Tar Heel P rofile _
Bv Eliza belli Co/ari
A Novel Approach
Raleigh’s Kaye Gibbons has emerged from a troubled
childhood and manic depression to become one of the
country’s most acclaimed novelists.
Writer Kaye
lii bboii s
looks very
mmli at home in tin
tile. Silling in the
Ix-autifullv dccomu-d
living room of ihc ele¬
gant home she shares
with her husband,
Raleigh attorney
Frank Waul
Gihlxms l(H>ks like a
woman who is when*
she wants to lx*. Like
someone kiss<*d In the
angels.
At age 3(i. Giblxms
has published live
novels, with a sixth
due to .i|>|M*at next
war. Her liixt novel.
IMrn Fostn, won the Sue Kaufman Prize lot
Fiist Fiction when it was published in
LIS”. She 4i\s it is largely autobiographi¬
cal Met third novel. A (‘tor I'm Dim ms,
won the PEN Rewon Award, the
I leartland Pti/e for Fiction and the North
Carolina Sit Wallet Rah*igh Award.
Worldwide sties ol hei books just top|>ed
LI million. I'hey haw lx*en translated
into 12 languages, and two are on track to
become movies. She has three daughters,
two stepchildren and a liiislxtud who
adores her. But things haven't always been
as |x-t feci as they look.
( abbot» mvx that “in willing there has
to Ire some element ol pain." She knows
what she's talking alxnit. Bom Bertha
Kaye Balts in rural Nash County, Giblxms
lived in a four-room farmhouse. Her
mother committed suicide when Kaye was
10. Her father drank himself to death
later the same vein. And for seats little
Bertha (save was shuttled around to vari¬
ous relatives.
“Some were kind." < Iiblxms says. "Some
|1x4iM*HitlrM
«Й
€• I* PtatiMin • Vim
were sociopaths."
She graduated
from Rocky
Mount High
School and then
went to college at
North Carolina
State University
and the
University of
North Carolina at
Chapel Hill.
Ми¬
ша!
lied young
and started a fam¬
ily while still in
college. Anti at
agi* 20. she w.ts
diagnosed with
manic depres¬
sion. Hie disease
was central to her
most recent Ixxik. Sights
Г/мл-//.
She talks
openly alxml the disease, occasionally lec¬
turing on her experiem e with it. It is. she
sivs. controllable, with "handfuls of med¬
ication."
“I used to think of manic depression as
a social disease," she says. “And I would try
to hide it. But it's such an essential pan of
my life that I found when I wrote the hook
Sights I //v*-// that I could either go to 42
cities on a book tour and lie about it ot I
could very calmly tell the until, and it
worked out better to tell the truth. as it
irsually does."
”1 don't want m lx- a jxister child lor the
disease," Gililxms adds. "But I get lots ol
letters from people who are glad that
somebody has spoken out about it."
Her novels are deeply |xrsonal. draw¬
ing on < iiblxms' own emotions and ex|x--
rience-s without lx-ing strictly autobio¬
graphical. I ler writing has been called
“breathtaking," and "haunting.” The Tow
magazine- review said of Chaims for the Easy
I -if that “some
|хч>р1е
might give up their
Our Stalc/Scptcinbcr 1996
14
Success has not spoiled Kaye Gibbons .
second-lx>m to write as well as Kaye
Gibbons." All of lu-r books feature strong
Southern women, tural heroines.
“But I do give them more and more
money in each lx>ok so they can travel and
shop." she points out.
< iiblxms fiist matriage unraveled early
in the 1990s. and she married Ward, who
is 52. in Septemlx-r 1993. The two arc
notorious love birds, and their open ado¬
ration lot eat bother is vvelklocumented.
“That's been written alxnit all over the
country and in Europe, too," Gibbous says
with a laugh. "We're still honeymooning,
and vve always will lx-. 1 le really makes me
feel bx/ked after."
’’I’m a high-maintenance Southern
woman." she continues. “Not that I need a
lot of clothes and jewelry, hut I need a lot
ol emotional support todoyvhat I do lor a
living. And Frank gives me that. But peo¬
ple do tend to lix»k at us in restaurants,"
she adds, laughing again.
( iiblxms
мух
that one of the tilings that
fiusi drew her to Ward was his love of liter¬
ature. The same love tuns deep in her.
Their library is overflowing with Ixxiks.
Hie whole family kee|>s a reading log.
allied “The B<x>k.“ of yvhat they read. And
her early career goals pointed to someone
yvlm rvould carve her name in literary
annals.
“I wanted to teach." she says. "I taught
all my Barbies to read. And then I wanted
to drive a Ix/okmobile. My goal in life is
still to drive a Ix/okmobile. 1 could win the
Nolx-I Prize, and I ’«I want to drive the
Ixxiktuohilc on ttiv way to Sweden."
She lixiks comfortable here in the six-
hedroom brick house in an old-money
Raleigh neighboduxxl. She mvs she chose
it Ix-ciusc she cm lexik out lu-r front door
and not see any other houses. Ix-liaying
hei mral roots. She clings t« ► those rixus,
setting her novels in country settings. And
while she might Icxik to the inanoi lx»m.
Gibbons says she isn't really a jxirt of this
country club setting.
“Sometimes I have this latent urge logo
hum trash in a hand in the hack yard ot
paint the lx it toms ol trees white," she
мух.
"I'm not very well-assimilated, and I don't
hope to lx-. I think that if I was on the
inside* I wouldn't lx- able to write."
Giblxms calls novelist Reynolds Price, a
fellow native of eastern North Carolina,
"one of my heroes. Price, through his writ¬
ing, gave me the idea that somebody from
Nash County could write. In high school I
