Ex-Pittsburgher takes new turn in London

The woman on the phone has one of those exotic British accents heard in James Bond movies. Kathleen Tessaro sounds like an international jet setter, perhaps an associate of Liz Hurley or Victoria Beckham.

That's not quite the case. Tessaro grew up in Aspinwall, Fox Chapel and Butler, and attended the Winchester School (before it became Winchester-Thurston) and Carnegie Mellon University. Then she left Pittsburgh for London 18 years ago.

"I never came back," she says. "But then, I had spent my whole life in Pittsburgh. I was aching to leave home."

Tessaro, 38, intended to become an actor, and London seemed like the perfect place to hone her craft. Now, almost two decades removed from her hometown, Tessaro has found another career -- as a writer. "Elegance," her debut effort, is a best seller in England and the story of Louise Canova, an expatriate Pittsburgher living in London who has given up on acting and is casting about for another career.

No, it's not nonfiction.

"I'm afraid I'm just a bit lazy," Tessaro says. "Because it's my first novel -- you know how people say stick with things that you are familiar with or that you know -- I didn't bother to give Louise a different path from my own. She's from Pittsburgh; I'm from Pittsburgh. She's studied drama; I've studied drama. But the things that happen to her and the kinds of adventures that she has are her own adventures."

The inspiration for "Elegance" came from Tessaro's habit of visiting second-hand bookstores. "Just a way of spending rainy afternoons when I was an out-of-work actress," she says. On one such visit, she found a slim volume called "Elegance" by Madame Genvieve Antoine Dariaux, who, among other ventures, was directrice of salons run by designer Robert Ricci, son of Nina Ricci. Dariaux's book, published in 1964, is an A-to-Z guide -- as Tessaro's novel is formatted -- on subjects ranging from Accessories to Zips.

"It occurred to me that if I used this book as a kind of conceit, I could tell the story of a woman who wanted to change her life," Tessaro says. "It would give me that kind of tension that comes between the inner and the outer self. It's quite easy for us in this day and age to be obsessed with the way we present ourselves physically to the world, and how that is often completely out of sync with who we feel we are internally.

"And it gave me this fantastic, grandiose voice of Madame Dariaux to contrast the modern-day story with. It also highlighted the fact that the obsessions we have today are not very different from the obsessions in 1964, when she wrote the book. But, most of all, it gave me this alphabetical format, and that way I could write 26 short stories rather than try and structure a whole novel."

Becoming a novelist, however, wasn't Tessaro's goal when she left Carnegie Mellon to study drama for a semester during her sophomore year. In London she saw Anthony Hopkins as King Lear and Jeremy Irons in "Richard II." With such inspiration nearby, returning to Pittsburgh was out of the question. Tessaro decided to stay and pursue acting roles.

"My forte was playing reporters in low-budget horror films," she says with a laugh, noting other roles in television and commercials.

Her acting career extended through 10 years, but after a failed marriage and a career that was less than what she originally hoped for, Tessaro took a job as an assistant box office manager at the English National Opera.

Then, two magical things occurred: Tessaro met her current husband, classical pianist James Rhodes, and found Madame Geriaux's book. A friend, fellow expatriate and novelist Jill Robinson, had been prodding Tessaro to write. All she needed was in alignment, save Madame Geriaux's permission to use extracts from her guidebook.

"When I was six months pregnant, my husband and I went to visit her, and I was in such a quandary about what to wear," Tessaro says of a trip she made to the fashion expert's home just outside of Nice, France. "All I had was one great big kind of tent dress, so there was wasn't a lot of choice. ... But, as it happens, she is still a terrific flirt. She opens the door -- she still looks amazing -- and says, 'My dear, I really have no fondness for the company of women.' She latched on to my husband and flirted with him for the whole of lunch. And we had a terrific time."

Tessaro's novel is a deeply nuanced work that, despite its sometimes comedic nature, incorporates serious issues. Hers is not another flimsy imitation of "Bridget Jones's Diary," but a promising first book that transcends the so-called chick lit genre. The lessons she learned studying theater, it seems, are applicable to her current career.

"I've had the pleasure of working on some of the greatest dramatic texts of the English language," Tessaro says, "professionally and as a student. Drama school is a fantastic education in language itself, and in motivation. In drama school, the teacher is always forcing you to look behind the language to see what the motivation is. ... And I think that has to have helped me, that hyper-awareness of language."

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Writers Read

Kathleen Tessaro

She's reading ... 'As research for my second book, I've been rereading (Anton Chekov's) 'The Seagull' and from T.S. Eliot poems.'

She just saw ... 'About Schimdt.' 'Golly, it's dark, isn't it• That landscape. Oh, isn't that depressing• Omaha, my God.'

She's listening to ... Music by Russian pianist Grigory Sokolov.