Reader Views is very pleased to be talking with Thomas
Kaplan-Maxfield, author of “Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter,”
a gothic tale about a contemporary woman.
Juanita: Thank you for talking with us today Thomas. You have
penned a very intriguing tale with deep Gothic undertones. Please
tell us the inspiration for writing “Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter.”
Thomas: The main inspiration is my love of love. I teach a class at
Boston College called “Love and Other Difficulties” (which by the way is always oversubscribed), and
it seems it’s always been something of primary concern to me–and to all of us. “Memoirs” is a love
story, first and foremost. But I wanted to write a particular kind of love story, which engaged another
central concern of mine, which is the matter of American literature. I think any serious writer should
undertake the large issues that are concerned with one’s art. Leslie Fiedler, in “Love and Death in the
American Novel” argues that all American fiction is gothic–and to him that means American literature
is more about horror or fear than about love. He points out that while European novels have
concerned themselves with the problems of mature love, American novels to a great extent have not–
and all the American classics have not.
So I wanted to pose a problem for myself and see if I could solve it: is it possible to write a novel that
begins as a gothic novel–indeed uses overt gothic techniques like ghosts, hauntings, the return of
the past, and push such a novel into being about mature love? In other words, would it be possible to
push American literature into a place where it can take up the matter of mature love?
Since I also teach a course on gothic literature, I’m familiar with the genre and love it. I don’t know if
the novel succeeds in solving the problem I set for myself, but it’s an attempt.
Lastly, I’d say the inspiration for the novel came from many women I’ve known over the years, some of
whom live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of the primary things Boston and Cambridge are known
for is colleges. Everyone here is educated–or like me, educated beyond their intelligence. One of the
effects, sometimes, of too much education is that it can interfere with the natural flow between the
sexes. So we end up with a lot of soft men concerned with finding themselves, and a lot of women who
hate men because of the patriarchy, etc. The result is a confusion of love and power, I believe. I
specifically wanted to take a particular woman, Nikki Helmik, who is such a Cambridge woman–
gorgeous, intelligent, severely independent–and see if she could, by means of a lot of self discovery,
figure out the difference between love and power.
Juanita: What kind of research went into preparing for this book and how long was it in the making?
Thomas: The book took me nearly ten years to write, from conception through six or seven revisions.
Any novel takes as much or more research as a dissertation, for example–that Mt. Everest of
research projects. I had stacks of books on Celtic lore and civilization, Wicca, Druids, magic, natural
healing. And then there were the histories of Gloucester, where the book is set, and everything that
coalesces around Gloucester–fishing, the granite quarries, and its place in New England history. As
all great novels are about the spirit of place, I wanted to evoke as much as I was able in the spirit of
Gloucester, and see what it had to teach Nikki, how the town itself, the land, the sea, right there, this
place, could show her and teach her.
Juanita: Please tell us in your words, the storyline of “Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter.”
Thomas: Since it’s partly a gothic novel, the story line is a bit complex. Essentially “Memoirs” tells the
story of Nikki Helmik, who returns to her hometown when her parents die. There she falls in love with
Philip Eveless, who is the son of her one-time mentor, Rose. Rose was married to Ernest, and
together they were the richest and most powerful couple in Gloucester. Nikki is angry at herself for
falling in love with Philip, and in her attempt to get away from him and, according to her, discover her
power, she discovers she’s descended from a Druid princess and Shape-Shifter named Anne Cleves.
Anne has left a journal which Nikki translates, and in so doing comes to understand the difference
between love and power, and to resolve her love for Philip. –One of the reasons the book is so long
is that Anne’s journal is included in the book.
Juanita: Did you base any of the characters on people you know, and is there any of you in “Memoirs
of a Shape-Shifter?”
Thomas: I based Nikki on several women I’ve known over the years, as I mentioned. And then the
more one revises, the further the character gets from actual people and the more like herself she
becomes. At this point I don’t see any actual woman I know when I look at Nikki. I was intentional about
not using myself in any of the characters, although that’s a bit ingenuous, since a writer is always
using his own material, voices, likes and dislikes. You can’t avoid it.
Juanita: What are the similarities between Nikki and her ancestor Anne Cleves?
Thomas: Nikki and I were sort of arguing all through the writing of the book, so speaking for myself, I’d
say they are more alike than Nikki thinks, and less. Anne has solved the problem of love and power,
because she’s lived through it, and she’s had teachers show her the way–both male and female. In
addition, Anne has something we in the modern world often lack, which is a container–call it a
tradition, history, purpose–that helps mold her. But Nikki is like Anne in starting out devaluing love
and overvaluing power. Anne’s story is intended to parallel Nikki’s, in that sense; Anne leads Nikki,
initiates her into a new way of seeing.
Juanita: Why is finding Anne’s journal at this point in her life, so vital to Nikki?
Thomas: It comes at a time when Nikki is at her wit’s end with regard to many aspects of her life: she’s
quit being a lawyer, she’s running out of money, she’s conflicted about living in her parents’ home,
she hates herself for loving Philip, she’s feeling herself growing older–and in our world that’s rather
the worst sin a woman can commit, unfortunately. Anne’s journal therefore comes as a door into a
different world. And it takes an immense amount of work for Nikki to translate it, even with help. So she
has to subsume herself to the work–as if the work, the journal, the translation–were more important
than her personal worries. I think that’s always a good thing in our lives–when our egos get
relativized. We experience it as a kind of Copernican revolution, and it can be frightening–the loss of
what we imagine is our autonomy, but it can also be refreshing to find out that you are merely a
character in a much larger drama.
Juanita: What is Nikki’s message to readers of “Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter”?
Thomas: Nikki, like Anne, is a survivor. Someone once defined adults as survivors, and so I’d say
that’s her essential message: that persistence and work, combined with a willingness to follow one’s
problems to their roots. And then of course love; always love in spite of oneself.
Juanita: This book is considered a historic fiction. How real is the history and documentation of the
Celtic religion and various settings in your book?
Thomas: I did a tremendous amount of research for the book, especially in the areas of Wicca and
Celtic/Druid cultures. Early on I was told by a Wiccan editor and friend of mine, Peg Aloi, that I had
better clear up the confusions I had between the cultural traditions–in short, decide whether the book
was going to be about witches or Druids. Yet most of what I read suggested that the two traditions
share a common root. At any rate, I decided to veer away from Wicca and stick with the Druid
business. Everything in Anne’s story is taken in some way from Irish or Celtic culture–but of course I
took some poetic licenses with some of the facts. “Memoirs” is not a book directly about Druids; it’s a
book about the problem of love that uses Druid culture to inform and enlighten the issue.
In addition, I used a topographical curiosity in New England–these so-called “beehive mounds” that
have been found in the area, which no one knows the origins of. I adopted them for the story, calling
them “sidhes”, or Druid openings into the Otherworld.
Juanita: Why did you choose this particular aspect of history - Celtic mythology, witchcraft, etc. to be
the backdrop of this story?
Thomas: Celtic culture appeals to me in some deep and immediate way, and that’s the main reason, I
think. After that, the particular stories and terms of the Celts and Druids seemed easily adaptable to
the story and my purposes. In addition, I’ve experienced a form of shape-shifting on my own, and so
the phenomenon, often associated with shamanism–but I’m no shaman–seemed a fitting metaphor or
even action for what occurs in love.
Juanita: What statement does “Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter” make about love and power?
Thomas: Power is not love, and if we remember that, it will shift our ideas of love. In other words, that
love shifts our shapes: when we love, we change or allow ourselves to be changed, by our beloved,
by the love itself.
Juanita: Who is your reading audience?
Thomas: The first and intended audience for “Memoirs” is women, modern women, educated and not
educated women, independent women, mothers, sisters, old women, young women; all women. After
that it’s anyone who’s interested in love and who worships at love’s altar.
Juanita: How important do you feel it is to include magic and mysticism into our lives?
Thomas: I don’t think we have to ‘include’ them because I think they’re there, whether we want them
or not. For example, an experience I just alluded to, of a sort of shape-shifting, occurred to me as I
was driving down the highway. I began to have a panic attack, stopped the car, got out, and found
myself running on all fours through the adjacent woods. I say “found myself”, meaning that I had not
consciously intended to do that. In fact, I felt like an idiot, of course. The fact that I was running
headlong through the trees, apparently in the guise of some animal I couldn’t recognize, both
frightened me and filled me with awe. Was that a kind of magic? I think so; but it came on its own.
Nikki’s Aunt Meg in the book says that love is a kind of magic, producing actual effects in our lives and
entering us on its own, when it will. We cannot make love happen, we can only try to welcome it and
be open to it.
Juanita: Thomas, you have been teaching literature and writing at Boston College for nearly 20
years. Tell us more about your passion for the art of writing and what keeps you inspired?
Thomas: Writing…hmm…well, I get bored with anything I do too long, which is why I work as a building
contractor and a teacher as well as a writer. But I do love the act of writing; and I mean “love” in the
usual sense of it’s sometimes being a real pain, a discipline, something that asks us to come to it. I got
seduced by fiction when I was in fifth grade and discovered that I could more or less enter the fictional
world by writing a story. For the first time in my life I felt at home. Homesickness propels me, therefore:
writing is going home. –Even when home is not always comfortable and usually takes work, like a
house takes constant work to keep up.
But words themselves again are magic-making. In Memoirs, Nikki has an insight that the old
storytellers wove magic by means of reciting stories. The audience ’saw’ the images. If you respect
the reality of the imagination, then hearing a story, or writing one, is magic because it creates before
your eyes an entire world.
Juanita: Who are your favorite authors and what are you presently reading?
Thomas: For teaching, I’m reading Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Talents”. For writing my next book
I’m reading a history of Libya. I’ve also got “The Lovely Bones” open on my end table. My favorite
authors–the ones who “concocted” me, as Anne puts it with regard to her initiation, are the ones I call
the “Dionysian” writers–those who seem to write in a welter: Poe, Whitman, Woolf, Kerouac, Henry
Miller, Thomas Mann, and of course my friend Lawrence Durrell, whom in my estimation is one of the
greatest writers of the 20th century.
Juanita: Well Thomas, it has been a real pleasure talking with you today. “Memoirs of a Shape-
Shifter” will undoubtedly be a great success and inspire women everywhere. Please let your readers
know how they may find out more about you and your endeavors.
Thomas: Readers can read reviews, a synopsis, the first chapter of Memoirs, and get some
biographical information at the publisher’s website: www.keplerpress.com, or by going to my own
website, www.tkaplanmaxfield.com. If you click on the picture of the brooch on my website, you’ll be
linked to a treasure hunt I set up for the book.
Juanita: Do you have any last thoughts for your readers?
Thomas: I think the change in centuries signals a great shift in our culture. The internet, globalization,
the environment, our government–there are many systems in crisis right now, and crisis always
means much danger as well as opportunity. I wrote “Memoirs” with the very conscious intention of
offering another way of the sexes relating, because I believe that revolutionizing how we see one
another will in turn help our entire planet through this time of transition. We need new paradigms, and
“Memoirs”, by hearkening back to other people and times, presents one, a vision of love based on
friendship and mutuality, wherein ‘male’ and ‘female’ can be seen perhaps as two colors–red and
blue, for example–instead of opposites. Yes, the genders are different–and vive la difference!–but
different does not mean excluded.