Murphy, Yannick

views updated

Murphy, Yannick

PERSONAL:

Married; children: three. Education: Attended Hampshire College and New York University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Reading, VT.

CAREER:

Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Whiting Writer's Award, Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, 1990, for Stories in Another Language; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship; Chesterfield Screenwriting Fellowship (in conjunction with Amblin Studios).

WRITINGS:

Stories in Another Language (short stories), Knopf (New York, NY), 1987.

The Sea of Trees (novel), Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1997.

Ahwoooooooo! (for children), illustrated by Claudio Munoz, Clarion Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Here They Come (novel), McSweeney's (San Francisco, CA), 2006.

Signed, Mata Hari (novel), Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including Antioch Review, McSweeney's, Agni Online and Southwest Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Yannick Murphy is the author of the award-winning short story collection Stories in Another Language. She is one of ten to receive the Whiting Writer's Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, which bestowed an award of thirty thousand dollars in "recognition of the quality of current and past writing as well as the likelihood of outstanding future work." The seventeen stories in the collection—one of which is only a paragraph in length—involve young characters who experience adult-generated dangers. Murphy's subjects include grief, death, sexuality, violence, and incest. Her use of such serious themes involving child characters has drawn criticism at times.

Paul Stuewe, reviewing Stories in Another Language for Quill & Quire, called Murphy's stories "too coy and naive for their own good," but noted that "in a few cases the banality of her language and … her characters do coalesce into a telling whole." Although Mary Soete, reviewing the collection for Library Journal, found the stories "neither accessible nor comfortable in themes and style," she did note that events are "filtered through the transforming consciousness of children." Sybil Steinberg, in an appraisal for Publishers Weekly considered the stories difficult reading but claimed that Murphy has a "keen eye for small, mundane details." Steinberg insisted that Murphy's fictional debut "evinces a deadpan voice that powerfully taps the interior world of emotions and thoughts."

Murphy's debut novel, 1997's The Sea of Trees, centers on a young girl named Tian who is being held in a Japanese prison camp in Kontum, Indochina, in 1942. This is a "coming of age" saga that follows Tian's life from the age of twelve through the next two decades. The story's many settings include Kontum, Saigon, Shanghai (her former home), France, and New York. Along with her French mother, her Chinese father, and her "amah" (nanny), Tian faces dangers and hardships: war, imprisonment, separation, family illness, and hunger. A Publishers Weekly contributor commented on the novel's "spareness of style," saying it "lends a remote quality to the work that contrasts with its content." Emphasizing that the narrative of The Sea of Trees is one in which "torture, fear, murder, and hunger are constant realities," a Kirkus Reviews contributor called the work an "indefatigably forward-going" tale of "girlhood and family amid war, terror, loss—and sometimes luck." Library Journal contributor Francisca Goldsmith applauded Tian's character because she "remains authentic and caring" despite such hardships. Goldsmith stated that this "inspiring view of the unvanquished human soul belongs in all collections."

Murphy turns to writing for children with her picture book Ahwoooooooo!, which is illustrated by Claudio Munoz. The story revolves around Little Wolf's efforts to learn how to howl at the moon. Unfortunately, Little Wolf is on his own since his parents are too busy to teach him. After being taught by other animals how to hoot, croak, and sing like Whippoorwill, Little Wolf's grandfather finally helps his grandson learn to be perhaps the most vocal member of the pack. "Themes of intergenerational bonding and childhood milestones lend substance to this agreeable picture book," wrote Jennifer Mattson in Booklist. A Kirkus Reviews contributor referred to Ahwoooooooo! as "a tender, sometimes humorous journey that evokes the yearning of childhood."

In her novel Here They Come, Murphy uses an unnamed thirteen-year-old narrator to tell the story of a struggling family in New York. The narrator, who can bend spoons with her mind, tells of her efforts to keep her family together, including her precocious sisters, suicidal brother, drunken grandmother, and depressed mother who is nevertheless full of resolve to make it. When their deadbeat father, who left the family to live with "the slut" disappears, the narrator's brother goes off to Spain to look for him while the rest of the family stays home to deal with their myriad of problems. In a review of Here They Come in Publishers Weekly, a contributor wrote that the author "creates a world as magical and harrowing as the struggle to come to grips with maturity." Michael Cart, writing in Booklist, commented: "This bizarre mixture of naturalism and surrealism is intriguing—and well written." A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted: "Murphy's skill for lovely imagery." In his review in the Library Journal, Jim Coan remarked: "Not intended as a realistic portrait of troubled family life, this readable work is … at once funny and sad."

Murphy told CA: "I hope [my books] whip people out of their sleep-state with their truth telling and their headlong passion, pressure and authority. I hope they will show the reader that I have tried to go beyond writing witty ruminations about motive and that the shape of my writing is driven by an idea of struggle. I hope they show that I have gone the distance by laboring for the rightness in my prose, and laying down my life to create a feeling of being overwhelmed. I hope my writing does not inform the reader, but that it transforms the reader and that my writing reveals that I have listened to my heart and provided against the horrors of regularity."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Austin Chronicle, March 17, 2006, Jess Sauer, review of Here They Come.

Booklist, February 1, 2006, Michael Cart, review of Here They Come, p. 30; August 1, 2006, Jennifer Mattson, review of Ahwoooooooo!, p. 92.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 1997, review of The Sea of Trees, p. 329; January 1, 2006, review of Here They Come, p. 13; May 1, 2006, review of Ahwoooooooo!, p. 464.

Library Journal, June 1, 1987, Mary Soete, review of Stories in Another Language, pp. 129-130; April 15, 1997, Francisca Goldsmith, review of The Sea of Trees, p. 118; April 1, 2006, Jim Coan, review of Here They Come, p. 85.

New York Times Book Review, June 7, 1987, Alida Becker, review of Stories in Another Language, p. 30; August 17, 1997, Catherine Bush, review of The Sea of Trees, p. 12.

Publishers Weekly, April 24, 1987, Sybil Steinberg, review of Stories in Another Language, p. 60; March 10, 1997, review of The Sea of Trees, p. 48; January 30, 2006, Craig Morgan Teicher, "A Wise Child," interview with author, p. 38, and review of Here They Come, p. 40.

Quill & Quire, August, 1987, Paul Stuewe, review of Stories in Another Language, p. 34.

School Library Journal, June, 2006, Marianne Saccardi, review of Ahwoooooooo!, p. 123.