(NOTE: page numbers refer to the hardcover edition of The Eight
and the paperback edition of A Calculated Risk. Yes, I know that
sounds strange, but those are the only editions available to me at the
moment.)
When I first read A Calculated Risk, I thought of Verity as the
person Catherine might have become ten (actually, nine) years later, if
she had remained single instead of marrying Solarin, and if she had moved
from New York to San Francisco. The two characters are very similar,
although I didn't get the feeling that they were almost identical, as I
did with Nim and Tor. I'm sure that they are both autobiographical
characters, to a certain extent. In another article, I mentioned the fact
that Katherine Neville, like Catherine, set up a computer system for the
Algerian government in the early 1970s (in fact, this was where she first
got the idea for The Eight). They even have the same birthday:
April 4 (even though Katherine Neville was born in 1945 and Catherine in
1949). Also like Catherine, Katherine Neville has been a musician and a
painter, and neither one is good at chess.
I noticed autobiographical elements in Verity as well. Verity lives in
San Francisco, which was where Katherine Neville lived when she wrote
The Eight and A Calculated Risk. (According to the
interview with Katherine Neville in Publishers Weekly, she wrote
A Calculated Risk while taking a break from The Eight.)
Verity is a vice president of the Bank of the World, which I'm sure is
based on the Bank of America; Katherine Neville used to be a vice
president of the Bank of America. Like Catherine (and Katherine Neville),
Verity is interested in music. She was not a music major like Catherine,
but she has season tickets to the San Francisco Opera (A Calculated
Risk, p. 14); in fact, when you see Verity for the first time, she's
at the opera.
Catherine and Verity have similar personalities, too. Both are tough,
without being mean. Both are successful in their careers and work very
hard. "She's always working," Harry says of Catherine (The
Eight, p. 31); it's a quarter past eleven on New Year's Eve, and she's
still at work. Verity feels she has no time for a social life because of
her work (A Calculated Risk, p. 14), and we often see her working
past midnight.
Both characters know how to deal with a difficult boss; it's
interesting that, very early in both books, there is a confrontation
between the heroine and her (male) boss, which sets the story in motion
(The Eight, p. 22-24; A Calculated Risk, p. 16-19). In both
cases, the situation is similar; Catherine and Verity are very honest, and
their bosses are dishonest; the heroines refuse to go along with their
bosses' dishonest plans. Verity's boss is a much more important character
than Catherine's boss, but the bosses' characters are similar.
Catherine and Verity both came to New York at the age of twenty.
Catherine says, "Three years earlier I'd come to New York to work for
Triple-M, one of the largest computer manufacturers in the world." (The
Eight, p. 21; a little earlier, Catherine had said she was
twenty-three at the time this was taking place, which means, of course,
that she was twenty when she came to New York). Verity says that when she
first met Tor in New York, she was "twenty, fresh in my new job at
Monolith Corp., one of the largest computer vendors in the world." (A
Calculated Risk, p. 62). It's interesting that, in both cases, the
company's name begins with an M. The jobs are very similar, too; both
involve installing mainframe computer systems. Both characters' specialty
was the transportation industry (The Eight, p. 22; A Calculated
Risk, p. 66).
Shortly after moving to New York, Catherine and Verity both meet the
reclusive computer geniuses who become their mentors: Nim and Tor. (See
my article on Nim and Tor for the similarities between those two
characters.)
Catherine lives in an apartment near the East River (The Eight,
p. 124). When Verity lived in New York, her apartment was also near the
East River (A Calculated Risk, p. 74).
Although Catherine and Verity have similar backgrounds and similar
personalities, there are some differences between them. Catherine likes
to paint; I don't think the book says anything about Verity liking to
paint (please correct me if I'm wrong). Interestingly, though, Verity's
friend Georgian is a commerical photographer; Katherine Neville was a
commercial photographer for two and a half years. (Here is another
similarity between Catherine and Verity, by the way; both have an
eccentric friend: Lily and Georgian.)
As I said earlier, Verity was not a music major; she studied data
processing (A Calculated Risk, p. 23).
Verity moved to San Francisco when she was twenty-two (A Calculated
Risk, p. 23), which means she lived in New York for only two years.
At the same age, Catherine was living in New York; The Eight begins
when Catherine is twenty-three, and she is still in New York.
We know a little more about Verity's childhood than we do about
Catherine's. Catherine does not say anything about her parents or her
childhood, or even where she lived as a child; we just assume that she had
a relatively "normal" childhood. Verity grew up in California; her
parents died when she was four, and she was raised by her grandfather, the
banker "Bibi" Banks (see p. 20-23 of A Calculated Risk for Verity's
childhood and background). This could be a similarity between Verity and
Mireille (I had never thought of this before); Mireille was also orphaned
at an early age, and her family's wealth came from her grandfather.
Copyright 1997 Vicki Kondelik.