Authors Interviewing Characters: Sarah Lariviere

Sarah Lariviere, Riot Act (Knopf / Random House, July 16, 2024)

Sarah Lariviere’s debut novel, The Bad Kid, was an Edgar Award finalist. In the first book in her new YA series, Riot Act (Knopf / Random House, July 2024), an alternative history set in 1991 in an authoritarian America, theater kids in central Illinois risk their lives to perform an outlawed play. The novel is narrated from the dead by Maximus Bowl, aka the Dionysus of the Midwest, who was murdered by the police-state.

Sarah Lariviere: Hey Max. I felt thrilled when you showed up to tell me your story. I was like, oh, shit. This kid is not fucking around. I fell in love with you instantly.

Maximus Bowl: Too bad for us both mama, because I’m oh so very dead. 

Yet, you feel so alive. 

It’s the cussing. It wakes people up.

Funny. So far, I’m the only one who has dropped the f-bomb.

Your frequent use of obscenities is ninety percent of the reason you got the job.

Aw, thanks. Before you died, did you believe that people could hear the voices of the dead in their heads?

Are you fucking kidding me? Definitely.

Did you hear dead people talking to you?

Yeah. Yup… no doubt.

Who?

…Okay, maybe not. But I totally would’ve believed it if somebody had told me they did.

Now that you’re dead, you can only get inside the head of one living person: your best friend, Gigi Durant. That feels like a weird rule, no?

EVERYTHING ABOUT BEING DEAD IS WEIRD. But the weirdest part is, you realize, I used to be fucking alive. What WAS that? I was made of hot blood and stardust and stuffed my face with frozen cream squeezed from cows’ tits and if I got lucky, I disrobed with another of my species, and we rubbed each other into a sweaty, sticky mess. And every night I stood in a tub with water pouring on my head and scrubbed the world off. To relax, I’d stare at a screen on which humans I didn’t know pretended to slash each other to pieces, or boinked.

And every night I went unconscious for a few hours and imagined a whole bunch of other shit happened to me that did not actually happen. Dude, Sarah. Being alive is much weirder than being dead. It’s so overwhelming that people go around telling each other not to feel it. We’re like, “Don’t worry!” And, “Everything’s gonna be okay!” And, “Things happen for a reason!” When the truth is—and we all know it, deep down—nothing we do, nothing we are, makes even a single snotbubble of sense.

I told you I love you, Max. Thank you for choosing me to tell your story. Which is what, again?

The year? Is 1991. The dictator of America? Is Bud Hill, founder of the SYXTEM, a self-help dollar-worshipping cult turned political party. The party murdered me, like they murdered thousands and thousands of other glorious human beings, because the party is a bunch of gaping, stanking assholes. They also made our theater teacher commit suicide.

When I shuffled off this mortal coil I left behind my best friend, Gigi, a sassy badass bitch, and my other best friend, Axl, a cocky goth He-Man. These two goobers should be kicking it wild style on the nightly but never do, because they’re “just friends,” a concept I find entirely unrelatable and borderline offensive. Instead of knocking boots, Gigi and Axl decide to put on an underground production of Shakespeare’s Henry VI, an excruciatingly boring play made sexy only because it is currently outlawed, along with all art that doesn’t have gums for teeth. 

I needed to tell you this, Ms. Lariviere, because I need to believe it’s possible for humanity to wake the fuck up and take their power back from the assholes, and I think Gigi and Axl might do it. I was like, a bunch of goofy-ass kids in an infinite expanse of cornfields giving the finger to the man? Or, in other cases—not naming names—caving to the party and its power, engaging in some tragic betrayal? 

Our story should be a book. 

But do I really believe we can beat the assholes? Aren’t we all assholes? Isn’t the true battle within ourselves? I don’t know. Why am I even worried about this? I’m gone. What the fuck do I care?

It sounds like you care a lot.

So do you. That’s the other reason you got the job.

I think we nailed this interview.

We did, partner. Let’s go write a sequel.  

You’re on.

—

Riot Act comes out July 16, 2024, from Knopf / Random House, and is available for pre-order now, everywhere, including your local independent bookstore. Sarah Lariviere used to be a social worker, and now messes around in her garden, hangs out with her family, and writes novels. Find more info about the author and her novels at SarahLariviere.com.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing