Throughout the book, you complicate the definition of victim. Why doesn’t Shay consider herself a victim, even though she views Laurel within that archetype up to the very end?
Shay has access to her own interiority, her thoughts and feelings, which means she has a damning record of every time she had a complicated reaction: when she wanted Don to do to her what others might consider something bad or wanted to see violence enacted against Laurel or felt like something Don did to Clem was justified. It’s that old adage: examine anyone too closely and you’ll find a sinner. Well, Shay has the misfortune of being very self-aware, which means she sees her flaws with great clarity.
For a long time, her agonizing awareness of her own complicity prevents her from feeling like she can be called a victim. But as she works with Jamie to stitch her life story together, she learns to view her decisions and reactions in context, see how things are connected, and that context opens the possibility for empathy for herself. Not only that, but she begins to see that by being radically honest about her thoughts and feelings, she opens space for other people to have empathy for her as well. For example, Shay’s crime of murdering Don sounds unforgivable on paper; the same crime told within the context of her life becomes understandable （or so she hopes, which is why she tells her story through the podcast）。
As for Laurel, Shay has always given other people more grace and empathy than she’s given herself. I think that’s a very human trait, to forgive and understand things in other people that we can’t forgive about ourselves. And so she’s able to contextualize Laurel’s decisions, see the extenuating circumstances, from the beginning. That’s what drives her relentless attempts to pull Laurel out of the Pater Society. Shay and Laurel in some respects have opposite arcs: while Shay learns to view herself as more the victim of circumstances, she learns to view Laurel as less so. By the end of the book, I think Shay has let go of the idea that Laurel is a victim. And yet she still believes she’s worth saving.
While some readers might look at Shay’s refusal to give up on Laurel as naive or the result of Shay’s savior complex （and they might be right!）， I also see it as an outgrowth of the fact that Shay believes she knows the real Laurel, that Shay understands that sometimes life puts us in the position to make bad choices that then become life-and identity-defining, and given all of that, she cannot abandon her friend. To do so would condemn Laurel to harm or death. And when it comes to Laurel, Shay simply will not abandon empathy. A provocative question is why Shay can forgive Laurel’s evils but not Don’s? That question may seem obvious or even offensive, but there’s been a lot of work in the justice reform world around radical forgiveness as a form of healing, and some argue forgiveness—even of people who have committed the very worst crimes—is more powerful than the kind of retribution Shay shows Don. The concept of justice continues to fascinate me because there are no easy answers.
The story of Scheherazade is a resonant frame for The Last Housewife. What attracted you to that myth? How does Shay differ from Scheherazade?
As readers might know, the story of Scheherazade is a frame narrative for The Thousand and One Nights, a collection of stories whose origins can be traced to India and Iran. The gender dynamics of the Scheherazade story are stark: It begins with a king whose ego has been wrecked by his unfaithful wife, and so he has her beheaded. Then, in a long, protracted revenge against women writ large （so it seems）， he continues to wed a new bride every day and has her beheaded the following dawn. One by one, the kingdom empties of women until Scheherazade, whose father is in the king’s service as the executioner, steps in and volunteers to be the next bride. In some versions of the story, her sister aids her, but in all versions, Scheherazade essentially compels the king into sparing her life anew each night by hooking him with an unfinished story. This is obviously supposed to demonstrate both the power of stories and Scheherazade’s cleverness. But it’s always struck me that her victory—after one thousand and one nights, the king comes to love her and makes her his permanent bride—is such a horrible one. A life sentence, married to a misogynist murderer.
The myth of Scheherazade the storyteller has taken up a lot of my mental real estate over the years. I find it so powerful and gutting, the idea of having to tell a story every night with your life on the line. In a way, it’s what we all do. We live and die by the stories we tell about who we are, who our families are, what kind of community or country we live in, how the world is supposed to work. In the myth, Scheherazade is presented as a very clever woman who always seems to be one step ahead, but I envision this storytelling as frantic, constant, feverish work. I liken it to the work of weaving yourself together, the burden of having to keep yourself cohesive and legible.