Caroline Kepnes is the New York Times bestselling author of You, Hidden Bodies, Providence and an upcoming novel, You Love Me. Her work has been translated into a multitude of languages and inspired a television series adaptation of You, currently on Netflix. Kepnes graduated from Brown University and then worked as a pop culture journalist for Entertainment Weekly and a TV writer for 7th Heaven and The Secret Life of the American Teenager. She grew up on Cape Cod, and now lives in Los Angeles.
Today, to mark the release of You Love Me, Caroline Kepnes is on the blog to tell us how her monstrous creation Joe Goldberg came to be. Read on …
Caroline Kepnes (Photo by Ace Photography)
Why I gave birth to Joe Goldberg
We have our real lives — nothing new there, we eat, we sleep, we think — and now we have our lives online — something new there, we can tell people what we eat, when we sleep, what we think (or what we want people to think we think for socially advantageous motivations). We are all dealing with it, and this is not just about social media — but oh it is of course a lot about that — but it’s also about the ongoing negotiations and conversations we have with ourselves.
I could Google that person or open a book and wait to learn more about them when I next see them.
I could search for reviews of this book and find spoilers or I could keep reading.
I think it’s so-and-so’s birthday tomorrow but I’m not sure. I could go online, check Facebook, or I could reach out, text or maybe even call and say Happy Birthday.
Our minds are working around the clock to rationalise decisions. Some are major, some are silly. But I wanted to make a time capsule of a person dealing with all the decision making in real time, in mind time. Joe is telling you why he does the things he does, the things he would never tell another person or share online with a bunch of strangers.
Every time someone asks what inspired me, I think of something new, because that first book is a sum of so many books you read. Today I think about the Choose Your Own Adventures series that was popular when I was a kid. Those books made me so anxious! The horror of knowing that one decision, by nature, will impact and limit future opportunities. So many years later, here we are holding our phones, embarking on countless consequential adventures defined by our choices.
How do our many small and large choices form the people we become? And what is the long-term impact of all this decision making?
It was fun to imagine this character who is just like you and me, but he is making life or death decisions for other people. You and I are deciding whether or not to call someone. Joe is deciding whether or not to stalk and possibly murder someone. A long time ago I read Benjamin Kunkel’s Indecision. The character is overwhelmed in the cereal aisle of a grocery store. Years later I’m like, oh right, I mulled over that moment about mulling a lot.
We have so many options that we did not have when I was a kid, when my brain was forming. We see headlines and clickbait about what all this access to information and online socialisation does for our psyches, for better or for worse, as if we are all married to it, like it or not. But then again, we are same as ever. Reading is fun because it gives our active minds a lot of work to do. Fun work.
You open You Love Me and you are, as always in a You novel, lodged in Joe’s mind. You are with him, in him. But you are also his new co-worker. You are a librarian. He’s the new guy in your life and he seems great and he knows that he seems great and if you think he’s great—and you are smart, a good judge of character, of books—well, you’re the one who was so nice to him when he got there. So, whatever comes next, that’s on you, isn’t it? And wait, are you with him or against him? Do you like him? Well, it doesn’t matter because you are in him and there is no escape but hey, two hours pass and you’re so sucked into the book that you don’t look at your phone and that has to be good for you, for your mind, your soul? After all, Joe’s a reader and here you are reading his story and you wouldn’t be doing that if he wasn’t right about some things in life and … Oops. Gotcha.
I hope.
—You Love Me by Caroline Kepnes (Simon & Schuster Australia) is out now.
You Love Me
Joe Goldberg is done with cities, done with the muck and the posers, done with Love. Now, he's saying hello to nature, to simple pleasures on a cosy island in the Pacific Northwest. For the first time in a long time, he can just breathe.
He gets a job at the local library – he does know a thing or two about books – and that's where he meets her: Mary Kay DiMarco. Librarian. Joe won't meddle, he will not obsess. He'll win her the old fashioned way . . . by providing a shoulder to cry on, a helping hand. Over time, they'll both heal their wounds and begin their happily ever after in this sleepy town...
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