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WORK TITLE: Alternative Remedies for Loss
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1982
WEBSITE: https://www.joannacantor.com/
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1982; married.
EDUCATION:Colorado College, B.A.; Brooklyn College, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and yoga instructor.
AWARDS:Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, 2014.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to publications, including Departures, Willamette Week, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, Greatest, and Fodor’s Travel.
SIDELIGHTS
Joanna Cantor is a writer and yoga instructor based in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Colorado College and a master’s degree from Brooklyn College. In 2014, she was awarded a fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center. Cantor’s writing has appeared in publications, including Departures, Willamette Week, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, Greatest, and Fodor’s Travel.
In 2017, Cantor released her first novel, Alternative Remedies for Loss. Its protagonist is Olivia Harris, a woman in her early twenties, who has been attending Vassar College. Olivia’s beloved mother learns she has a brain tumor and passes away shortly after, leaving Olivia to deal with her loss. Olivia behaves erratically and sometime irresponsibly. She is working for a film production company based in New York City. When a client of her company’s shows interest in her, she offers to sleep with him for $1000. Olivia goes on to sleep with another client. In this case, he displays disturbing behavior. Meanwhile, she deals with the recalibration of her relationships with other family members. Her father has begun dating, and Olivia treats his new girlfriend coldly. She does not appreciate kind overtures from her siblings and others close to her. Olivia finds several letters while going through her mother’s things. The contents of the letters lead Olivia on a journey that ultimately brings her to an ashram in India.
In an interview with Rachel Fogle de Souza, contributor to the Book Trib website, Cantor explained how she came to write Alternative Remedies for Loss. She stated: “I first wrote a short story about a family traveling to India after the matriarch’s death, told from multiple perspectives. My story was modeled on a chapter of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad called “Safari,” which I’d first read in the New Yorker. When I finished the story, I was still interested in the characters, and decided to see if they could sustain a novel. I didn’t have an overall arc at first, but I kept writing about the Harris family in the year after Eleanor Harris’s death until a plot emerged.” Regarding the takeaways from the book, Cantor told de Souza: “The themes that are most important to me are that grief can really be a lonely, individual experience; even within a family, siblings or a parent and child can have a very different process after a death. But on the more positive side, I believe families can be resilient enough to survive this difficult, lonely period after a loss.” Cantor discussed creating the character of Olivia in an interview with Deborah Kalb, which appeared on the Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb website. Cantor told Kalb: “When I came up with the character of Olivia, I was fairly new to writing fiction and just learned how to let my characters mess up. It felt liberating to create a female protagonist who was constantly stepping into action, rather than sitting around overthinking every email and conversation (which is more the way I am!) So from the start, she was feisty, gutsy, and not a people pleaser.”
Critics were divided in their assessments of Alternative Remedies for Loss. “There’s no shortage of wrenching writing about the loss of a mother, but this novel fails to hit memorable heights,” remarked a writer in Kirkus Reviews. Chelsie Harris, contributor to Xpress Reviews, suggested: “Cantor’s debut novel has a clunky quality that makes it tough to get through.” However, a Publishers Weekly reviewer described the book as a “stellar debut” and asserted: “Cantor’s novel is not only full of unexpected turns but hits all the right emotional notes.” “With a delightfully imperfect heroine, vibrant settings, and snappy dialogue, this is a whip-smart debut,” commented Stephanie Turza in Booklist.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 1, 2018, Stephanie Turza, review of Alternative Remedies for Loss, p. 20.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2018, review of Alternative Remedies for Loss.
Publishers Weekly, March 26, 2018, review of Alternative Remedies for Loss, p. 90.
Xpress Reviews, April 6, 2018, Chelsie Harris, review of Alternative Remedies for Loss.
ONLINE
Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, http://deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com/ (June 3, 2018), Deborah Kalb, author interview.
Book Trib, https://booktrib.com/ (June 4, 2018), Rachel Fogle de Souza, author interview.
Joanna Cantor website, https://www.joannacantor.com/ (July 2, 2018).
About
Joanna Cantor holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and a BA from Colorado College. Her debut novel, Alternative Remedies for Loss, is an Amazon Best of the Month for May 2018 and has been highlighted in Vanity Fair, Real Simple, Nylon, and elsewhere. Her writing has appeared in Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Departures, Fodor's Travel, Greatist, and the Willamette Week. Joanna was the 2014 recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. She is also a yoga teacher. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their dog.
QUOTED: "I first wrote a short story about a family traveling to India after the matriarch’s death, told from multiple perspectives. My story was modeled on a chapter of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad called “Safari,” which I’d first read in the New Yorker. When I finished the story, I was still interested in the characters, and decided to see if they could sustain a novel. I didn’t have an overall arc at first, but I kept writing about the Harris family in the year after Eleanor Harris’s death until a plot emerged."
"the themes that are most important to me are that grief can really be a lonely, individual experience; even within a family, siblings or a parent and child can have a very different process after a death. But on the more positive side, I believe families can be resilient enough to survive this difficult, lonely period after a loss."
Joanna Cantor on Her Debut Novel, Yoga, and Writing About Grief
Published on June 4, 2018 in Fiction by Rachel Fogle De Souza
This year, we’ve had some pretty standout books that have been published across the genres, but debut author Joanna Cantor’s novel Alternative Remedies For Loss has become one of the most talked about and beloved books, even though it was released just a few weeks ago. Though this is her debut, Cantor’s novel actually tackles some of the hardest things to write about clearly: the contradiction of life in your early 20s, where everything seems to be standing still yet happening too fast and all at once; grief and the feeling of permanent loss; and recovery, acceptance of our lives the way they are. And she manages to do all this effortlessly.
Alternative Remedies For Loss focuses on 22-year-old Olivia, who, when receiving the news that her mother was dying, left Vassar and her future career plans to spend time with her mother while she still could. Now, just four months after her mother’s death, Olivia feels more alone than ever, as everyone is her family has seemed just fine moving on and forward. Her brothers have careers and partners, and her father has even begun dating again, inviting his new girlfriend to come on a family trip that Olivia had originally planned with her mother. Looking for a way to remedy her loss, Olivia throws herself into Manhattan’s media world, dating older men, and trying to put together a plan for adulthood without her mother there to help her. But a shocking discovery leads Olivia halfway around the world, where she must come to terms with her family and find her place in the complex world around her.
BookTrib got to interview Joanna Cantor, where we talked about inspiration the book, yoga, writing your early 20s, and the question she’s never been asked before.
BookTrib: In this book, 22-year-old Olivia has to come to terms with the loss of her mother, which she tries to do in some not-so-typical ways. How did the idea for this book first come to you?
Joanna Cantor: I first wrote a short story about a family traveling to India after the matriarch’s death, told from multiple perspectives. My story was modeled on a chapter of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad called “Safari,” which I’d first read in the New Yorker. When I finished the story, I was still interested in the characters, and decided to see if they could sustain a novel. I didn’t have an overall arc at first, but I kept writing about the Harris family in the year after Eleanor Harris’s death until a plot emerged.
BookTrib: One of the things that this book does so well is really understand and convey that feeling of being in your early twenties: where everything is suspended, but happening all at once, so to speak. Was this something you found easy to write?
JC: Yes! It helped that I was 27 when I started writing about Olivia, so I was closer to this very up-in-the-air life moment. But even looking back safely from my 30s, I can still recall that feeling so well: that you are supposed to have a lot more figured out, and that every move you make could determine your entire future. I found it paralyzing. Olivia is more of a doer than I was—she acts impulsively, and deals with the consequences later.
BookTrib: This is your debut novel – what are some of the surprises that you found when you started writing this book?
JC: When I began this book, I was in an MFA program and relatively new to writing fiction. Writing scenes of conflict was very challenging for me. My impulse was to make my characters good and likeable—to make their actions defensible. When I began to force myself to write more tense and dramatic scenes, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It actually became addictive!
Another surprise was that I conceived of the novel as being told from multiple points of view. But when I finished a first draft, it was clear that this needed to be Olivia’s story; her chapters were the most dynamic and emotionally resonant. I don’t regret a moment of the time I spent getting to know the other characters, though—I think it helped the book.
BookTrib: Olivia, the main character, goes through an evolution throughout the book. Can you tell us a little of what it was like to write her character? Did she change the way you thought she would?
JC: I had a lot of fun writing about Olivia. She’s a feisty character who doesn’t take things lying down. That’s not to say there weren’t challenging moments—several times I had to step back and do some reflecting or reading (such as Cheryl Strayed’s Wild) to connect with what Olivia might be feeling after losing her mother in her early 20s.
As I mentioned, I began writing about Olivia and her family without an overall picture of the novel in mind, so I’m not sure I envisioned exactly how Olivia would evolve. Fairly early on, I knew the novel would take place over approximately one year, which gave me a sense of about how much change would be possible for Olivia and the other characters, but in terms of specifically what that change would be, I felt my way into it.
BookTrib: You’re a yoga teacher, the practice of which is something found throughout the book and actually pretty vital to the story. What made you want to add in this element?
JC: I like it when fiction writers introduce a specific world about which they have some expertise. It’s fun as a reader to feel like a voyeur, snooping around a subculture. Yoga was also on my mind while I was working on Alternative Remedies for Loss (I became a yoga teacher while I was writing the novel). I didn’t set out to write about yoga, but it began to seem that there was a place for it in this story—not as the solution to grief or Olivia’s difficulties, but as one of several worlds she dips her toes in as she makes her way towards adulthood.
BookTrib: Is there one thing in particular that you really want people to take away from this book?
JC: I’ll be happy if readers take away anything that has meaning to them! But if I have to narrow it down, I would say the themes that are most important to me are that grief can really be a lonely, individual experience; even within a family, siblings or a parent and child can have a very different process after a death. But on the more positive side, I believe families can be resilient enough to survive this difficult, lonely period after a loss, and come back together with perhaps even more love and understanding than they had before.
BookTrib: What are some of the books that you love?
I love 19th and early 20th century novels of manners by Edith Wharton, Jane Austen, and Henry James, and I also am drawn to contemporary novels that to my mind come out of this tradition in some way, such as The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud, Maggie Shipstead’s Seating Arrangements, or Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter. I am a huge fan of Jennifer Egan’s work; I’ve turned to her novels again and again for inspiration and instruction. A few highlights from my last year of reading were Rachel Khong’s Goodbye, Vitamin; Katherine Heiny’s Standard Deviation; and Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage.
BookTrib: What’s one question you’ve never been asked, but have always wanted to answer?
JC: What is the point of fiction? Does it need to have a moral or message?
I read fiction to be transported out of my life and my own familiar set of concerns. It’s partially escapism (which is why I’m drawn to character-driven fiction rather than more conceptual work), but it’s also the way I deepen my understanding of people and the world. I don’t think fiction can’t succeed unless the characters feel three dimensional; their motivations and emotions need to be believable, even if technically they’re “made up.” Great fiction makes me think about human character while I’m also soaking up the pleasure of a good story—for me, that’s more than enough without an explicit moral or message. When authors subtly weave in a message without sacrificing character or story, it can be powerful. But if what you’re trying to say could be reduced to a thesis statement, I don’t think you necessarily need to be writing fiction—you can get your message across in an essay or an article instead.
Alternative Remedies For Loss is now available for purchase.
ABOUT JOANNA CANTOR
PHOTO © SYLVIE ROSOKOFF
Joanna Cantor holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and a BA from Colorado College. She was the 2014 recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. Her writing has been featured in Electric Literature, Departures, Fodor’s Travel, and elsewhere. Her new novel Alternative Remedies for Loss has been named a Best Book of the Month by Vanity Fair, Real Simple, Amazon.com, Nylon, and more. She lives in Brooklyn.
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QUOTED: "When I came up with the character of Olivia, I was fairly new to writing fiction and just learned how to let my characters mess up. It felt liberating to create a female protagonist who was constantly stepping into action, rather than sitting around overthinking every email and conversation (which is more the way I am!) So from the start, she was feisty, gutsy, and not a people pleaser."
Sunday, June 3, 2018
Q&A with Joanna Cantor
Joanna Cantor is the author of the new novel Alternative Remedies for Loss. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Literary Hub and Electric Literature, and she also teaches yoga. She lives in Brooklyn.
Q: What was the inspiration for Alternative Remedies for Loss, and how did you come up with your main character, Olivia?
A: I began Alternative Remedies for Loss as a short story, inspired by “Safari,” a chapter of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. I love family dramas and set myself the goal of writing a story similar to “Safari” but about a family traveling to India. After I completed the story, I didn’t feel finished with the characters, and I thought maybe the story could become a novel. So I kept writing.
When I came up with the character of Olivia, I was fairly new to writing fiction and just learned how to let my characters mess up. It felt liberating to create a female protagonist who was constantly stepping into action, rather than sitting around overthinking every email and conversation (which is more the way I am!) So from the start, she was feisty, gutsy, and not a people pleaser.
Q: You've said Jennifer Egan is one of the authors you particularly admire. How has her writing influenced your own?
A: One thing I admire about Jennifer Egan’s work is that, though several of her books are formally innovative, she doesn’t sacrifice character or plot in order to be cutting edge. Her books are always compelling stories with interesting, three-dimensional characters.
Though Alternative Remedies is formally quite traditional, I was drawn to Egan’s work and, as I mentioned above, a chapter from A Visit from the Goon Squad inspired me to write the first part of my novel.
A few years later, I read Egan’s novel The Invisible Circus, and the structure of that book—a secret within a secret—helped me find a plot for my book. It was helpful to look closely at the work of a writer I admired to see how she solved a similar narrative problem.
Q: The book includes scenes set in India. Why did you choose that as one of the book's locations, and how important is setting to you in your work?
A: I studied abroad in Northern India in college (I was based in Bodh Gaya, the town where the fictional ashram Olivia visits is located).
My time in India had a big impact on me; it was the first place I’d traveled that felt dramatically different from the United States, and it made me question some of my basic assumptions about how to live and what my priorities were.
I always knew I wanted to write something set in India. When I began telling the story of Olivia and her family, I liked the idea of setting a messy family situation against the already rich and complicated backdrop of foreign travel.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I knew almost nothing when I started writing! There was a premise, but no real plot—I spent a while getting to know my characters, just allowing them to talk to each other and wander around.
By the time I figured out the arc, I did have an endpoint in sight, though of course smaller things changed along the way. (The first draft was actually written from multiple points of view, and I then rewrote some chapters from Olivia’s perspective once I realized this was really her story.)
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’ve been pretty busy with everything leading up to publication (as well as my other job, teaching yoga) so I haven’t sunk my teeth into a new book just yet. I have only a vague inkling of what my next project might be—but I’m excited to get started soon.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I’m thrilled that Alternative Remedies for Loss is finally out in the world after a long gestation, and very grateful for the opportunity to talk about it!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
QUOTED: "stellar debut."
"Cantor's novel is not only full of unexpected turns but hits all the right emotional notes."
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Print Marked Items
Alternative Remedies for Loss
Publishers Weekly.
265.13 (Mar. 26, 2018): p90.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Alternative Remedies for Loss
Joanna Cantor. Bloomsbury, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-1-63557-171-4
Cantor's stellar debut follows 22-year-old New Yorker Olivia Harris as she contends with her close-knit
family and decides to make a film to honor her mother, Eleanor, after she dies of cancer. Though she has
one more semester to go at Vassar, Olivia uses her brother Alec's connections to get an entry-level job at a
Manhattan production company. There, she meets and get involved with Michel Zahavi, a client 16 years
her senior. While Olivia treats the relationship as a temporary situation to help her cope with her loss,
Michel appears to be more attached. Meanwhile, Olivia and her brothers are aghast that their father brings
his new girlfriend on a family trip to India a few months after Eleanor's death. After the trip, while sorting
through Eleanor's things, Olivia discovers some curious notes signed by "F" that lead her on a journey back
to India to find out the truth about who F is. She also shoots footage there for a film to complete her thesis.
Olivia's self-centered brattiness feels true, but despite that she's a charming, well-fleshed out character who
carries the story. Cantor's novel is not only full of unexpected turns but hits all the right emotional notes.
(May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Alternative Remedies for Loss." Publishers Weekly, 26 Mar. 2018, p. 90. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532997118/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f24caf83.
Accessed 24 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532997118
QUOTED: "With a delightfully imperfect heroine, vibrant settings, and snappy dialogue, this is a whip-smart debut."
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Alternative Remedies for Loss
Stephanie Turza
Booklist.
114.13 (Mar. 1, 2018): p20.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Alternative Remedies for Loss. By Joanna Cantor. May 2018.320p. Bloomsbury, $26 (9781635571714).
Olivia Harris is 22, working as a runner for a Manhattan production company, and just asked a total stranger
for $ 1,000 in exchange for sex. This behavior is out of the ordinary, but Olivia's been floundering in the
months since her mother suddenly passed away. The solid, stable family that Olivia took for granted now
seems to be falling apart. Her father is dating, her older brothers are wrapped up in their own lives, and
Olivia's motivation has evaporated. After finding mysterious letters of her mother's, a spark of ambition
returns. Olivia's mission to uncover the mystery takes her to all the way to an ashram in India, but she ends
up learning more about herself than about her mother's last months. A sharp and witty glimpse inside a
functionally dysfunctional family, Cantor's first novel is heartbreakingly honest. Fans of Helen Fielding,
Emma Straub, and Maggie Shipstead will appreciate Olivia's zest for life and capacity for personal growth.
With a delightfully imperfect heroine, vibrant settings, and snappy dialogue, this is a whip-smart debut. --
Stephanie Turza
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Turza, Stephanie. "Alternative Remedies for Loss." Booklist, 1 Mar. 2018, p. 20. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532250813/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6196c6f4.
Accessed 24 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532250813
QUOTED: "There's no shortage of wrenching writing about the loss of a mother, but this novel fails to hit memorable heights."
6/24/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Cantor, Joanna: ALTERNATIVE
REMEDIES FOR LOSS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Cantor, Joanna ALTERNATIVE REMEDIES FOR LOSS Bloomsbury (Adult Fiction) $26.00 5, 8 ISBN:
978-1-63557-171-4
Unmoored by her mother's death, a young woman finds herself making questionable decisions, processing
new information about the past, and reaching toward a more enlightened future.
There's a punchy moment on Page 4 of Cantor's debut when Olivia Harris, 22 and working a lowly job at a
Manhattan film production company, goes home with a not-especially-attractive client and finds herself
charging him $1,000 for sex. But Olivia, who grew up comfortably in Westchester County and has nearly
finished her degree at Vassar, is no kind of sex worker; instead she's a grieving daughter whose mother
succumbed to a brain tumor a few months earlier. For much of this cool tale, Olivia maintains her
unpredictable and borderline sympathetic stance, whether taking up with another, possibly abusive client;
resisting any gesture of kindness from--or toward--her father's new companion; or taking the support of
parent, friends, and siblings for granted. But Olivia is working through her pain and loss and also following
the trail of some mysterious correspondence in her mother's effects which leads her into the world of yoga
and later to an Indian ashram. In between these minimal events, the novel spends a great deal of time
hanging out with Olivia--in bars, with her friend Kelsey, with family members, work colleagues, ashram
acquaintances, passing lovers. Cantor acknowledges Olivia's mixed emotions--anger, sadness, confusion--
yet translates them into a slowly paced, numbly expressed sequence of jumpy choices. A coda follows,
which perhaps sees the dawning of some maturity, although it's accompanied by Olivia's unacknowledged
acceptance of another round of easy opportunities.
There's no shortage of wrenching writing about the loss of a mother, but this novel fails to hit memorable
heights.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Cantor, Joanna: ALTERNATIVE REMEDIES FOR LOSS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959999/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=655f6d67. Accessed 24 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528959999
QUOTED: "Cantor's debut novel has a clunky quality that makes it tough to get through."
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Cantor, Joanna. Alternative Remedies for
Loss
Chelsie Harris
Xpress Reviews.
(Apr. 6, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
Full Text:
Cantor, Joanna. Alternative Remedies for Loss. Bloomsbury USA. May 2018. 320p. ISBN 9781635571714.
$26; ebk. ISBN 9781635571721. F
[DEBUT] Olivia, a 22-year-old film student, is experiencing what can only be described as a quarter-life
crisis after the death of her mother. The grief is still fresh, with only four months having passed, yet Olivia's
family seems to have all but forgotten their matriarch. One brother is engaged, another married and trying
for a baby, and her father already has a new girlfriend. Olivia's college friends have moved on with their
lives as well, while she is at a standstill after she drops out of school and takes a job as a glorified coffee
attendant at a local film agency. When she finds a mysterious photo and love letter among her mother's
things, she embarks on an Eat Pray Love-reminiscent journey to India that she hopes will bring her closure.
Verdict Cantor's debut novel has a clunky quality that makes it tough to get through. The plot never takes
off, and the characters (of which there are many rotating in and out) seem basic and lacking depth.--Chelsie
Harris, San Diego Cty. Lib.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Harris, Chelsie. "Cantor, Joanna. Alternative Remedies for Loss." Xpress Reviews, 6 Apr. 2018. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536533234/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8d7d1b0d. Accessed 24 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536533234