7 vragen aan… Kate Doyle, schrijver van I Meant It Once

What is your favourite Dutch word? 

I think it must be ‘hondje.’ Early in my time taking Dutch lessons I had one of those satisfying moments of actual comprehension, when a kind woman said ’hoi, hondje’ to my dog in a café and I was so delighted to understand. I’m very charmed in general by the diminutives in Dutch. Anyway, ‘hondje’ is a word I have been able to thoroughly incorporate into my daily life, since I’m definitely the kind of person who talks to her dog! 

What book do you force upon your friends? 

Days of Distraction  by Alexandra Chang. It’s this formally unusual, fantastically candid, often funny novel about a woman who moves with her boyfriend to the town of Ithaca in upstate New York, while he gets his PhD and she tries to figure out what she’s going to with her life. This was quite literally the story of one chapter in my own life a few years ago, so I wonder if my friends think I mostly love it because it feels so personal, and so maybe they don’t necessarily listen when I say ‘you have to read this!’ But really, the personal element aside, it is such a brilliant book. What Chang does to kind of collapse the gray area between author and narrator, and between fiction and essay, is extraordinary. 

What was the first book you ever read? 

I believe it was an American picture book called  Chicka Chick Boom Boom where all the letters of the alphabet climb up a coconut tree—which, it becomes increasingly clear, does not has the capacity to withstand so many climbers! 

What is your favourite spot in Amsterdam? 

It’s hard to choose just one! But I love to sit out at the restaurant 1900 on the Hogeweg—there are these big trees and a beautiful fountain on the square, and it’s place where you can just sit and take in the life of the neighborhood. Kids play in the fountain and people have dinner and drinks, and they come by walking their dogs or go biking past in the roundabout. I experienced my first Sint-Maarten sitting there watching the neighborhood kids running around with their lanterns. An extremely festive frenzy, and a memory I really love. Someone else in the restaurant turned to us that night and said ‘I think this is the greatest neighborhood in the world!’

What book comforts you? 

There’s a novel called Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty—her first book, before she became better known for more mystery-oriented books like Big Little Lies. Anyway Three Wishes has all that same great plotting but instead of being, you know, suspenseful and stressful, it’s this funny, warm book about triplet sisters turning 33 and grappling with their childhood and their choices, and the family roles they’ve been playing all their lives. It’s such a lovely book about siblinghood—one of my favorite themes. Plus it’s set far away, in Australia, so there’s something about reading it that’s a little like going on vacation. I first read it when I was 15, and I still re-read it every few years. 

When you were little, what did you think you’d be when you grew up?

For a long time I wanted to be an actress. There’s this great Joan Didion quote where she says writing and acting are the same impulse, ‘make-believe.’ She says the only difference is that writers can play make believe alone. I think that’s true, and I think that acting, when I was a student—and later directing too—were both such good training for writing. I learned to watch people very closely. I learned how the smallest gesture or shift in tone of voice could communicate so much. It made me a writer who never wants to over-describe what could be expressed in a single detail. 

Could you pinpoint the moment you decided to start writing this book?

I was standing in a bar in New York City called Ramona eight years ago, waiting to order a drink. I’d just been telling my friend that I had surely make a mistake going to get a masters degree in fiction writing, that I was a total mess and hadn’t written in months and should probably drop out. Then I had this sentence come into my head, and I took out my phone and wrote a paragraph in the notes app about these two childhood best friends, Helen and Catherine, who are a little older now, in their twenties, and drifting apart—Helen reluctantly, Catherine seemingly without looking back. That was the beginning of writing the book. Once I finished that story I knew I wanted to write more stories. I still have the note on my phone—a little artifact I really love.