and fall of walter and patty bergen, a troubled couple in minnesota with two children, it's a take on suburban life. we're trying to figure out where readers are in any kind of a platform, and reach them with book criticism or book news, like everybody else. >> host: are you find finding -- >> guest: the book videos, i don't know what the numbers, on twitter i meet people all over the country and that's fun. ... lot are also authors. >> guest: a lot of my authors write books and we go through a

very strict process to make sure they are assigned to people who have no connection to was under not trying to pass back or soft-pedal a review, the worst part of my job is waiting for those reviews to come back and they are not always confident. it is agonizing in the book review section. my colleagues put up with it. i can honestly say they have all been supportive under the worst circumstances. >> host: with book reviews do you read? >> guest: the la book review. i have heard good things. the la book review is great, it is not a startup anymore. i'm impressed by their reviews and i read all the great reviews in the library journal, to figure out what to assigned three month out.

as far as book review sections, the guardian is a great section. >> host: ron charles is the editor of washington post book world. this is booktv on c-span. thanks so much. [inaudible conversations] >> hi. >> we are -- welcome to book court. we are excited to welcome louisa thomas in conversation with

louisa hall about her new book, louisa. louisa hall is the author of two novels, the carriage house, and speak. louisa thomas's first book, conscious, examines the clash between conscientious objectors and soldiers, by the new york times. and sufficient style and emotional range, the story of louisa catherine adams in all its splendor. please join me in welcoming louisa thomas and louisa hall. [applause]

>> thanks for coming. so happy to be here to talk about this book, happy to be part of this group of louisas. other louisas might have been chosen to be the third louisa but i am flattered to be the one. this is one of my favorite books i have read this year. i love this book very deeply not just because of the narcissistic pleasure of reading about somebody with my own name but also because i just found as a biography, i was deeply invested in understanding the main character, and this character of louisa adams came alive for me and remained with me. and so many decisions in this book, and the decision every shifting -- as much as she was

exploring the fact of her life. and just as an introduction, the story of louisa adams. and follows her to berlin and russia and back to washington, the wife of the president. >> one thing i wanted to ask you, did the fact that her name was louisa draw you to the book? >> >> i did it quicker than if her

name was jane. i think when you are writing about a historical figure. and and a crack in the window, and i don't know too many -- it is a little bit of the window over. >> for me, it had to do with who i became as a person. i was interested in the fact my name was louisa growing up. do you think her name affected her personality? >> it was a common name, there is a funny -- in berlin everybody, the queen was louisa,

dutchesses and royalty, es, not quite common. i was making a joke, i feel more comfortable answering the question. was louisa's name what do you? we went to college together about how we knew each other and used to think i was her. before i met her i had a sense of shifting. >> people still think i am her if i say my name is louisa and i am a writer they complement me and i go with it every time. i worked hard on that. >> i think this louisa in particular, makes her own identity in a lot of ways so we

are a little more in thrall of our names. >> the other thing that fascinated me was it read more than any other biography, read like a novel. it was somehow fictional and i was trying to put my finger on what caused that feeling, being swept up into a fictional story. and one thing i was thinking, and it was a distinctly novelistic setting. and in snow a saint petersburg, she comes back to america, the days of the republic. and i wondered what kind of strategy you used to make this biography feel like a novel and whether that was a conscious

decision or not. >> the storytelling, straight storytelling. and the historical context, i kept in mind, sometimes about passionate feelings beyond what she told me. and so much about your feeling, and a lot of people, and their posterity. it was in the same way. i do think she was not the best interpreter but they were there on the page and put them in

context. she gave me so much material to work with. at the same time, it was a great story. i always wanted it to unfold as it happened and so much i wanted the ideas -- didn't want this block to be undigested and we will talk about -- we are going to talk about how women were regarded. and the spoil from which the whole thing grows, rooted in that -- not really strongly but we get the flowering of that. i did read some novels -- actually thought of it, the first part, in the same office,

she was born in london. jane austen was raised in london. i do think i went back, was not seen as a novel but i learned from this what was important. and the romantic novels when i was in high school i really learned to pay attention to the financial language in the novels, the way they talk about marriages and alliances and that helps me understand something, which is her father goes bankrupt after she is married. it was creepy and she was devastated by the fact her father doesn't have the majority.

and she comes back year after year after year. and constantly reopened and i thought this was crazy as a scholar was crazy, to me. you realize everybody has a price tag. actually, if you couldn't get out of america, you go back with that in mind, his diary, he actually says i am doing my duty, rigorous, flexible duty and you realize it is inside to save that marriage. and this was deeply upsetting

and destabilizing and don't think i appreciated that the same way had i not been able to put the fertilizer into the soil. then they go to russia and she is in st. petersburg and dancing with alexander, there is a kind of -- not even written at the same time. you kind of get a feeling of the place and i thought what was important was a travel journal, i don't remember -- which was written, beautiful writer and wish i could remember his name. the new york review book, that

also helps and middle march again. the historical novel, and research. to get the feel for how it is and what i was really after was just as he was interested in facts, and certain units, and one thing or the other, and this emotional landscape. i have two contemporaneous journeys, the actual journey, she called one of them for the journey and the other one is the journey she goes through and grows so much and that was one

of the most exciting thing this and she changed again, the static figure, and she was a dynamic changing, growing figure, and snap that. >> that comes through really clearly in the book. how mysterious a character she is, how interchangeable shes and how flexible she is and how invested she is in learning her own voice, seems like a character, she wrote three memoirs, troves of letters and each of my memoirs is written in a different voice and each letter is written in a different voice, sometimes complaining, hypochondriac and incredibly sensitive, and intellectual and other times, it does feel like

there is a record of her voice but also a record of her many voices and i wonder if that was a complicated thing to track this person who has so many different voices and invested in finding their voice and could have gotten her eye the end of the process or she alluded that. >> i felt i got to know her really great. which is to say as a complicated human being. her voice drew me to her. i read some of her letters and struck by how urgent they were and how funny when i think of earlier public people being how sharp, and -- so i do think the

development of the voice was funny. i actually read her later, her earlier letter a little bit later and her first letters, second letter, one incredibly long run about how long she hits right. i will therefore quit this subject. all she could write about, she hated to write. this is partly a story about her becoming a writer blues not a published writer although she did. became a little bit proud. the insight she had is important because she is a complicated person.

she wrote one satire, she described lady -- warmth, and and they add up -- they both made it easier to understand where these voices were coming from and obviously it could be if you want to pin something, free in that way. >> i had more questions by the end of the novel than i did in the beginning. terrible. but the best of a novel.

so my last question i will open up to the audience, has to do with one of these complicated factors in her personality, she really rose to the role of leader in the early republic, in a pretty magnificent way. you could make the argument that she was responsible in many ways for the success of her husband's political career and she was incredibly sharp and tear jefferson down in one of her letters pretty easily. and retiring and seems to fully accept a woman's place as subservient to her husband or less then her husband. one of her three memoirs, the adventures of a nobody. she fully embraces her nothingness and smallness. and her humility.

i was interested, you tend to want to find female heroines who rise above that and magically manage to be bold and brave and have no doubt and educated in every way, to be humble at all moments, i wonder how you felt about her alternation between humility and extreme courage and whether that was part of it. >> this is one of the ways in which we have to understand the past is not like the present. when they start talking to me they want her to be margaret fuller, abigail adams, talk about how strong she was and she was, made a 2000 mile journey to paris with her 7-year-old son,

halfway through, mail service and in fear. she was really resilient and survived a lot. it the same time she was fragile. a complicated person. her insecurities were a little liberating. her husband was very so furious and born for the nation and had this important bowl to play and didn't play it and was a failure and had to do these great things and you have to feel that way, she didn't have to be this kind of american icon.

she could be herself. she lost it herself, her insecurity, a part of who she was and something would be lost if she had more i am a boss attitude. it is a paradox between her constrictions in life. at the same time it is important to make an account of that journey. it is a great story. she wrote it because she wanted to be remembered by one who was. she was worried about being forgotten. at the same time she made it

universal. she said this stayed with me, never desert ourselves. any questions? >> right now, you think that -- stories of the news were traditionally -- >> i think one of the great best friends in history, john quincy adams, i do think she was not part of the underclass in many ways.

it is about her own intimacy, slavery to a degree, she lived in washington dc and did not say the right thing. how do you deal with that? i do think, why i approached this book but i am drawn to people. for that reason. this is to answer your questi in in a different way, john quincy adams, the first real populist and part of the way they negotiated that is quite interesting.

how to -- how the country was changing and what kind of relationship to have with people and franchise is expanding. and the early republic is they knew what they were doing. everybody disagreed about everything. everybody was making compromises. one of the exciting things is you get that because she wasn't trying to reflect the world. she wanted the future to see it. she was exasperated and hopeful.

>> how hard is it -- just like jefferson, but was he writing about her? >> there were people so writing about her. kind of cutting, hurting, seeing the leading dissipation's of the day, who started the whole thing. niece wrote a wonderful tribute to how appealing she was. people wrote about things, newspapers wrote about her party, people in letters, certainly abigail wrote about her. people were drawn to her and

tended to reflect that. >> the other former beings in the news, how do you see the role of first lady being different in the early republic versus how we see them today? >> it was quite different. one interesting thing is, at a low point in her life. she didn't have anything to do -- there wasn't any precedent of an active role for a first lady. that is what she did. she copied mozart. as a campaigner she actually -- the role a lot of first ladies

do now, a kind of surrogate figure for someone, making up for shortcomings. that -- you can't draw a straight line from her. for a long time, partly because louisa was so forward and criticized for being so forward, that role kind of disappeared and in fact she was punished for it in some ways. one of the reasons she withdrew when she got to the white house was she wrote about this, for being too visible. i need to step back. there was a complicated thing in the jackson administration which had consequences for women in

washington. the growing movement, that sort of shut down in the 1820s especially if there was a kind of women were elevated in their domestic sphere, called angel of hearts and that kind of thing. that was started around the time johnson was president and the role he could play in the political sphere. not like she set examples for other first ladies. she configured them. >> i sense louisa grew up on the national stage. do you get a sense that she was trying to remake the society or

something to create? >> learn to talk about this, and pretend, she was sensitive to you couldn't be too aristocratic. the highest i pay as i have to pretend i am not a travel lady. there was a kind of suspicion of her already and she was at once didn't care and on the other hand was aware of it. one of the interesting things, the 1828 campaign was vicious. her background was in propriety. she was accus