Sara Sligar: Author of "Take Me Apart" Talks Archival Research, Plotting a Thriller and How We Consume Art
Sara Sliagr’s debut novel, Take Me Apart, is part thriller, part mystery, and part obsession. When the famed photographer Miranda Brand died mysteriously at the height of her career, it sent shock waves through Callinas, California. Decades later, her son Theo hires the ex-journalist Kate Aitken to archive his mother’s work and personal effects. Kate begins piecing together the life of an artist who felt the weight and pressure of ambition, motherhood, and marriage. As Kate dives further into the shocking details and rumors of Miranda’s life, while fighting attractions for her employer and Miranda’s son, Theo, Kate’s curiosity starts to turn into an obsession. Power, art, gaslighting, and mental illness are all at the forefront of this suspenseful and captivating novel.
I spoke with Sara via email where she discusses the thrill of archival research, the challenges of plotting a thriller with interlocking stories, how we consume art based on gender and her debut novel, Take Me Apart.
What sparked the idea for this novel?
I wanted to write a novel that showed the addictive thrill of archival research as a kind of detective work. But I also wanted to think about the difficulties of interpretation, the ethical questions involved with projecting your own situation onto someone else’s documents. I loved the idea of making the documents belong to someone who was both famous and secretive, so that I could explore that disconnect between the reality of someone’s life and the narrative that others construct about them.
The atmosphere was also a big starting point. I was very drawn to this area of Northern California, which embodies so many contradictions and has such a distinctive feel, with all its cliffs and beaches and fog. I thought it would be a perfect setting for a suspense novel.
Kate is an archivist who is in charge of putting together the lost pieces of Miranda Brand’s work and personal documents. This idea of piecing together a person through what they have left behind is an interesting one. Have you ever looked into your own family's legacy or personal history? What intrigued you about this for Take Me Apart?
The research sections were more inspired by my academic work than by family research. I have a Ph.D. in English and a master’s in History, and I have worked with a lot of archives and historical documents over the years. There have been a lot of times when I’ve looked at something and thought, Wow, if this document had been destroyed or gotten lost, we wouldn’t have had any proof at all of this thing happening. And then the story we told about this event would have been completely different. That was something I wanted to explore in Take Me Apart. What happens when you suddenly find this huge trove of evidence that contradicts a story people have believed for years?
Take Me Apart has been described as a psychological suspense or thriller novel. When writing a mystery like this, what did your process look like?
Structuring the book was really difficult, and I didn’t outline much before starting, which I later came to regret, because I had to do so many complete, start-to-finish rewrites even to get to something that resembled this version. Earlier drafts had completely different endings, additional characters, all kinds of things. Some of them were more conventional thrillers, in that they had more dramatic twists, but ultimately I had to remove those because they weren’t authentic to this story. They weren’t earned.
I don’t know if plotting a mystery is harder than plotting any other kind of book. It does require a lot of detail work, and thinking about what readers and characters know at any given moment, but I think that’s also true of a lot of great books in other genres.
One thing that did make writing the book extremely logistically complicated was the interlocking storylines—so at any given moment, you have to think about what Kate knows, what Miranda knows, and what the reader knows, all of which are different. Because Miranda’s parts were told through documents, most of which were dated, everything had to be very precise. If I moved an event to a different year in the storyline, I would have to re-do like six other things.
I’m really interested in Miranda as a character, for many reasons, but mostly for the way she navigates through the art world. She understands gender has so much to do with how she is perceived by others and how her work is bought and sold. She says, “Men aren’t afraid of misinterpretation. It’s not dangerous to them. Women, we know bad things can happen when someone misreads you.” Can you speak more about this?
I was thinking about that idea of “giving the wrong impression,” which can be very dangerous for women, who often have to walk a very fine line between being overly friendly, which can be seen as “asking for it,” or not friendly enough, which can make people very angry. You have to perform very specifically in order to remain safe.
Of course, women are not the only group who have to walk this line. And the danger is intersectional—race, class, and sexuality all factor into it. So I agree with Miranda’s statement, but I also think it’s an oversimplification. As a character, she tends to talk and write in very broad strokes.
The idea that a woman can “go crazy” or be incredibly depressed or be a recluse often makes that artist more attractive in a way — I’m thinking of Sylvia Plath here — is an interesting one. Some of Miranda’s photographs have self-mutilation as the subject and there is a kind of romanticism to the idea that a woman is suffering mentally within her art. Miranda mentions in her diary that men are better at being crazy. “Better at being forgiven. The blood on their hands can be real, not imagined, They can be bought and sold and still no one thinks they are owned.” I’m curious about your thoughts on this idea.
I think people are attracted to the mythos of female artists with depression or other mental illness, but then there is a tendency to focus on the illness over the art itself. Sylvia Plath is a good example. In public memory, her illness and her art are deeply intertwined. Whereas with male writers, people might know about their illness—Fitzgerald’s alcoholism, Van Gogh’s depression—but it’s a smaller part of public memory, and there’s more willingness from viewers to separate the person’s life from their art.
I don’t necessarily think biographical interpretations are always bad. The book explores some of the value of biography, too. But the pressure of the biographical reading is something Miranda feels very keenly, and I think it’s something that we need to think more about when we consume art.
How long did it take you to write Take Me Apart? How does it feel now that your debut novel is out in the world?
I started the book in March 2016. So about three and a half years from beginning it to finishing the final proofs. Having it in the world is strange! It’s exciting to be able to hold this big block of work in my hands. I love seeing readers connect to the book. I feel proud and I feel honored. I also feel vulnerable, and it’s hard to tell which parts of that vulnerability are related to the book and which parts come from the pandemic. A real minefield of vulnerability right now!
What are some of the things you are doing during this pandemic to stay sane?
Ha! I don’t know. I’m just paddling along on my little raft trying to keep it together. It’s an extremely sad and frightening time. I have been very busy with the book coming out, so that’s a good distraction, and connecting with friends usually makes me feel better. But we are in a very stressful, extraordinary situation, and I think it’s okay not to feel totally okay.
Sara Sligar is an author and academic based in Los Angeles, where she teaches English and creative writing as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s in History from the University of Cambridge. Her writing has been published in McSweeney’s, Quartz, The Hairpin, and other outlets. Take Me Apart is her first novel.
