MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
If you, like me, are a Harlan Coben fan, you're in good company. Just about everything he writes ends up on the bestseller lists. He's got 90 million books in print worldwide. But even Harlan stopped in his tracks when he got a call one day asking if he wanted to collaborate.
HARLAN COBEN: It sounds so braggy for me to say, well, Reese Witherspoon called...
KELLY: (Laughter).
COBEN: ...And said she wanted to meet about an idea. And I was just a little wary. I'm not necessarily the guy who collaborates on novels. You know, novel is a very solitary activity, and it's, you know, where I spend most of my life alone.
KELLY: You haven't collaborated on one before. Is that right?
COBEN: Never with a novel.
KELLY: Well, collaborate they did. Harlan Coben and the actress and producer Reese Witherspoon have just published a thriller. It's called "Gone Before Goodbye." I asked them to tell me how they did it.
REESE WITHERSPOON: Our process was we would meet in person probably every other week for a few hours at his apartment and just talk about teasing it all out. And then Harlan would write, and he would send me chapters. And I would go back in and say, well, I don't think she'd say it like this. I think she'd say it like that. Or, this is amazing. Keep going. So it was a lot of texting. I love to do research, too, so I was always sending him articles about artificial hearts being made out of a pig heart or CEOs of companies being - I don't even know. I was just sending him all kinds of stuff.
KELLY: Like, dense reading material. And then, Harlan, is your job - OK, but how do I do a cliffhanger of a chapter ending out of this?
COBEN: Yeah. But it was a lot of discussion. You know, at the end of the day, it's like, there's an old Yiddish expression, that you can't ride two horses with one behind. So I sort of said to Reese in the beginning. Like, only one hands can actually be on the keyboard at a time, and they should be mine just because, you know, I've done that part before. And so, you know, I sent her things constantly. She would comment back. We would discuss it. And we were both obsessed with it.
KELLY: OK. So let's apply all this to the main character. This is a woman. It's a surgeon. Her name is Maggie McCabe. Reese, what else should we know about her?
WITHERSPOON: Maggie - gosh. Maggie was, for me, a character as vivid and real as any character I've ever played in a movie. She was a military surgeon. And when you start the novel, she's lost her medical license. She's really down on her luck. She's deeply in debt. You kind of don't know why, but you're going to find out. And I wanted to set her up in a way that we understood that she was extremely good at what she did, but she was really down on her luck.
KELLY: Yeah.
WITHERSPOON: It starts off in a way that I think you understand why she decides to take on this unbelievable, once-in-a-lifetime offer to go to Russia and perform a surgery on a high-net-worth person who she has no understanding of what it would entail and what is about to happen to her.
KELLY: She's an appealing character to me. She's really tough, as you learn early on. She's also very feminine. I - Reese, read me - there are a few lines that I was chuckling at. This is page 49. It's the few lines that begin with, she hangs up.
WITHERSPOON: Oh, yeah. OK.
(Reading) She hangs up and throws on black jeans, boots, a denim shirt and a blazer. It's a massive mind melt that never seems to have a clear answer. Never be too provocative but never be too stuffy. Oh, and have a sense of style and always know what's trending so you don't appear - gasp - out of date. Always trying to find the right balance between feminine and practical - utterly exhausting.
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: I'm laughing. I'm also thinking, preach. Am I right in detecting maybe you wrote that part, that only a woman could have written that?
WITHERSPOON: That was a part that Harlan was like, I need you to write this.
(LAUGHTER)
COBEN: I'm like, what is she wearing? What is she wearing here, Reese?
WITHERSPOON: But he said...
COBEN: Help me out.
WITHERSPOON: ...What is she wearing? And for me, it's like, here's the constant mental math that women are doing every day of their lives - to be considered professional but not to be too sexualized. And then, are you age appropriate? And also, she's a woman who's very serious about her job and is frequently in places where she's underestimated. So it's a full exploration into what is it like to have to just get up and get dressed as a woman. Whereas guys just put on their pants and their shirts (laughter).
KELLY: Yeah, exactly. That scene for the guy would have been khakis and a white button-down - next. My favorite character - much as I loved Maggie - was Pork Chop. Harlan, tell us about Pork Chop - spelled like the cut of meat, by the way.
COBEN: Yeah.
KELLY: Pork Chop is his name.
COBEN: Pork Chop is Maggie's father-in-law, who is sort of a biker dude with a very modern attitude about that whole thing and is sort of both Zen and tough and dark. And I think that Reese and I had a blast sort of creating him.
You know, it's funny. When you're working with someone like Reese Witherspoon, who knows so much about both story and acting, there was times we would be in the room, and I could almost tell she was turning into Maggie a little bit. And I would kind of be like, ooh, Maggie's in the room with me right now. This is a chance for me to get some good information. And we really wanted her to have this kind of banter and relationship that would bring out a lot about her with somebody. And Pork Chop ended up being that perfect guy. I actually compare him sometimes to Jennifer Coolidge in "Legally Blonde" - just someone stealing scenes away when - at will, kind of a thing.
KELLY: Well, he keeps roaring in on a motorcycle, and he's got a - speaking of clothes, he's got some crazy wardrobe choices.
COBEN: (Laughter).
KELLY: So there's that.
COBEN: Yeah, I think those were more mine, but yeah (laughter).
KELLY: Yeah. So you two, obviously, between you and in different ways, have done so much to support books and writers and reading over the years. I mean, Harlan, we nodded to your 90 million in print and counting, and Reese's Book Club, which a lot of people may be familiar with. My question to each of you, does reading - do books feel more important than ever in a moment when our country is so divided over so many things, but we can all come together, and we still love a good story?
COBEN: I mean, absolutely. I think reading has never been more important in many ways. First of all, there's been, now, scientific studies that show that if you read a book at night rather than scrolling on your phone - if you just read five minutes a day, it improves your mental health. It helps you sleep. It gives you clarity. Telling stories like this, reading a novel, we all know this is good for us, and we all know it gives us empathy, which can help all sides. And it is some place where we can all go together.
What - we talk a lot about this book. I think Reese and I also want this book to be that book - you know, we went "Gone Before Goodbye" to be that book you take to bed at 11 o'clock at night, say I'm only going to read for 10 minutes, and it's 4 or 5 in the morning, and you've just had to keep reading to find out what...
KELLY: Yeah.
COBEN: ...Happened to Maggie and Pork Chop and the rest, and you're deliriously happy.
KELLY: I mean, I guess the flip side, Reese, does writing fiction - did it ever feel beside the point on mornings when you wake up and the world feels like a dumpster fire?
WITHERSPOON: (Laughter). No. I think it's more important than ever, just to echo what Harlan said. And also, I'll add on that I think book clubs are really important.
KELLY: Yeah.
WITHERSPOON: Actually sitting together in a common space and socializing ideas and talking them out and saying, I've had this experience that was inside this book. Have you? And I think in this world of disconnection, there's nothing more important than connecting and talking about, what are your personal opinions? And literature facilitates those conversations.
KELLY: Yeah. That's Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben talking about the new novel they have coauthored, "Gone Before Goodbye." Reese, Harlan, thank you.
WITHERSPOON: Thank you so much.
COBEN: Thanks very much.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOUR TET'S "AS SERIOUS AS YOUR LIFE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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