David Gilbert discusses his short story from this week’s issue, which came from “a dream I had, of these sisters who perform this strange ceremony to honor their dead sister.”
,” takes place against the backdrop of a family gathering in the Berkshires, where the extended family of three sisters—Louise, Lily, and Eleanor—come together, as they do every summer. When did you think of this as the scenario for a story?
I always had the sisters; they, as an image, burned bright. And a boy was the reader of the collective eulogy, but his role as Miles was beefed up in the post-dream production work. Mickey? He was invented and is essentially the proxy reader, the one reëxperiencing the ceremony under new, deeper circumstances.
The story takes its title from a 1959 song by the Fleetwoods—“this otherworldly song,” as Mickey thinks of it. Why did you want to use “Come Softly to Me”? Is it a record you’ve always listened to? Does it capture a mood that you’re looking for in the story? Are there other songs that you could imagine being played that day in the Berkshires?
Like I said, it came by way of a dream, fully formed. I did have to come up with the name for the coffin-like thing that the sisters lie down in, hence the Reliquadry, and how it might operate. I did sketches and everything.
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