The Creative Process Behind The Amateur
Chris Bohjalian, the novelist behind The Flight Attendant, recently released his latest thriller, The Amateur. The story centers on Mira Winston, an eighteen-year-old golf prodigy who causes a fatal accident at a Westchester County country club. A practice drive from her club tears through a net at 150 miles per hour, striking and killing a seventeen-year-old caddy. What follows is a narrative structured as a memoir, written decades after the event, tracing how one moment shattered Mira’s future. She abandons her planned enrollment at Yale and finds her life entangled in a trial that forces her to confront the reality of the incident.
Bohjalian manages to balance the tension of a legal drama with the intimacy of a character study. The novel introduces an eleventh-hour twist that recontextualizes the entire history of the protagonist. While sports form the initial setting, the core of the work deals with the weight of guilt and the fallout of hidden affairs. Bohjalian’s approach to the subject stems from a desire to examine how freak accidents alter human trajectories, moving the focus away from the game of golf itself to the psychological aftermath experienced by the survivors.
Daily Habits and Writing Rhythms
Away from the drafting table, Bohjalian maintains a regimented physical routine. He spends significant time on his bicycle, logging roughly 3,500 miles every summer. He rides five days a week, often for three or four hours at a time. He views this habit as a necessary part of his profession rather than a simple leisure activity. Many of his character arcs and difficult scenes find their resolution while he is on the road, detached from the distractions of the office. He treats this time as an intentional period of isolation that anchors his productivity.
His personal discipline extends into his morning rituals. He insists on keeping a clean desk and making his bed every single day. This obsession with order contrasts with his self-described "wildly stitious" nature. Bohjalian follows specific, self-imposed rules in his domestic life, such as putting his right foot down first when getting out of bed or ensuring he completes the first paragraph of a book page before setting it down. He admits to a degree of magical thinking that influences how he moves through his physical surroundings.
Influences and Current Reading List
When asked about his recent reading, Bohjalian points to two specific titles released in the spring. He highlights Jung Yun’s All the World Can Hold as a definitive examination of the September 11 attacks, set entirely on a cruise ship departing from Boston shortly after the tragedy. He praises the book for capturing the atmosphere of fear and the attempt to maintain normalcy during a period of national instability. The inclusion of humor regarding The Love Boat provides a point of contrast against the historical gravity of the era.
He also recommends Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say, which documents the personal collapse of a schoolteacher in 2024. For travel, he points to Yerevan, Armenia, as a destination of particular interest. He appreciates the city for its abundance of parks, sculptures, and architectural tributes to poets and novelists. These interests provide a window into the varied sources of inspiration that inform his own narrative style as he moves past the success of his previous bestsellers.