Caroline Coleman O'Neill: Author Interview

 Our Interview with Caroline Coleman O'Neill

Yes, Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher. He lived in Copenhagen in the middle of the 19th century and is seen as the father of existentialism. But he was a Christian existentialist. A lot of people think that’s an oxymoron.

How did you choose the topic of Soren Kierkegaard?

I was raised on Soren Kierkegaard’s philosophy. My father became a born again Christian in his early forties by reading Soren Kierkegaard, and he was quoted in our home almost as often as the Bible. But I found Soren’s renunciation of the world far too extreme, and I resisted reading him. I managed to avoid reading him at Princeton, and Oxford, and Columbia. But my father kept talking about him and when I was 32 he gave me a copy of Fear and Trembling. I still didn’t read it, but I read the biographical introduction in the beginning, which told the love story of Soren and Regina. I was fascinated. I saw immediately how his love story fit into his philosophy. And when I was telling a friend who’s a history professor at Middlebury about it, she said, “Caroline, why don’t you write about that?” So I did.

Is Loving Soren a stand alone novel?

Definitely.

Do you prefer write historical or contemporary novels?

This one involved so much research, but so does my new book. I think I like both. But I don’t have plans to do another historical novel right now. I need to be really, really comfortable about a subject to write about it.

How much research did Loving Soren take?

It took a ton. The book took seven years from conception to release. I traveled to Copenhagen. I went to the Danish West Indies, which is now the U.S. Virgin Islands. I read extensively. I read biographies. I read contemporary accounts. I read Regina’s side of the story. I read over two thirds of Kierkegaard’s works, focusing in on the ones about Regina, also called his “aesthetic writings”. I read all of Kierkegaard’s obsessive musings of Regina in his private journals. Loving Soren takes place during the Golden Age of Danish painting, and I pored over all of these incredibly beautiful paintings for the details, the clothes, the scenery and the décor. And I read a lot of books on contemporary costumes.

Why was the setting in Denmark?

That’s where Soren and Regina lived. My understanding of Europe is enriched by the fact that I’m half English and I spent every summer of my childhood in England until I was sixteen. I’ve been back about once a year ever since, and I lived there for two years when I went to Oxford.

It is really hard work. I love it. I miss it desperately when I don’t write but trying to get everything right, trying to juggle the many, many things a novelist needs to think about is really challenging: the voice, the dialogue, the description, just the going deeper part which involves observing, thinking. It’s so easy to slip into telling rather than showing. You’re constantly focusing in on one aspect too much and then having to draw back and work on the other aspects as well.

Do you have a new book coming? What is the title?

I’ve been working for over a year now on a contemporary novel set in New York City about a liberal Episcopal priest and his most conservative evangelical parishioner. But the novel is really about grace, about how we can love each other. It’s working title is The Book of Common Prayer.

Are there any other projects on the horizon?

I’m a one-project-at-a-time person. I have a bunch of older manuscripts which need rewriting, including two young adult novels, but I can only focus on one thing at a time. Then all day long, no matter what I’m doing, I’m constantly looking for things that feed into it.

How do you bring your characters to life?

I don’t know, they’re just real people to me.

Who was your favorite character?

Soren Kierkegaard was probably the most fun to work with because he is so difficult and so narcissistic and yet so witty. I don’t necessarily like him that much, although I definitely empathize with him and feel sorry for him. Actually, I think I have to like all my characters because otherwise they’re not real. As a Christian writer, if I start to judge my characters, they become flat and one dimensional and not compelling and I haven’t loved them in the Christian sense. It’s a failing in my own life too when you don’t love someone and you judge them. It’s a terrible way to live and it’s a terrible place to be and I find myself slipping into that problem as a writer. I actually pray about loving my characters rather than judging them.

How personal is Loving Soren?

I definitely found out the hard way how unhappy it makes you to build your identity on things other than God. But five years ago, everything in my life fell apart at the same time, and I finally surrendered everything to God. Since then, I’ve never been happier. I discovered you can have joy and pain at the same time. And the joy comes from knowing Jesus.

Who most influenced your writing?

Maybe Jane Austen; I think Pride and Prejudice is one of the best novels ever written. I love Austen’s nuance and understanding of human foibles that she manages to express with love, so that her characters seem real instead of stereotypes. And her dialogue is so witty. I especially love books whose characters wield the words and wit as weapons.

The Lord of the Rings. Even then, the Christian elements resonated for me: the idea of the ring as temptation, and the battle between good and evil and how we’re constantly buffeted between those two forces. Also the Pauline idea of the good that you want to do, you sometimes just can’t do. Tolkien captured that so beautifully.

What message would you like your readers to take from Loving Soren?

Women are so often taught to build their identity on a man, and when that doesn’t work out they’re devastated. I would love for my female readers to put this book down thinking that Jesus is the one that satisfies our deepest desires; that he is the one who, as it says in the Song of Songs, always sees us as “the most beautiful woman” he’s ever seen, that he is the only one on whom we can safely build your identity.

What is your goal or mission as a Christian writer?

I try to write the books that I like to read; which are books that make me think - but not too hard - with a great love story, a Christian world view, that are clean but real, and have happy endings. I would love to give people the feeling that they’re not alone – that someone else on this planet feels the way they do. And I’d be thrilled if someone got the idea from Loving Soren that Jesus is the answer to their heart’s deepest longings.

Song of Songs 4:7 "All beautiful you are, my darling; there is no flaw in you."