Sarah Blake: On the Literary World of Isolation

Sarah Blake’s novel Naamah won the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction. Blake is also the author of the poetry collections Mr. West and Let’s Not Live on Earth. In 2013, she was awarded a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She currently lives in the U.K. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.

In this post, Sarah discusses how her real-word experience inspired her new literary novel, Clean Air, her hope for readers, and more!

(What Is a Cli-Fi Novel and What Are Some Examples?)

Name: Sarah Blake
Literary agent: Sarah Yake
Book title: Clean Air
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Release date: January 31, 2023
Genre/category: Literary Fiction
Previous titles: Naamah, Let’s Not Live on Earth, Mr. West
Elevator pitch for the book: 10 years from now, the plants release toxic levels of pollen into the air, and 10 years after that, the world is a near utopia for the survivors, as long as they’re in well-sealed plastic domes with fantastic air filtration systems. But Izabel is struggling with this new world, for herself and for her four-year-old daughter, Cami, especially when a serial killer begins terrorizing their small town.

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The world of Clean Air was prompted by my struggles with asthma. I wondered what it would be like if everyone had as severe a reaction to pollen as I did. I imagined that, if there was enough pollen in the air, the result probably would be everyone suffering with the same sort of breathing problems.

The characters were prompted by my own family. Izabel was inspired by my feelings about being, primarily, a stay-at-home mother. And Cami, the four-year-old, was inspired by my son, who was six when I started writing the book.

And the plot was prompted by the procedurals that I love to watch on TV, and by what bothers me in those dramas. They often sensationalize violence and make the murderers appealing characters to watch. The killer in my book is never the main focus.

I began writing the book in May 2017, and the hardcover came out in February 2022. Almost five years! The idea never changed during the process because the world is so central to the book.

Once I had the world built up in my head, I turned my attention to the characters. To get a feeling for Izabel as my protagonist, I wrote letters from Izabel to Cami, for Cami to read when she’d grown up. It took me about 40 pages of letters before I felt confident enough to start the book.

Finally, I discovered the serial killer plot line once I began writing the actual chapters, and at that point I was a few months into the project.

Clean Air is centered around a world that creates isolation with our family units. My first book, Naamah, had a very different world but the same effect. And then the pandemic hit, and quarantines and lockdowns, and we were all isolated, alone or with family or with chosen family. I had never expected the atmosphere of my books to be reflected back at me in this way.

It was scary to have a book come out that seemed to speak so directly toward those feelings of isolation without actually being a book about the pandemic. People reacted to it right away, some finding it difficult and some finding it extremely therapeutic.

I didn’t plan this book in any way, so every day of writing was a surprise for me. I love that about my writing process. I love letting the characters guide me through the days in their lives, reacting, taking action, and revealing their preferences and the idiosyncrasies of their language.

I hope Clean Air shows that there are unexpected ways forward, that there are ways to open yourself up to people who can support you and lift you up, and that you can ask for what you need. I also hope it’s fun!

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