Dolores Farrell had her future all planned out: she'd marry an attorney, have sons who'd become attorneys, daughters who'd become patrons of the arts, and live in the shadow of Harvard University, thereby continuing her privileged, purebred Irish-Catholic legacy.
Didn't quite work out that way.
Instead, Dolores must watch as each of her children adopts a lifestyle quite different from what she had envisioned. One daughter becomes a waitress, another a shock jock. One son becomes a cop, another a cartoonist. Much to his mother’s dismay, the cartoonist is also missing a leg due to a terrible childhood accident. That, of course, had not been part of Dolores’ original plan.
That’s the background for Almost Like Praying, Joel Samberg’s new and intriguing novel featuring flawed, relatable characters and a compelling message that likely will resonate with readers everywhere.
Almost Like Praying, which fictionalizes some very real thoughts and memories, is told through a trilogy of stories reconstructed by a curious journalist who, as a boy, lived across the street from the family at the heart of the book. One day from his old bedroom window, the journalist sees Dolores on her front step hugging a dark-skinned little girl named Maria, and smiling—something he feels the grim-faced Dolores would never do. That’s what prompts him to write the stories.
I had a chance to interview the author to learn more.
Why did you write this book?
Because I felt compelled to. And because it gives me great pleasure to share stories with people who may enjoy meeting new characters, exploring some common and some unique challenges, and being introduced to different places and ideas.
When I was thirteen I wrote a screenplay and sent it to MGM. Although the studio turned it down, in his note back to me an executive named Roger Ahrens complimented my style and made me feel as if I should never give up my dream to become a writer one day. The next year, my ninth-grade English teacher, Miss Fronefield, accused me of plagiarizing a book report because she said it was too well-written for 14-year-old. She sent a nasty note home to my parents. The thing is, I did not plagiarize that book report. I just love writing and take it very seriously. That settled it. From that point on I never gave up.
But what started the compulsion in the first place? I have no clue. All I know is that ever since I was a six or seven, almost everything I witnessed, overheard, learned in school, or simply wondered about I turned -- in my head at first -- into books and plays and movies. That's just the way it was.
When I was growing up, one of my friends had a mother who to me seemed humorless and severe. I always wondered about her. Why was she so damned icy? Why did she have a hard-as-nails façade that made kids like me want to run away? She became Dolores in Almost Like Praying, a woman with five interesting kids and plenty of secrets and disappointments. Secondly, whenever my family drove through the Bronx from our home on Long Island, I’d look at the dilapidated apartment buildings and wonder how the kids who lived there would fare in my own middle-class neighborhood. One of them became Maria. Almost Like Praying, which to a great extent is about the relationship between Dolores and Maria, came out of these two combined recollections. This is just one example of many concerning what I had mentioned earlier -- that observing or listening or wondering about things often compels me to write about them. In short, my combined recollections of that icy mother and the Cross Bronx Expressway stayed with me for fifty years and eventually became Almost Like Praying.
How does your book illustrate that even fictionalized stories have a lot of truth to them?
I worked in an editorial capacity a few years back with a noted psychoanalyst in New York City, Dr. Gibbs Williams, and I asked him to read Almost Like Praying. I was exceedingly thrilled that he reported back to me how real my characters and situations were, from his psychoanalytic perspective. "Dolores ends up being a perfect example of how we all have the power to shift our attitudes by facing our challenges, instead of running away from them," Dr. Williams said to me. "She's also an example of how we often create our own destinies--that not everything is luck and chance, but manifestations of who we are deep down." What that says to me is that my fictional characters speak to real-life issues. I guess it’s all about close observation and honesty interpretation.
What do you hope readers will take away from reading this book?
That they spent a few hours over the course of a few days with a worthwhile diversion from daily life -- a story with which they were able to engage, one that made them think a little, one that caused them to care a little and, ultimately, one that compelled them to smile a little.
Samberg decided to become a writer as a boy. He wrote a screenplay when he was 12 and sent it to MGM, and although the studio turned it down, an executive’s encouraging note suggested that he never give up on his dream to be a writer. Two years later, his English teacher sent a nasty note home to his parents accusing him of plagiarizing a book report because, she said, it was too well-written for an eighth-grader. That settled it: from that point on, he never gave up.
Samberg has written for dozens of magazines and has published seven fiction and nonfiction books, including Some Kind of Lonely Clown: The Music, Memory, and Melancholy Lives of Karen Carpenter. His coming-of-age novel, Blowin' in the Wind, was published in 2019 and features the boy who grows up to become the journalist across the street in Almost Like Praying.
For more information, please visit https://almost-like-praying-new-novel.blogspot.com/, and follow the author on Twitter at @JoelSamberg.
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