The romance and fantasy books Meghan Nesmith read in her youth often adhered to a formula. “There’s a prototypical story of a young woman who doesn’t know she has power, doesn’t know she’s beautiful, is waiting to be chosen,” Nesmith says. “And that is a story that I really resisted.”
So when she began writing what would become her debut novel, “A World Apart” (Bloomsbury), Nesmith sought a fresh approach. “The two characters who came to me were men and they were in love,” she says. The book tells the story of Kit, a Victorian gentleman more interested in studying ancient forms of magic than settling down with an acceptable wife, and Wil, whose family has been trapped in a timeless, liminal space for 800 years after a bad bargain with the Faerie Queen.
“I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable telling a contemporary story about someone grappling with their queerness,” says Nesmith, who is married with two children, “that is not a viewpoint that I have enough insight into.” But, she says, “this story is much more rooted in just love and desire, which are things I’m quite familiar with. And there are lots of people in my life who are queer and who read the manuscript. So I didn’t feel like I was operating in isolation.”
A native of Canada, Nesmith now lives in the Boston area, where she’s working on the first novel’s sequel. There is another novel in a drawer, the ill-fated book she wrote while studying creative writing: “a sprawling, somewhat incomprehensible magical realism work that featured a school of talking cod. I mean, it was quite wild!”
After attempting to make it in the world of literary fiction, Nesmith is clear-eyed about the genre she now writes in. “Romance and fantasy as genres, they can be looked down upon in the literary community, which is absurd” she says. “They’re brilliant and they also fuel so much of the industry financially.”
The popularity of books like hers is partly due to readers hoping to leave behind, however briefly, from a difficult world. “ I don’t think it’s entirely coincidental that the rise in romantasy has coincided with a rise in fascism, with a pandemic, with a lot of really intense world events that a lot of readers just want to escape,” she says. “There’s only so much a person can feel and engage with on a daily basis, and I think having an escape that allows you to kind of play-act those big feelings without having them crush you can be kind of nice.”
Meghan Nesmith will read at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17, at Lovestruck Books.
And a few more bookish notes…
David Hajdu is one of our essential cultural and music critics. His latest, “The Night Before: Essays on Music, Comics, and Culture” (Columbia U. Press) is a collection of short pieces, the perfect book to dip into for an instant rejuvenation of the weary, jaded brain. And in “Between the River and the Railroad Tracks” (Little, Brown) Nicole R. Fleetwood has given us an exemplary memoir. She writes of growing up in Hamilton, Ohio, a mill town that teetered between comfort and coldness, secure in her family’s multigenerational presence there yet ever aware of the glaring inequities of their redlined neighborhood. A MacArthur Fellow, Fleetwood excavates person, family, and regional history with a sharp-eyed honesty that cuts through comforting mythologies and busted American dreams.
Kate Tuttle edits the Globe's Books section. You can reach her at kate.tuttle@globe.com