Samsun Knight Explores Unorthodox Marriage in 'Likeness'

Author and graduate of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Samsun Knight, joins Writer’s Voices to discuss his second novel, Likeness. Loosely based on his own parent’s open marriage, Likeness tells the story of Anne and her husband, Sebastian, who have a polyamorous marriage, as they navigate their relationship with Sebastian’s lover, Sandy. Told from multiple points of views, the first half of the book is narrated by the wife, Anne, and the second half is told through journal entries written by Sandy. According to Knight, “This is about a complicated, polyamorous relationship where these people fall in love and one of the partners really doesn’t want to have a, sort of, exclusive relationship… but as they get more and more involved, they come to, sort of, a compromise where one of the partners is less enthusiastic than the other about the structure, but… they make it work. They’re in love with each other and things feel like they have a mutual understanding, and then this mutual understanding is monumentally challenged… The marital partner in this polyamorous relationship is two months pregnant and then learns that one of her husband’s partners is also pregnant, and for her, this is a massive violation… and to him it’s just sort of something that they need to figure out…”

While the book was inspired by Knight’s family situation, it’s not an exact version of his parent’s relationship. Additionally, he emphasized that none of the characters in Likeness are fully based on anyone in his own life. He explained, “It’s me trying to imagine this period where everyone has different versions, but a collective set of particular facts around one very dramatic point and trying to understand if I was in everyone’s position, how does this make sense… in some ways, I feel like everyone should write a novella from the perspective of people in their parent’s positions… it’s very… sympathizing with a lot of very complicated aspects of what I imagine the pressures that they faced and the details of how they made sense of themselves in those decisions…”