Serena Burdick has written pretty much all her life. “I started telling stories when I was six,” she told me last week. Burdick, who lives in Greenfield, is the author of the new book, “Girl in the Afternoon: A Novel of Paris.”
Growing up in Millers Falls, she enjoyed the creative writing program for children at Full Circle School in Bernardston. (She proudly informed me that her sons now attend this school.) Nevertheless, it took her a while to decide to write professionally.
For many years, her first love was acting. She decided to try the theater professionally after she began to study it at Sarah Lawrence College. “I threw it all away at that point. I was 19,” she said ruefully.
She moved to California to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Art. There she re-met the high school friend from home who is now her husband. The two lived in a variety of settings — Aspen, Sweden, New York City — before coming home to Franklin County seven years ago.
For most of her time away, Burdick continued to pursue her dream of theater. While in New York, however, she had a breakthrough moment.
She enrolled in Brooklyn College and reconnected with her passion for literature and writing. “At Brooklyn College, I had an incredible mentor, the head of the English department,” she recalled.
That mentor encouraged her to write a thesis, and Burdick decided to try writing it in fiction form. “I said, ‘I’m going to write a novel. I’m just going to see if I can do it,’” she told me.
Once she discovered her voice as a novelist she never looked back. She does see many parallels between acting and writing fiction, however.
She observed that in both she has cultivated “the ability to slip into a character …. to get into the head of my characters very intimately.”
“Girl in the Afternoon” isn’t the first novel she wrote. It is the first to be published, however.
“I’m very happy with it. I’m in awe that it was published. (Getting published) is a challenging thing to do,” she said.
“Girl” tells the story of Aimee, a young French woman living in Paris in the 1870s. Aimee has two loves — painting and Henri, an English boy who came to live with her family many years earlier and also aspires to be an artist.
Although Henri has been brought up as her brother, Aimee feels far from sisterly about him.
The book opens during the Franco-Prussian War. Aimee’s upper-middle-class family has chosen to stay in the city during the Prussian occupation. Food is scarce, and the whole neighborhood is on edge. The war worries Aimee less than the fact that Henri has mysteriously disappeared.
A few years later she finds him by chance when both take part in a major art exhibition. When she finally manages to speak to him, she is thrilled but worried.
She cannot get him to tell her why he left their prosperous home. She is also concerned that he is becoming romantically involved with her best friend and model.
Soon Aimee learns the secret that forced Henri to leave her — and no one’s life is ever quite the same.
Burdick writes Aimee’s story with sympathy. The reader feels the frustrations of her personal situation, as well as the difficulties of being a female artist in an era in which women were defined by marriage rather than by career.
I asked the author why she chose the particular time and setting of her novel. “It was mostly because of what was going on in the art world in Paris. I was fascinated with that period when the impressionists were young artists,” she said, adding that most accounts of these artists situate them as older and established.
She chose to focus on a female artist because most novels about women during the Impressionist period revolve around models; they are written “from the point of view of the muse.”
In contrast, Burdick wanted to remind readers that the Impressionist movement included women like Berthe Morisot. “A lot of people have never heard of (Morisot),” sighed Burdick. “She exhibited at those very first shows, when they weren’t even called the Impressionists. They were the ‘Independents.’”
Burdick explained that she set the novel in Paris because that city was the center of the Impressionist movement. “I didn’t realize when I started the novel that Paris was such a to-do,” she observed. “I think this novel sold because it was set in Paris. … There is a whole world of people who love Paris — and who love art.”
She was quick to add that although she adores art herself she is not a visual artist. “My sister is an artist, a masterful painter. I’m in awe of her…. I can’t imagine being able to do it. It’s an outstanding skill. I think it’s fun to write about characters who do things you couldn’t imagine being able to do yourself.”
She added that she wasn’t sure when she started the book whether this type of novel could find a market. “I was actually really afraid to write historical fiction,” she confessed. In the end, however, she decided, “It was what my heart wanted to do. I said, ‘I don’t care if anyone reads it. This is what I love.’”
Fortunately, she found an agent and a publisher who assured her that people will indeed read her book. She won’t know until next spring when the final sales numbers come in just how successful it will be.
Nevertheless, she informed me, “I was told before the book ever came out that based on the pre-orders for the first printing run (the book) exceeded their expectation in terms of meeting my advance.”
Burdick explained that “Girl in the Afternoon” took about two years to write, including six months of research. She plotted the book out in a timeline on her wall. “When I sat down to write it, I really had most of it.”
Her next novel will be set in New York in 1915 — another exciting city and time.
Serena Burdick has just returned from a national book tour with “Girl in the Afternoon.” She will read from the book and sign copies this afternoon (Saturday, Sept. 24) from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the World Eye Bookshop in Greenfield.
Tinky Weisblat is the author of “The Pudding Hollow Cookbook” and “Pulling Taffy.” Visit her website: www.TinkyCooks.com