Exclusive interview with author Ronlyn Domingue and a review of her new novel about a woman who makes maps
Rating: Three Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“My first novel The Mercy of Thin Air had been published, and I was struggling to get a hold on the novel I thought I’d write next,” says The Mapmakers War author Ronlyn Domingue. “One day, I was procrastinating and decided to dig through some old writings from graduate school. I searched through various files on a computer I didn’t use any longer, and there was the folder with the book I’d started long before. I wrote what was meant to be a feminist fairy tale about a young girl who lived in a kingdom where women weren’t taught to read. Before I finally shelved it, a subplot emerged about a woman named Aoife [pronounced ee-fah] who had some distant tie to the narrator of the novel itself.”
The Mapmaker’s War is the second novel by Domingue. In it we meet Aoife, a young woman who is granted permission by the king to apprentice to the mapmaker. She travels beyond the kingdoms borders and discovers a group of people who have great wealth yet live in peace. They protect a treasure that is connected to the creation of the world. That Aoife reported their existence threatens the community. After warning them of the danger, she is exiled because she betrayed her king. Aoife finds no peace after leaving her home and children behind. She is accepted into the community that she betrayed and falls in love with a warrior. She bears his child. Can she reconcile her past and present?
The book is written in second person with no quotation marks around the dialogue. It takes a few pages to get used to the style. But once you do, you will be pulled into the story. It’s about a woman wanting more than what she’s expected to get and who’s willing to fight for what she wants. Domingue draws the lines that define the map of humanity and the maps of the world at large. Set in a fantasyland, the story has memorable characters with hope, love and wisdom gained over the years.
Domingue says of her research process: “I spend years in what I call my research and incubation phase. That’s when I’m doing lots of thinking, jotting down notes, images, snippets of dialogue, as well as reading for research. In time, I get a sense of the plot’s entire arc and then I start writing. But with The Mapmaker’s War, much of the writing was very different. About half of the book was written in three weeks in this strange stream-of-consciousness spew.”
The Mercy of Thin Air, which has been translated into ten languages, is a Costco’s Book Pick a Finalist for Borders Original Voices Award, a Redbook Club Pick, a Book Sense Pick Nominee, and is a winner of both the SIBA Book Award for Fiction, and a James Tiptree, Jr. Award.
Before she was a published novelist, Domingue worked in communications and as a grant writer for non-profit organizations. Her writing has also appeared in The Beautiful Anthology (TNB Books), New England Review, Clackamas Literary Review, New Delta Review, The Independent (UK), and Shambhala Sun, and at mindful.org, Salon.com, and The Nervous Breakdown. Her next novel is the sequel The Chronicle of Secret Riven, available in 2014. Domingue was born and lives in Louisiana.
The Mapmaker’s War: A Legend by Ronlyn Domingue . Hardcover, 240 pages, Publisher: Atria Books (March 5, 2013), Language: English. ISBN: 9781451688887 $23.00
