired me to play around with first- and third-person, and past- and present-tense. ELLE: Do you see yourself in any of the characters?RC: There are parts of you that go into every character. And it&amp;#039;s often the darker sides, to be honest. Lydia, Louise&amp;#039;s mother, for instance, is somewhat selfish. She doesn&amp;#039;t really think about other people and just goes after what she wants. We&amp;#039;ve all got a bit of that inside us somewhere. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/news/a4955/author-rebecca-connell-on-the-selfishand-dangerousside-of-love-7590/>