An exclusive Q&A with Jodi Picoult, author of A Spark of Light!

Jodi Picoult is the author of twenty-four internationally bestselling novels, including My Sister’s Keeper and Small Great Things.

In this exclusive Q&A, Jodi discusses her most recent book A Spark of Light, which follows the course of a day in a US abortion clinic whose very existence is controversial.

Given the backward timing of the day that unfolds in A Spark of Light, do you first write or sketch the story chronologically then fill in the details as you write it back?

No, I wrote the book exactly in the order you read it. I just had wrote an extensive 48 page outline beforehand. And once I’d written the book I edited it 10 times in reverse order before editing it again in the order in which you read it.

It seems terrifying that you need to wait longer to get an abortion than to get a gun in the USA. The UK seems to be so much more progressive and liberal than the US, and this really brings it home. Has there been a staggering difference to the audience and media reactions in the UK, versus the US?

Not in terms of the number of people who know someone who has terminated a pregnancy, that’s equal everywhere. Although I have received mail from pro-life people in the UK, the majority of the audiences here seem to be in favour of a woman’s right to choose, and baffled by the conservatism of the United States.

I can imagine this on a study syllabus. Where would you like to see your book read, and by whom?

For this book, because of the subject matter, I could see it working well on a university ethics course, but the people I’d really love to read it are the members of the Supreme Court in the United States.

An article I read said that you sometime bring characters from old books into new ones. Have you done that in A Spark of Light, and have you included any of the research from your book Nineteen Minutes – or did you start your research from scratch?

The characters in A Spark of Light are all new and so is the research!

Is Bex’s artwork something you have seen an artist do, or did you pluck this from your imagination? The used Post-it notes are very evocative and thought-provoking.

I did create Bex’s art from my imagination but here’s the weird thing: just before starting my book tour I was in Maine and saw a mural that was basically this kind of art- except instead of Post-its the individual building blocks of the art were tiny Polaroid photos. 

You witnessed several abortion procedures as part of your research for this book. How did you feel afterwards? Did you meet the women to hear their stories or gauge their reactions? Or did you watch from the doctor’s perspective?

The 5 and 8-week abortions were so quick (3 mins) and so uneventful it really almost felt like observing a doctor’s exam. The 15-week abortion was more unsettling as the products of conception had very very small recognizable shapes: a hand, an elbow. Not gonna lie – that was hard to see. But I met with all the women before and after. They were nervous but not crying. They all were 100% committed to terminating the pregnancies and they were very relieved when it was over. The woman with the 15-week pregnancy had three other children at home under the age of four and she was so grateful to the doctor because this procedure meant she could afford to feed the children she already had. 

How many drafts does the opening section go through to end up this gripping?

Because of the structure of this book, editing was particularly difficult.  When I was editing, I flagged each character with a different color post-it, and edited in reverse ten different times to make sure each character thread was legitimate, and then I edited the entire book going forward.  It may be interesting for you to know that it wasn’t until my editor suggested I split that opening chapter that I decided to leave it as a cliffhanger — with the resolution in the epilogue.

You have done such a great job of showing the pro- and anti-abortion viewpoints. How important was it that you gained a deep perspective on this issue from every possible angle?

It’s incredibly important.  When I write a book, I don’t ever want to preach to you, but I do want you to hear all sides of an issue, so that you can ask yourself why you believe what you do.  To that end, I find myself doing research with people who think very differently from me, for every book.  I am pro-choice but for this book I interviewed pro-life advocates, who were not religious zealots as I expected, but people who come from a place of deep compassion and deep conviction, just like I do…but they believe inviolably that life begins at conception.  I also interviewed abortion providers, including Dr Willie Parker, and was in the room to observe three different abortions.  Finally, I interviewed 151 women who had abortions.  One of my favourite comments about this book is that readers have told me they don’t know which side of the debate I’m on, until they read the author’s note at the end.

Buy A Spark of Light here: