{"id":9156,"date":"2021-08-04T07:53:57","date_gmt":"2021-08-04T11:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9156"},"modified":"2021-08-04T09:43:16","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T13:43:16","slug":"karin-slaughter-no-sugarcoating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9156","title":{"rendered":"Karin Slaughter: No Sugarcoating"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Last week a library consortium sponsored an interview with best-selling crime author Karin Slaughter to discuss her new standalone thriller, False Witness<\/em>. She told the interviewer that it is a hard book to talk about without revealing spoilers, and since I\u2019ve read and reviewed it for CrimeFictionLover.com, I can attest to the difficulty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book centers on two sisters, Leigh and Callie, who in their mid-teens experience a horrible event that has changed their lives in many ways. The book was a way to for Slaughter to explore her abiding interest in the impact trauma has on people. The bond between the sisters is at the book\u2019s emotional core. Sister relationships, she says, are so fraught. \u201cA sister is the person you can love the most and hate the most at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interviewer noted that many readers consider her books very \u201cdark,\u201d and she said \u201cif my name was Ken Slaughter, they wouldn\u2019t say that.\u201d She puts violent situations in context but does not shy away from portraying them as they are. No sugarcoating. When she was a child, her grandmother would often have a black eye or split lip or even a broken bone. Her uncles would always make light of it, saying how clumsy she was, but as Karin grew older, she realized her grandfather was an abuser. The family\u2019s refusal to face or even discuss the violence \u201conly hurt my grandmother\u201d and enabled the beatings to continue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tough issues, indeed, but despite them, Slaughter works considerable humor into her stories. In this one, Callie works in a veterinary clinic and gives the animals humorous (and very apt) nicknames. Her boss, Dr. Jerry, entertains her with intriguing animal stories. \u201cThis book was my opportunity to put in all the obscure animal facts I\u2019ve collected,\u201d Slaughter said. \u201cYou can\u2019t have all the dark stuff without balance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As adults, Leigh is a lawyer in a high-priced Atlanta firm, and Callie a drug abuser, intermittently sober. To research Callie, Slaughter talked with current and former drug abusers and wanted to describe their outlook without defaulting into clich\u00e9s. She wanted to separate Callie\u2019s base personality from the addiction and does so in part through Callie\u2019s love of animals. In my opinion, Callie comes across as the novel\u2019s most engaging and believable character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She read Pale Horse, Pale Rider, <\/em>Katherine Anne Porter\u2019s novel about the 1918 influenza epidemic, which contains so many parallels to our covid experience. The new book includes a pointed epigram from Porter too. Slaughter produces a book a year, generally, and has published 21 novels with more than 35 million copies sold worldwide. Several of her books are optioned for television, and the one closest to airing is Pieces of Her<\/em>, which will be an eight-part Netflix series starring Toni Collette, premiering in late 2021 or 2022 (covid delays).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week a library consortium sponsored an interview with best-selling crime author Karin Slaughter to discuss her new standalone thriller, False Witness. She told the interviewer that it is a hard book to talk about without revealing spoilers, and since … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Karin Slaughter: No Sugarcoating - an author who faces violence square on--and why.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,52,126,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-crime","category-reading-2","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2nG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9156"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9159,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9156\/revisions\/9159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}