Hala Alyan
AS A child of a diaspora, I’ve always been haunted by the idea of home—what it means to connect to one specific spot on the earth, to let yourself love that place as you would another human. This longing is beautifully felt in Hala Alyan’s beautiful debut, Salt Houses, which follows the splintering trajectory of a Palestinian family across decades and continents. A poet and psychologist, Hala Alyan is uniquely gifted at showing us exactly how the ruptures of the outside world travel across our own internal landscape.
Which character in this book came to you first? Which did you feel closest to? Did that change as the book progressed?
I began by telling the story of Mustafa, a young man living in pre1967 Palestine. I found myself curious about his restlessness in such a charged political situation and soon found my focus shifting onto the rest of his family, how they would be impacted by the coming war. I would describe their conversations and dynamics, their childhood home, knowing it would be lost in a few short years. I’d say the characters I felt the strongest kinship with were Alia, the matriarch, and her youngest daughter, Souad. Both, in their own ways, are complicated, unhappy women whose lives and desires are derailed by wars. As the writing process went on, I found myself surprisingly drawn to Abdullah, who’d been essentially adopted into the larger family as a child. He grows into a lost young man, easily seduced by political extremism.
A novel is often built around a central urgency and a reason that
whose debut novel, Salt Houses, was published in May by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
urgency needed to be told this way. What was yours, and why?
I felt an urgency to create a narrative where a Palestinian family wasn’t just Palestinian, if that makes sense, but rather transcended their circumstances. This felt crucial to me. When I wasn’t working on the novel, I’d sometimes imagine the characters in their frozen lives, waiting for me to finish. It was an intense but sustaining process.
How many years did it take you to write Salt Houses?
It took about two and a half years to write the first draft, and then another year or so of editing and giving it to a close few to read. I began writing it as I was finishing up my dissertation for my clinical psychology degree and used it as a reward, so that I’d “earn” my fiction writing if I did enough academic work. It was a good system. In general, I tried to commit to writing thirty minutes a day, no more, no less. I have a hard time writing for long stretches and find it works best for me to leave my day’s work on a cliffhanger of sorts, so that I’m excited to return to it the following day.
We share an agent, the wonderful Michelle Tessler. How did you find her? How did you know she was the right fit for your book?
Actually, I found her—indirectly— through you. I had gathered my favorite novels, ones that resonated with me and explored similar themes (immigration, family stories, war), and flipped to the acknowledgements page to make a note of the agents. I hadn’t actually read The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing yet, but I’d been hearing a lot about it, and so I looked up Michelle and really appreciated the fiction she’d represented. When we had our first in-person meeting, it was such a thrill to watch her discuss the story with enthusiasm; every suggestion she had for editing made perfect sense. We just clicked.
What was the most surprising thing
about the publishing process?
How many people are involved. Also, this sounds absurd, but I didn’t know that getting an advance was something I should expect. That was the loveliest surprise. In many ways, my day-to-day life is very removed from the business aspect of writing. I never did an MFA. Most of my community is within poetry circles. So I was surprised by pretty much every step of the publishing process. I definitely didn’t realize how long it took, even after the book was sold.
If you could go back and tell the you who started this book one thing to make your process easier, what would it be?
I would grab her by the shoulders and shout, “Write chronologically, damn it! For the love of God, please do not save dozens of little documents titled ‘Alia’s convo with M’ and ‘Maybe beach scene?’ which will just force future you to have to stitch this sprawling beast of a novel together scene by excruciating scene.”