Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 12)
Oxford’s Mary Miller highlights a Mississippi coastal town with a thoughtful tale of a middle-aged man facing an uncertain and lonely future–until he adopts a dog on a whim and one thing leads to another.
Her new novel, Biloxi, focuses with compassion, humor and hope on Louis McDonald, Jr., a man who has made his share of mistakes and truly needs a fresh start. The plot is part unconventional, part relatable–and all-around encouraging.
Miller also authored two short story collections, Big World and Always Happy Hour, and her debut novel, The Last Days of California. She is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas and a former John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at Ole Miss.
In brief, Biloxi is the story of a 63-year-old man, Louis McDonald, Jr., facing his share of insecurities and mistakes (most of which are of his own doing), and who finds a new lease on life when he adopts a dog. As an accomplished young woman, did you find it hard to put yourself in his place, in this story told in first person?
Mary Miller
Thank you for the compliment! Though Louis is different from me in many ways–marital status, politics, gender, age–I understand him pretty well. He’s lonely. Life hasn’t turned out as he planned. He wants to connect with people, but he’s afraid of being hurt or rejected. All of these are human experiences, and there aren’t many among us who haven’t encountered each of them at some point in our lives. In other words, Louis is “everyman,” though he’s certainly more curmudgeonly than most.
The best word to describe Louis’s life–as a man who lives alone and is recently divorced with no real friends and a daughter and granddaughter he avoids–is “boring.” How does adopting a dog begin to change that in no time flat?
You’re right. Reading about a person alone in a house with his own thoughts is boring. When writing, the best thing you can do is give your narrator someone with whom to interact. This is writing 101.
Layla, the dog, gets Louis out into the world. He has to buy her a bed and food and toys; he wants to socialize her, so he takes her to the dog park. Early on, he thinks, “I also felt a strange need to entertain her, be interesting. Lucky for her I was an interesting man.” He comes to life with Layla around, finds himself making up songs and belting them out. He tries to teach her to catch and fetch and navigate the doggy door, and though he has little success, she’s given him renewed purpose. Layla is a reason for him to get out of bed in the morning.
Louis is not only insecure, but brutally frank as he not only ruminates about his fate to himself, but, quite often, when he ventures even the most mundane comments to people he doesn’t even know. This often results in great moments of humor for the reader (even when he’s talking to the dog). Does some of this come from your own straightforward thoughts in conversations with yourself and others in everyday life
Sure, though I’m nicer and more genial than Louis. He makes people uncomfortable a lot of the time. I hope I don’t make people uncomfortable! I do have a tendency to put my foot in my mouth, though, to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. I also talk to my dog a lot, ask her questions and bounce ideas off of her. She seems to appreciate being included.
Louis has a penchant for drinking (as is mentioned every day that passes in the Biloxi story), he doesn’t sleep well, worries about his future a great deal, and has a pattern of getting himself into awkward situations, to say the least. He comes to realize that even his father didn’t seem to care much for him. Why is it so easy to find this character as likable as we do?
I’m glad you found him likeable. Louis, with all of his flaws and self-sabotaging behavior, is pretty funny. Or it’s fun for the reader to watch him get himself into absurd situations. I don’t know if he would find himself humorous, though I think he might get a chuckle out of some of his actions in retrospect, like when he’s shoving religious pamphlets down his pants or lamenting the loss of his stolen blender.
There’s a ridiculous quality to the story, like the fact that his father’s lawyer “died after a swallowed toothpick punctured his bowels.” Even when Louis is taking himself seriously–when he’s dejected or drunk or worried–the prose and storyline work to balance it out. Or that was my goal; the reader will have to decide if I achieved it.
After everything he’s gone through in the course of just a few days, it seems that Louis’s redemption does come in the end. What’s the takeaway here?
Thank you! I don’t think in terms of the takeaway. I just tried to write a book that was true to this character and his life.
Most novels follow a pretty basic formula: put your character up a tree; throw rocks at him; bring him down. Louis is up the tree when I find him, and he’s been pelted with rocks for quite a while. And I keep chucking them. Ultimately, I’m not sure how much Louis’s life has changed by the end–it’s not like there’s any sort of formal redemption. He’s repairing his relationship with his daughter and her family, however, which is a start, and he’s got Layla by his side. Like Louis, I have my dog by my side, too.
Mary Miller will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, May 21, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Biloxi. Lemuria has selected Biloxi as its May 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.
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