Interview with Maria Kuznetsova
What are some things you would want to find?
A diary I wrote in faithfully through elementary school that my family lost when we moved.
Inner-peace.
A pair of glasses I recently lost on vacation.
The perfect tension-defusing joke for every tough situation.
Velcro pockets that I could stick on to all of my favorite dresses.
What are some things you would want to hide?
The new emails in my inbox. Who needs them?
The coffee mug stains on my favorite writing desk.
The deleted scenes from Something Unbelievable – there were about a hundred pages of war parts that did not make it in and did not feel entertaining or authentic.
My black cat’s fur. It’s impossible to remove from all the crevasses of my home, no matter how hard I try.
The enormous mess in my almost-three-year-old daughter’s room.
If you could choose anywhere in the world for your book to be hidden, where would it be?
I would love to hide my book in my grandmother’s old apartment in Kiev, Ukraine. She told me the story that inspired the WWII aspect of Something Unbelievable there, and the place that Larissa tells her own story from is also inspired by her small but charming apartment on the eleventh floor. In fact, a cousin of mine lives in it now, so he could help hide it!
If you could find any book, which would it be and why?
My great-grandmother Zhenia, who was born in 1905 in Ukraine, wrote a fascinating memoir about how her parents met when her father was her mother’s lawyer after she was arrested after being a revolutionary. It also delved into her own career as a Jewish journalist – not an easy feat in the USSR. However, my family was only able to find the first half of the book. I’d love to find the rest!
Who would you want to find your book (another author, celebrity, et cetera)?
Tom Perrotta! Though he doesn’t typically write historical fiction, he grew up near my old hometown of Edison, New Jersey, and he’s been such an inspiration to me. He’s so skilled at writing about the tensions between different members of the same family, loss, parenthood, and so much more – all with a healthy sense of humor!
