Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry, has for the moment taken up graphic novels. (She illustrates as well as writes them.) The first installment in a planned series of them, The Night Bookmobile, was published in September.
From a recent interview with Niffenegger at the Newsarama.com site (italics added):
The Night Bookmobile, a new release from Abrams ComicsArts, tells the story of a young woman named Alexandra who goes for a walk one night and comes upon a mysterious “bookmobile” that contains every book she’s ever read, igniting treasured memories of her past. The library eventually disappears, and Alexandra becomes obsessed with finding it again…
Niffenegger admitted that she has her own “bookmobile,” which is just the memory of everything she’s ever read and looked at.
“It’s stocked with novels, comics, various books I’ve read for research purposes, poetry, printmaking manuals, art history books, travel guides, plus all the ephemeral stuff like signage, soup labels, math tests and so forth,” she said. “I have been reading avidly since I was a child, so my daily life is partially real and partially literary. It makes my imaginary world stronger, to feed it on a diverse diet of books. Too much ordinary life is limiting to the mind.”
Got that? Not just everything she’s ever read; everything she’s ever looked at.
