Building a Story House
Agnès Madrigal
A Story House is a new literary project that chronicles the lives of four women, each at a different stage of life. The women live in apartments in the same house. Their lives intersect, as neighbors’ lives do, but mostly these are independent stories—each character emblematizing her own generation, narrative, struggle, and self. Along with the traditional retelling of their lives in novel form, parts of the tales will also be told in a forthcoming online feature titled Story House.
What are the commonalities among four women who live in the same apartment building? Lives of the characters are both farther and closer than the author might imagine. Photograph by Berenice Melis
For many years I’ve wanted to tell a story of the different lives of women, determined, mostly by the different ages persons pass through, and how those times vary, sometimes wildly, within a single human experience. Rather than create a lengthy chronicle of one woman’s life story, I wanted to capture more episodic glimpses of a few women, women at different moments in their lives, but in moments occurring concurrently with the other characters represented. This idea caused me to consider a “story house” in which these women live, in their separate apartments, but unified by a single backdrop.
“[I am] a writer who strives to consider the fragile and often invisible interweaving and entanglement of lives, both real and fictional, almost constantly.”
—Agnès Madrigal
I was partially inspired by the great Polish film director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog and Three Colors (Blue, White, Red) series. In the former, one-hour tableaus based on the Ten Commandments are conveyed through persons living in the same apartment building in Warsaw; in the latter, characters in three completely separate narratives cross paths with some of the same persons and situations, as well as with each other. These films have always been very intriguing, even magical, inspirations for me as a writer—a writer who strives to consider the fragile and often invisible interweaving and entanglement of lives, both real and fictional, almost constantly.
A sketch by the author of a possible “Story House” with four characters within. Photograph by Madrigalit
I was also curious about the way in which people can live, physically divided from one another, while their emotional concerns might be deeply interwoven. Aspects of social isolation and modern society certainly come up in this telling, though without any didactic overtures or, for that matter, tangible solutions. Mostly, I was interested in an experiment to observe how people exist, how we survive, how we grapple with the periods of time that are handed to us, some such periods marked with very particular and probably unavoidable circumstances: innocence in youth, for example, the contradictions of mid-life, or physical decline as we age. Of course, there are plenty of other obstacles that come to each of us, also, ones more specific and not necessarily thrust upon everyone. The counterpoint of these two kinds of concerns has been something fascinating to explore in these stories.
“I was interested in an experiment to observe how people exist, how we survive, how we grapple with the periods of time that are handed to us, some such periods marked with very particular and probably unavoidable circumstances [like] innocence in youth . . . or physical decline as we age.”
—Agnès Madrigal
As of now, the stories are in a kind of incubation period: some parts have been written and left to cure for a bit, other parts are still uncoiling in the imagination. Like every new story, I don’t know where it will go, how it will shape itself exactly. The beginning of Story House has been, at the very least, an enjoyable exercise after the completion of the last novel. Story House may bear fruit as a novel, too, or it may be something else entirely—or it may be some delicate intermixing of the two. I hope to report back on it in these pages soon!