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October 17, 2008
Check out Writers Festival
Writers Linda Grant and Cary Fagan come to Vancouver.
OLGA LIVSHIN
British writer Linda Grant comes to the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival this month with her new novel, The Clothes on their Backs.
Clothing is a recurring theme in Grant's writing. Although, as a journalist, she doesn't shy away from tough subjects, including drugs, body modification and racism, fashion seems to be her favorite topic. Her blog, "The Thoughtful Dresser" (thethoughtfuldresser.blogspot.com), covers books on fashion and fashion designers, Grant's articles on fashion and her personal thoughts and idiosyncrasies about dresses and sleeves. "My interest is in the relationship between the individual and their clothes, the messages the clothes send out, the way clothes define us and even create our identities," she said.
Despite being a successful journalist and publishing several prize-winning nonfiction books, Grant considers herself foremost a fiction writer. "When I was at school, I was very good at English but not good at anything else, particularly science and all sports," she said. "Writing gave me confidence and friends. As I read novels and poetry all the time, I wanted to be one of the people who wrote novels and poetry. Journalism pays the mortgage."
For her first novel, The Cast Iron Shore, published in 1996, Grant won the David Higham First Novel Award. Her second novel, When I Lived in Modern Times, set in Tel Aviv in the last years of the British Mandate, won the Orange Prize for fiction. The Clothes on their Backs is Grant's fourth novel.
The book starts quietly, as its middle-aged heroine, Vivien, walks the streets of London, the streets of her childhood. Her unwilling purchase of a red dress in a neighborhood clothing store triggers her plunge into a well of memories. These memories revive her past woes, the people long dead, the clothes long gone and the events that shaped her life 30 years ago.
The novel follows Vivien from birth to maturity, illuminating her parents' quiet existence, their fears and their lies. As former Jewish refugees, inundated with the terror of the Holocaust, they hid for their entire lives, long after Nazism was defeated. Vivien, born free in postwar England, perceived her parents' invisible, mousy lives as "a quarter of a century hibernation."
Lonely and uncertain of her identity, stained by her family's gloomy mysteries, Vivien felt adrift, rootless. In her struggle for comprehension, she started digging into her father's concealed past. And she entered the life of her flashy Uncle Sandor, the uncle her parents denied.
She began asking questions, but the answers didn't offer her the relief she sought. Instead, they lashed Vivien with painful enlightenment. She discovered that "survivors survive because of their strength or cunning or luck, not their goodness...." She also discovered that blind belief in ideas often led to disaster and that, in the turmoil of the 20th century, not everyone was able to afford noble principles.
The novel is tragic and comic at the same time, unfolding misconceptions between generations. One moment, readers will smile, savoring spicy Yiddish insults. The next moment might instil burning shame or a biting recognition of an unwanted relative, clad in vulgarity. While a strong novel, unfortunately, the dramatic conclusion to Vivien's stroll down memory lane is disappointing; the author seemed not to know what to do with Uncle Sandor after all the secrets had been revealed.
As its name implies, clothes play an important role in Grant's book, occasionally as Vivien's masks or disguises but more often as signposts, marking turns and twists on Vivien's road to maturity. Every new fashion sparked new insights, and her clothes reflected the passing of years and personalities. For other characters, clothes sometimes meant death.
Like most artists, Grant opens up in her writing. "I never have an audience in mind," she confessed. "I write solely for myself."
In the case of her latest novel, her self-expression pushed the writer towards London of the 1970s. "The character of Sandor in the novel is based on a real person called Peter Rachman, a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor and slum landlord who was notorious in the late '50s and early '60s in London," she explained. "I did a small amount of research ... and read a biography of Peter Rachman, but a novel weighed down with research is dead in the water, in my opinion. Better to make up as much as you can."
Besides making up her stories, Grant also enjoys reading the stories of others. She likes literary fiction, mostly novels, and considers Philip Roth the greatest modern writer. She doesn't discard frivolity in literature either. "I quite like chick lit occasionally, for a bit of light relief," she admitted.
During the festival, which takes place Oct. 21-26, Grant participates in Wasserman and Company on Friday, Oct. 24, 1-2:30 p.m., at the Revue Theatre, with Andrew Davidson, Amitav Ghosh and host Jerry Wasserman. Tickets are $14/$7, with a $1.50 facility surcharge. She also takes part in the Sunday Brunch at Performance Works on Oct. 26, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m., with Kathlyn Bradshaw, Steven Galloway, Tristan Hughes, Gail Jones, Andreas Schroeder and host Sheryl MacKay. Tickets are $31 in total.
Inventing stories and having fun
Also among the guests of the annual Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival is the award-winning Toronto writer Cary Fagan. As a participant in two children's programs, Fagan will bring two new books: a picture book, Thing-Thing, and a novel for young readers, Ten Lessons for Kaspar Snit, a sequel to his previous books about 13-year-old heroine Eleanor.
In the best traditions of the adventure genre, Fagan's new novel starts with a bang. Eleanor is in trouble. The famous "Creature Catcher" has announced in a newspaper interview that he is set on catching her. Actually, he wishes to catch a mythical creature, the "Mysterious Flying Girl," and put her in a display case. The problem is: Eleanor is not a myth. She is a real girl, going to a real school. She just happens to be able to fly – and she doesn't want to be displayed in a case.
Comedy trappings prevail, as ridiculous details pile up. Eleanor's father is the world's foremost specialist on fountains. Is there really such a profession? The fountain in the family backyard is decorated with eight horses, eight naked riders and multiple pigeon droppings. And Eleanor's former nemesis, evil genius Kaspar Snit, asks her to teach him how to become good. The novel hardly gets started, before the reader grins and mutters, "Yeah, right!"
Then the story gets serious. With no new fountains to build, Eleanor's father is unemployed and moping. Her mother develops a fear of flying. Her nine-year-old brother discards his superhero outfit – a sad sign. And then there is a new, cute boy in her class.
Fagan has no qualms in helping Eleanor solve her problems. He navigates the maze of a child's world naturally, guiding his readers along the paths of real life and fantasy. Obviously delighted by the quirks of English, he invites readers to share his enthusiasm. Whenever the story allows it, his heroes use unconventional lexicon: they want to steal "oodles of money," take "postprandial strolls" after dinner and call a bad guy a "scallywag."
"When I write for kids, I don't dumb down the vocabulary, but just put down the words that seem best," said Fagan. "I love old-fashioned words and expressions, and they seem to emerge from my own memories of my parents and their generation. I sometimes just love the way a word sounds."
Since he was a boy, Fagan has loved words. He often made up stories and, in all his tales, he was inevitably the hero. His propensity for story-making organically grew into the writer's profession. He is the author of four novels, two collections of short stories and several children's books. Most of his books can coax a smile from even the solemnest reader.
"My adult books are a mix of humor and serious emotional questioning and situations," he explained. "That's simply because I think that humor is a natural part of our experience in all but the most dire situations, and even then sometimes. I don't try to be funny; it's just what comes out. I never thought I'd be considered a comic author and am always a little surprised when someone calls me that. But to laugh means to be human."
Fagan's laughter is always compassionate. Finding amusement in the ordinary, the writer leans towards low-key, intimate affairs, avoiding loud blockbusters.
"Every writer needs to find his or her material," he said. "I tend to write on a 'small scale' – domestic dramas, you might say. This is true of both my adult and my kids' work and it's where I think I can find my own 'truths.' That's what feels right to me."
While the majority of authors can be found in only one place in a bookstore, either children or adult fiction, Fagan moves effortlessly between the two genres.
"In my mind, I don't make as big a difference between adult and children's writing as you might think. It's all storytelling. And some of my stories ... could be read by kids and adults both.... Mostly, when I want to write from a kid's point of view, I write for kids, and when I want an adult voice, I write for adults."
A versatile master, he also alternates between literary forms, writing equally well novels and short stories. "In the last 15 years, I wrote only the occasional story, taking years to finish each one. But recently, I've written maybe half a dozen [short stories] and I've loved writing them. They have felt very liberating.... There are certain feelings that a story can just capture so well. On the other hand, there are other things I want to explore, where the story just doesn't offer enough room. It's an instinctive decision, not a rational one."
Fagan often finds inspiration for his books in real life.
"I don't write about things that have actually happened to me," he said, "but I take the feelings, the circumstances of what I know and turn that into fiction. The atmosphere of my Jewish upbringing is in a number of my books, but the stories are always fictional. The same is true for more recent short stories about love, work and children. I'm not interested in writing autobiography; it's much more fun to invent. But I still use what I've seen, felt and learned."
At the Vancouver Writers Festival, Fagan will take part with Hazel Hutchins in Flying Families and Magical Mitts, at the Revue Theatre on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 1-2 p.m. Tickets are $14/$7, with a $1.50 facility surcharge, and the event is suitable for kids in grades 3 to 6.
He and Hutchins will also participate in A Treat of a Tale, at PTC Studio, Thursday, Oct. 23, 10:30-11:30 a.m. Tickets are $14/$7 for student groups.
All festival tickets are available through VancouverTix (604-629-8849) or from the festival box office (in-person sales only) at 1398 Cartwright St. For more information, call 604-681-6330.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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