Andrea Lochen's "The Repeat Year"

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Andrea Lochen earned her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. While there, she won a Hopwood Novel Award for a draft of The Repeat Year, her first novel. She currently lives in suburban Milwaukee with her husband and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha.

Here Lochen dreamcasts an adaptation of The Repeat Year:

Casting actors for The Repeat Year is actually a lot more challenging than I thought it would be, but what a fun challenge and a great excuse to pore over the Internet Movie Database for a few hours!

My protagonist, Olive Watson, the young ICU nurse who finds herself reliving the previous year, was the hardest one for me to cast because she’s so dear to me, and I feel like I would need to entrust her to someone really beautiful and talented. I think she’d be in good hands portrayed by the lovely Kate Mara because of the depth, intelligence, and sensitivity she brings to every role she plays.

Her best friend, Kerrigan Morland, would have to be played by Kirsten Dunst because they share fun, party-girl personalities with a slight edge to them and blond good looks—“Her face was strikingly pretty, pretty in the way of prom queens and girls in skin cleanser commercials, but her dressed-down appearance tempered the effect” (39).

Olive’s love interest, Phil Russell, is “that rare and refreshing combination of a person who is both drop-dead gorgeous and completely unaware of it” (76). I think Jake Gyllenhaal or Zac Efron would both be good picks, although they have blue eyes, while Phil is supposed to have eyes that are a “brilliant shade of green…with a kaleidoscope pattern of amber overlaying his irises” (76). Colored contacts, perhaps?

Lastly, Kathy Bates would make a phenomenal Sherry Witan (an experienced “repeater” who becomes Olive’s mentor) with her frank, bold attitude and fierce sense of humor. Every character Bates portrays is larger than life and legendary from Fried Green Tomatoes to Titanic, and Sherry Witan is definitely one of those characters.

Learn more about the book and author at Andrea Lochen's website and Facebook page.

Writers Read: Andrea Lochen.

The Page 69 Test: The Repeat Year.

--Marshal Zeringue