Preconceived ideas about things, places, persons or occupations can rob us of seeing the world as it really is. Take writers. Most people I know think of writers, especially female writers, as being dowdy, inclined towards frizzy hair and shapeless dresses. Well, they have not met Wasserman. This author of a very well conceived and fascinating book has about her the aura of elegance, even understated glamour. There is nothing dowdy about this woman, who has taken on two very different jobs at the same time, namely being an author, and being the mother of a new baby.

"I sold the book and found out I was pregnant the same week, "she revealed at her book launch. Now, when we meet months later, Wasserman tells me that The Naked Island went through its final birthing pangs just as she entered the final stages of her pregnancy. Dealing with editors to bring a book to final fruition is a heavy task and as life-changing as that moment when a new baby will enter one's life and change it, irrevocably. When we meet for our interview, she shows no sign of not being equal to the task.

An Indian restaurant off Toronto's Avenue Road was to have been our meeting's destination. As it turns out, neither of us knew that our meeting time is also the downtime for the restaurant. I stand there, wondering what to do next, when this slender, well-dressed woman approaches me, wearing a black coat and fedora with a brim touched by magenta. Wasserman is a little late because she has just finished a session with a physiotherapist for a bad back. Despite this she is willing to take a walk farther north to find another restaurant with the right atmosphere, or the next best thing to it. This is obviously important to the writer because her book's story takes place largely in places where samosas, a slight scent of curry, and sitar music have their place. Instead, we get background music leaning toward the blues, and food touched by fusion. But, then, life never quite turns out as we want it.

Wasserman is clearly a woman of the world, well travelled and well spoken. One is drawn to her easy smile and warm toned-voice. Her unlined face belies the fact that she is 44 years old. I am stunned. This lady definitely has guts to take on two new careers at this stage of her life, and one fiercely wants her to succeed in both.

"Has my life changed since the book?" It is a rhetorical reply to my opening question. There is a moment of silence, and then comes a drawn out "Yea!" It is followed by a musing about taking time out to promote her book, which came out last fall at a time when her publisher, Key Porter Books, had just been taken over by H. B. Fenn & Company. It was also the time when publishers generally put out some of their best books in time for the Christmas buying rush. For a first-time author this presented some problems, especially when her publisher had the merger on the mind, and the final editing was carried out "lightening fast."

Wasserman has a business background. She worked with her father, a retired Hamilton businessman, and also had other business ventures in her background before finally concentrating on her book. It shows in her approach toward marketing her novel. She is eager not to leave things to chance. But, although she had been in the business world for some time, she obtained her BA in literature from York University in 1995. Sometime before achieving this, she began work on her book, which took 10 years to get from idea to finished product.

Being a writer turns out to be very different from being in the business world, although, wisely, she maintains an office away from her home to write. "I guess I worked intensely," she explains. "I got up at noon and worked till three in the morning in my office. I practically lived there." She worked so intensely on the book that now and then she had to take a complete break. "I had to completely reorient myself because it is like I lived in another world."

I ask her if people she knows really understand what it means to be a writer, and if she finds it easy to talk about her work. There is again a long silence and hesitation in her voice as she begins to talk. "I find it hard to talk about it as intelligently and as articulately as I would like to, as I know I can when I am in the group, because I work on theme, and I work on not so much the plot lines as the theme lines. " Wasserman is a member of a writers' group with whom she shares ideas and whose members help each other to critique work. "It's about where I go . . . and then I do research and things like that." There is again a moment of silence as if she is searching for the right thing to say. "I had an open door in my office and friends would drop by and we talked about truth and lies and evil, and all these different ideas that weren't really plot related."

Of course, truth, lies and evil have great importance in her book. The Naked Island's title was named after a phrase used by Sir Winston Churchill in 1942 to describe Singapore after the fall to the Japanese. The book deals among other things with possession of the soul by some malevolent spirit, and Singapore and Dunnville, Ontario are important locales in the novel.

"When you. . ." She stops. "You know, you are sort of lucky with the first book. For me, I thought about what I wanted to look at and I didn't really look at the world around me so much, so I wasn't stifled in a way. I let myself be really open to [ideas]. And also, when I travelled in the Far East there is such a different idea of culture, and spirit and identity, and when you tap into that. Amazing."

Knowing from my own experience how important research is to a writer, and how little others frequently understand that need to dig deep into a subject, I ask her how much importance she placed on research.

"I spent three months researching a possible personality disorder, which is similar to spirit possession, in some way, and I really had to decide whether my character was [a] multiple personality from a western point of view, or a possessed." Of course, she also spent researching other topics that come up in the book.

The two main characters in the book, Rachel and Kifli, are from two different religious groups. The former is Jewish, the latter Muslim. So, did she find that this and the idea of spirit possession presented a conflict with her own Jewish upbringing? "I was brought up conservative, but I was brought up in a very open household. Very inclusive, very open. I was lucky. So, I grew up thinking I was part Italian, part Jamaican, part Indian because that is who was around me."

The idea of spirit possession came to her from her family's summer farm in Dunnville. She brought the original deed from the Crown to the original owner with her to the interview. It is not only an important document because it shows how old the farm is, but because the farm is said to be haunted by a spirit, though she did not get around to explaining who that spirit might be.

When we touch on the subject of editing the novel, I wonder if she found herself seeing a line that she liked particularly well being edited out? "I don't think we had any of that. It was pretty tightly wound to begin with because today you have to be so, you know. The one big thing was that we cut one character, my comic relief character. This made it much more focused and intense. Because, although Rachel is going through all of these experiences and they are very severe, and it is a serious subject matter, I never wanted it to be so serious."

Having read the book, I assure here that I found much humour in it despite the subject. I also tell her that I found that she captured the essence of the place and the oriental mind. As it turns out, all of the places she describes in the book she actually visited. Visited is perhaps not a good word to describe her deep look at the places, which gave her the ability to speak with an authentic voice.

"I was very affected by it. When you studied Chinese medicine and yoga from an early age, [they start] to become part of your culture, too. I tried very hard to be authentic with everything in the book. I had some wonderful early anthropological books that are like the keystone in that area. I moved from there to a friend who has new cutting edge thinking on anthropology and how to present culture in a more balanced way." She pauses. "In some ways it could not be balanced because of Rachel's thinking, but I tried to be strict with myself there."

There is always a tendency for people to think that novels are invariably autobiographical, and some people see themselves in books. Wasserman wants people to know that her book is not autobiographical. "What I find hard is that people think that Rachel is me, and that the experience is mine because I drew on things that I had to write about, I had to draw from a perspective from things that I knew well." She stops to think for a moment. "Over the course of 10 years, even that alone should put that [idea] to rest. In that sense people really don't understand what I mean by research."

We talk about the book's ending, which I describe in my review as being left up to the reader's imagination though it is inevitable, and is " . . .told simply and quite beautifully." This leaving to the imagination is not so common these days. "That was my thinking exactly." Wasserman says. "It is not the most popular way to go. For me, though, that was the only way to go. I had to be myself and that was my definite ending choice because there is so much chaos and so much flux."

She found that a number of coincidences happened as she worked on the novel. "I started trusting my creative mind rather than trying to plan everything out. I had to let it go and I had much better material." What helped her in completing her novel is that she finally discovered this aspect of writing, which she had heard other writers talk about but had never really understood. She began writing different exercises to find her voice, often writing two hours or more without interruption, simply letting ideas flow.

There is always the chance that a reader will misinterpret what a writer attempts to say. "I think that is inevitable that that happens," she says without hesitation. "There is nothing one can do about it. It happens more than one thinks. I really felt comfortable with the way I presented the book. There will always be people who will find issue. It deals with very sensitive topics. There is the relationship between a Muslim man and a Jewish woman, which was always topical but not known as well as it is now." Her voice rises. "I loved Singapore. I felt so happy to write about Singapore. For me it was so symbolic. The place is so modern and yet when you scratch the surface it is so ancient, and it was run by a dictatorship."