The Breakdown Lane
by Jacquelyn Mitchard
List Price: $25.95
Pages: 400
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0060587245
Publisher: HarperCollins
Jacquelyn Mitchard is the New York Times best-selling author of Twelve Times Blessed, A Theory of Relativity, The Deep End of the Ocean, and The Most Wanted. Jackie is widely acclaimed for her literary achievements, but until now, few people have been aware that she is also a trusted one -- a human who has been welcomed into mouse society. It is a great honor previously bestowed on the likes of E. B. White, Benjamin Franklin, and Marie Curie. Jackie became a trusted one while still in high school by rescuing an entire family of mice from the depths of a trombone just before a performance of The Music Man. She has enjoyed the company of mice ever since, and with starring prima!, she finally realizes a long-held ambition to share her insights into mouse culture with her fellow humans. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and six children.
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Is the real-life newspaper column you write anything like "Excess Baggage," the column Julianne Gillis -- with some help from her friends and family -- writes in The Breakdown Lane?
My column, 'The Rest of Us,' is about legal, social, economic and personal issues that affect the family. It's nothing like the advice column Julieanne writes, because, though I sometimes find myself standing unsteadily on my soapbox, I would never presume to offer advice to a general audience, only one person's opinion on a topic.
Throughout your novel, you incorporate other "texts" -- Julianne's column, her poetry, and Gabe's. Is The Breakdown Lane a commentary on "the writing life" and the creative process?
In a sense, yes. My friend, Ben, says that one of the perils of experiencing some success with creativity -- as he has, in the world of music -- sometimes causes a person to forget "where the song came from." It's important for me to remember that the impulse for creativity often springs from a signal event in life: a loss, a change, an unexpected hairpin turn in the road. And no one can entirely define just who can turn out to be a participant in the creative process: For example, it's assumed that a learning-disabled teenager would be inarticulate. Gabe can't always present or write down what he thinks on the first try; but he is thoughtful and witty.
Julie's family and friends come to her rescue when she is most in need. Was one of your goals in this novel to show the resilience of a nuclear family when it is confronted with serious challenges?
That, and to define how a modern-day nuclear family often is composed -- of friends and extended family -- not the traditional parent-and-child unit alone.
Did you model Julianne Gillis, a protagonist with multiple sclerosis, after anyone, in fiction or real-life?
Yes. My best friend from childhood, an actor and singer by profession, learned in her 40s that she had MS. Going through that devastating experience with her, seeing her grow in strength and acceptance, was heartbreaking and inspiring.
What kind of research of this disease did you do in preparation for the novel?
I needed to know a great deal about relapsing and remitting multiple sclerosis and how it could affect an individual almost to the point of incapacity at one point, only to offer almost a complete remission of those symptoms not long afterward. It's one of the great frustrations of the disease. I spoke to many MS sufferers, their spouses and their children, and worked to fund-raise for research in finding a way to stop this disease from crushing so many people, fifty percent more of them women than men, in the prime of life.
You examine a number of aspects of family life in The Breakdown Lane -- marriage, parenting, pregnancy, divorce, adoption, remarriage. Did you find yourself borrowing from any of your own experiences as a wife and mother?
Of course, yes. I have a son who has learning disabilities not unlike Gabe's, and he's my hero, while at times driving me nuts. I've been a widow, remarried, given birth to and adopted children; and I know that these experiences are a tightrope for everyone involved.
Does Julie's illness and its accompanying physical challenges enable her to relate better to her son, Gabe, who has a learning disability? What explains their deep connection?
Gabe is Julie's firstborn, and his "different" qualities have always brought forth the advocate in her. As her own physical strength weakens, she is forced to see how Gabe has suffered; and when he returns her devotion, despite her sometimes erratic behavior, she is overcome with gratitude and guilt. While she has always "understood" Gabe's inabilities in an intellectual sense, she finds herself experiencing difficulties not so different, and it is humbling. Children of parents who are disabled usually have one of two reactions – an overdeveloped sense of guilt, or rejection based on fear. Gabe feels the former, especially given his anger toward his father.
You've devised The Breakdown Lane as a "frame story," with Julie Gillis as a kind of fictional stand-in for Pamela. What considerations were behind this artistic decision?
Julie is the kind of person for whom appearances are important, for better or for worse. Letting Pamela "hide" inside the story of Julie, which is true but not real, is consistent with Julie's intense privacy and pride.
When Matthew MacDougall asks her to marry him, Julie acknowledges the economic security that he offers her. In today's world, do you think women can separate their romantic and financial concerns?
I think that they can, of course, and that they must, especially given that they have more choices than our grandmothers did. All our mothers said that a rich man can be as easy to love as a poor man; and it is true that when marriages fail,, the woman is often left with much more serious economic concerns than the man -- particularly if, like Julie, she has devoted more to her marriage and family that to her work. However, I don't think many women marry "for money," as they might have several generations ago, or simply to flee the influence of their parents. I do think that many women marry for emotional stability after they become disenchanted with the ideal of "the perfect love." Julie's set of references is different from the ordinary woman's. She is very attracted to and grateful for Matt, but she also is in desperate straits. Used to a stable life, she must consider whether she is giving in to his quick, impulsive offer because she wants security or because she truly feels they are well-matched. She knows her choice could have been a disaster. It could have gone either way. Julie could have reached for a safety net, and found that the trade-off was a superficial compatibility. Her attraction to Matt was only a rebound phenomenon. She got lucky, and she recognizes that. Taking that chance is something she would never have advised a reader to do.
What's your next project?
I'm almost finished with a novel that has begins with a very shocking premise -- the decision of a young and very protected girl to seek her own retribution on the man who killed her younger sisters. Finally, though, it is a story about the futility of vengeance, and what takes its place.
Excerpted from The Breakdown Lane © Copyright 2009 by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Reprinted with permission by HarperCollins. All rights reserved.
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