CR 010: Jessica Anthony on Her Brilliant New Novella, ‘The Most’

The critically acclaimed author discusses her influences, the craft of writing, and her love for absurdity in fiction.

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Jessica Anthony’s work has been referred to as “achingly funny” (The Guardian), “thrilling” (The Los Angeles Times), and “weirdly compelling and compellingly weird” (Kirkus). One of the most innovative authors working today, her writing is ambitious and clever, with each project different from the last. Her widely praised 2012 novel Chopsticks (written in collaboration with designer Rodrigo Corral) was told entirely through images and featured a companion app, while her third novel, Enter the Aardvark, was one of Time Magazine’s “100 Must-Read Books of 2020” and a finalist for the New England Book Award in Fiction.

Her latest work, The Most, is a novella that brilliantly tackles marriage, longing, secrets, and shame as it pulls back the curtain on a seemingly idyllic 1950s suburban family. Taking place over the course of a single day, The Most tells the story of Kathleen, a housewife who gets into her apartment complex’s pool one warm November morning and refuses to get out. Over the course of her eight hours in the water, the narrative alternates points of view, allowing Kathleen and her husband Virgil to reflect on the choices they’ve each made that brought them to this critical point in time. Referred to as “exceptional” by Publishers Weekly, The Most is a delicious read, and its format—two points of view shared over the course of a single day—was a fun stretch for Anthony, who doesn’t typically enjoy shifting narrative perspectives.

“Reading novels that jump around like that usually are unsatisfying to me,” Anthony says. “I don’t know why. I just want the writer to commit to a perspective. But it’s fun to imagine the different ways in which these two characters misremember or return to similar moments of their past with different perspectives. That’s something I’d never had the chance to do before in fiction and it was enormously gratifying.”

Anthony recently chatted with me from her home in Maine about the craft of writing, her influences, and the ridiculousness of grocery stores.

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SANDRA EBEJER: I read that you began writing The Most while you were guarding a bridge in Slovakia. How did that come about?

JESSICA ANTHONY: There’s a website called Res Artis and they have a huge compendium of international artists residencies that you can apply for. There’s one called the Bridge Guard Residency. It’s a three-month stint, and you’re living in this little apartment underneath this bridge between Štúrovo, Slovakia and Esztergom, Hungary. The story of the residency is that in WWI, the bridge was destroyed, and then the Nazis obliterated it in WWII. Finally, in 2001, they rebuilt the bridge. It was hugely meaningful for the area to have this bridge rebuilt, and now they have an artist there to guard the bridge against further fascism and fascist destruction through the act of creation.

So, that was my task. Every day I got up, I would write, and then I would walk out of my flat and cross this bridge into Hungary and return. Obviously, it’s more of a metaphorical bridging and yet, you feel while you’re doing it that there is some kind of larger importance to it. It really changed the way that I think about the importance of writing. This experience reminds me every day how important it is what we do—the execution of imagination in daily life, and the importance of making, even in climates where you feel overwhelmed by bad news and a sense of hopelessness. It reminds me that we are not powerless. By creating, by using the imagination, we’re fighting those forces in some way. Maybe that’s facile of me to think, but it helps when you sit down every day at your desk and you’re just doing the work.

Where did the idea for The Most come from?