Bittersweet Author Miranda Beverly-Whittemore on Outsiders, “Difficult” Female Characters, and Dark Family Secrets

When Bittersweet‘s Mabel Dagmar is paired with the sleek, glossy, wealthy, and imposing Genevra Winslow as a roommate at the beginning of college, she has no idea she’s made a friendship that will—for better or worse—inform the rest of her life. In Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s latest novel, Mabel enters the secretive world of the Winslow family when she’s invited to summer at Bittersweet, a cottage on the family’s Vermont estate.
Mabel becomes fascinated by the family, and deeply wishes she could be one of their tribe. Little does she know that her own secrets, which she is desperate to keep hidden, could be the key to becoming a member of the Winslow inner circle forever. I had the chance to talk to author Beverly-Whittemore about her novel, the books and experiences that inspired her to create this world, and the issues that surround writing “difficult” female protagonists.
The town of Winloch is as integral a character as Mabel or any of the Winslows. You describe the place with such specificity and clarity that it makes us wonder: Was Winloch based on an actual place?
My grandparents bought some land on Lake Champlain in the late sixties and built a house there that I’ve returned to every summer of my life. It’s some of the most beautiful land and water I’ve ever laid eyes on, which was part of an original tract owned by a prominent Vermont family. I grew up imbuing that place and those people with a kind of mythic power. The descendants of that original family still own some of the land (and, I should add, are all very nice and lovely people). Writing fiction is so much fun because you get to turn reality on its head, which is how I was able to turn that original paradise into a gothic, brutal place full of less-than-nice people.
The novel turns on two pretty major secrets. Did you go into writing the novel with the plot—and secrets—planned out, or did you figure it out as you went along?
A little bit of both! I work a kind of two-pronged approach when I’m writing a novel—from a detailed outline, but also with an ear to the ground, waiting for the secrets I can’t plan to reveal themselves. I always knew this would be a book of secrets, so the trick in writing it was to let them pull me in when they presented themselves.
Although she’s not an easy person to know, I decided that if I had to be shipwrecked with any of these characters on a desert island, I’d go for Tilde. How about you?
Ha! I love that. Yes, Tilde is an enigma, but she knows what she’s doing most of the time. I guess I’d pick Luvinia (Lu). She’s a little biologist so she’d be able to figure out exactly what we should and shouldn’t eat. And she’s nice, or nice-ish. Not sure I can say the same for Tilde.
How did you come up with the wonderful and strange (e.g., Luvinia, Genevra, Birch) names for your characters?
Oh, I love naming characters! My mother will tell you that as a little girl my favorite kind of drawing to make was of children in Victorian families. I’d put them in a row, oldest to youngest, and each would have names like “Merryweather” and “January.” So when I decided to make up this multigenerational old-money family, I went practically weak-kneed with the possibilities for naming the Winslows. Names can do so much work for a writer; they can be definitive, mysterious, and everything in between. You find out the main character of Bittersweet is named Mabel Dagmar, and you already have an idea about who she is.
Mabel is a really compelling protagonist, who isn’t always easy to like. Were you ever worried that readers wouldn’t be on board with her as a hero?
There’s been a lot made of this in the writing world of late—the idea of the unlikeable female character. And yes, there are a few readers out there who’ve said, “I didn’t like the book because I didn’t like Mabel,” but my response to that is that we all have different reasons for reading (and for writing), and personally I LOVE to read about people who aren’t easy to like. People in real life are complicated. I believe that my job is to write books that illuminate what it is to be a real person. What happens in Bittersweet is at times over the top—it’s a book about the struggle between good and evil. Mabel faces all sorts of decisions that none of us will ever have to face. But my hope is that as we feel pulled between liking her and not liking her—and liking and not liking what she does or doesn’t do—we discover something about ourselves. Have we ever been greedy? Have we ever believed we deserve something that we might not? Have we ever wished those we love harm? I want the reader who finishes this book to walk away with a “hmmmm” feeling that makes him think deeply about what makes a “happy” ending—what should we want for ourselves?
What initially inspired you to imagine and write Bittersweet?
I’ll be honest—even if this makes me sound crazy: the first bit of this book came from hearing the voices of the Winslows as they gossiped about cousin Jackson’s suicide. They were just so mean about it! I wondered who on earth these people could be who’d speak so cruelly about one of their own. And then the other elements of the book came into focus: the gorgeous place where they summer, and the girl (Mabel) who believes that in finding the Winslows and their place, she has found paradise. Those pieces came together and I knew I had a novel on my hands.
Bittersweet definitely has a gothic feel to it, reminding me particularly of DuMaurier’s Rebecca. What authors or books influenced your writing of it?
There’s a certain kind of novel that I guess you could say I’m obsessed with: the kind in which an outsider is given a behind-the-scenes glimpse of a rarified world. Books like The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst; Atonement, by Ian MacEwan; The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud; The Secret History, by Donna Tartt; Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh; and The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. All layer beautiful language over a gripping plot, and all have young men as their main characters. As soon as I identified how much I loved reading this kind of book, I realized I wanted to write one, but make the main character a woman. Putting an element of female friendship into the mix—having Genevra Winslow be Mabel’s doorway “in”—was also very intriguing to me (and I hoped would be relatable), since I think most women have memories of the toxicity and passions that often exist in girlhood friendships.
At the novel’s start, Mabel feels every inch the outsider. In a way, this makes her almost a superhero, able to see things others on the inside can’t or won’t. Why was it important to so sharply distinguish her from the Winslow clan?
Mabel’s weakness—and what makes her a good candidate for narrator and main character—is her hunger. She wants what the Winslows have, plain and simple. But in order to want what they have, she has to know that she doesn’t have it. The whole book hinges on her not having what they have, and the arc of the book is her trying to get what they have, and, well, I’m not giving away the ending…
Every character in Bittersweet is dynamic in their own right, and we don’t get to spend nearly enough time with all of them. If you were to write a sequel about any character in the book’s world, who would you choose?
I think a prequel about Indo’s young life would be quite illuminating to write—she has seen and done a lot that none of the rest of her family knows about. I also toyed with the idea of writing about a few days in Mabel’s childhood, before darkness really gets its chance to enter her. And to go back to Tilde—I’ll bet she’s got some tales. But I’m not sure I’d want to tangle with the compromises Tilde made to become matriarch of the Winslows.
Are you as intrigued as we are by Bittersweet?