Welcome to another installment of If My Book, the Monkeybicycle feature in which authors compare their recently released books to weird things. This week Megan Staffel writes about The Causative Factor, her new novel, out now from Regal House.
If The Causative Factor were a mountain hike, the start of it would offer a challenge. The incline is steep and the effort would make your breathing labored and tighten the muscles in your legs. But then you’d reach the top and see the valleys below and the other mountain peaks all around, and the view would be so beautiful and your sense of accomplishment so powerful, you’d linger at the top as long as possible before starting the easy descent on a well-worn trail that takes you to a meadow where food is laid out on tables, musicians are playing, and your friends who’d also finished the same difficult climb were waiting for you to arrive.
If my book were a dream it would begin with an dark and forbidding stone house with gabled roofs. The dreamer enters to find herself in a living room with a large fireplace where a fire crackles. There are beautiful Oriental rugs and an inviting sofa and a smell of cinnamon in the air. It feels cozy and comfortable, but the dreamer moves on. She finds herself in a room at the top of the house where a window is wide open, a thin gauzy curtain billowing in the breeze as though someone left abruptly. The next scenes are outside where a long, dirt path extends into an unknown distance with scrubby trees and stunted wildflowers growing on either side. But there is a mysterious melody coming from far away, it is wind instruments playing a simple dance tune and as the dreamer walks towards it the dark house recedes and the air turns balmy as flowers become profuse.
If The Causative Factor were a bird it would be a tufted titmouse, a small grey and white year-round inhabitant with a perky tuft at the top of its head, a stubby practical beak, and a bright black eye. The titmouse’s eager look is inviting. Its movements are balanced by a long, graceful tail and its mostly white breast has a surprising smear of pale orange on its flanks.
If my book were an animal, it would be twin fawns. They run away from each other, leaping and bounding over fields in a wild chase that keeps them separate until they tire and get worried and then search for the other, no longer playful but now scared and determined.
If The Causative Factor were a room it would be a tower with a window on every side so that the light shifts with the passing of the day, beginning with the bright streaks of sunrise, changing to the cold light of morning, the warmer light of afternoon, then moving into the intense sultry colors of sunset, and ending with the soft, velvety darkness of night.
If my book were music it would be blues, full of trouble but with a slow, sexy tune a person just has to get up and dance to.
If The Causative Factor were a summer storm, it would start with lightening, thunder, and torrential rain, then change to a slow, soaking drizzle, one that nourishes the earth. Then the sun
would break out while drops were still falling, and from one end of the horizon to the other a double rainbow would appear.
If The Causative Factor were a famous piece of art it would be a box construction by Joseph Cornell. It sits in a museum, surrounded by people milling around, while inside it contains a small, inviolable world.
If my book were a popular song it would be Billie Holiday singing “Why Was I Born?” The singer asks the big questions, Why am I here, What is my purpose, and also and more importantly, “Oh baby, why was I born? To love you.”
Megan Staffel is the award-winning author of six books of fiction, three novels and three collections of short fiction. Her most recent publication, the novel, The Causative Factor, is the winner of the Petrichor Prize and is forthcoming in October, 2024. Megan taught for many years in the MFA program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and posts a monthly discussion about a novel or story she admires on her blog at www.meganstaffel.com as well as at “Page and Story” on Substack: https://pageandstory.substack.com. She is an avid walker, bird watcher, and gardener.
