It’s set in New York, London and Jamaica, and tells the story of the love affair between two writers who meet by chance on a Manhattan street and fall in love. The man is a novelist and lives in Jamaica. The woman is a journalist and lives in New York. This is the main story. There is also a subplot that looks at the novelist's attempt to rebuild a damaged relationship with his childhood friend—a sculptor.
The book was an instant success—a national bestseller and a Critic’s Choice selection of the Washington Post. How did success change you?
I am not sure that it did. Perhaps it did. It affirmed me as a writer. It said to me that I could write on a level nearing that of the writers that I love to read. And I think this made me work harder at writing. Nothing else changed. I still live in the same house. I still have the same friends.
Describe Fire?
He is a man who has transformed himself by tapping into his feminine essence. Many men are afraid of doing that. Many others don’t even know that it is there. Fire has the strength of a man and the strength of a woman. He is both warrior and healer.
How did you go about naming him?
First of all Fire is his nickname. His real name is Adrian Heath. The element fire has universal associations with illumination and transformation. And my character brings these things into people’s lives, especially Sylvia’s. I didn’t name him Fire because he is sexy. That would have been too easy.
Tell us about Sylvia.
Sylvia is a magazine editor who wants to be a novelist but is afraid of letting go of the security of a regular job. She is afraid of embracing life to its fullest. She denies herself many pleasures. This fear is rooted in her upbringing. Her parents were poor. She was adopted by an uncle who sexually molested her. She spent her teenage years in a group home. Sylvia is a survivor. But surviving and living are two different things. Sylvia likes to be in control. She is reluctant to change. Then along comes the Fire man.
One of the things I find fascinating about the story is the way it looks at race and class. Talk a little bit about this.
Well, Fire and Sylvia are from two different classes. They are both Jamaican. She left there as a child and has never been back, and he was raised there. Fire is from a wealthy family and Sylvia is not; and the novel looks at how this difference in class has shaped their respective visions of themselves.
Class is also an issue between Fire and his childhood friend Ian, the sculptor. Like Sylvia, Ian worked his way from poverty to success and is still hurting from the struggle. Complicating Ian though is the issue of race. Although Ian is Jamaican like Fire and Sylvia, he is not black. He is a descendant of East Indian laborers who were brought to Jamaica after slavery. The novel takes what many readers think is an interesting look at racism—it enters the mind of a person who suffers from racism under a black majority.
A glance at the Waiting in Vain page on Amazon reveals a fascination with the novel’s sensuality.
I don’t know what to say to that.
How do you feel about that?
I don’t understand the question. What is there really to say about that?
Okay then, why are so many readers fascinated by the novel’s sensuality?
Because it got to them. And I think it got to them because it took them by surprise. It took them by surprise because it took them on an elliptical journey of seduction. I think that readers have been trained to expect characters to have sex quickly then spend time figuring out why it happened. Physical sex comes late in this story, but the readers are seduced by Fire and Sylvia’s fantasies and thoughts, for example when Sylvia dreams that Fire is touching himself outside her window.
Then there is the famous phone sex scene, pages 98-101 in the trade paperback.
Yes. Yes. I remember now. Fire is in London and Sylvia is in Brooklyn. It is one of the scenes that I remember writing in a very clear way. I can’t say this about a lot of the scenes. I get in this kind of trance when I write, a really deep concentration. I wrote that scene at about two in the morning. I had just made myself some ginger tea with milk. I was wearing nothing but white boxers and listening to Al Green on repeat.