Can you tell us how you became a writer?I grew up in the country with no television, and no neighbourhood kids to play with. I spent a lot of time alone, mooching about in the woods and fields, making up imaginary lives for myself, or reading. I began writing these invented lives as stories when I was about eight. There was a children’s author in our town, Miss Esther Bates (the “Marilda” books) and I would go up to her house in the village and have tea. We would talk about writing. I can barely remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer.
What inspired you to write this particular book? Is there a story about the writing of this novel that begs to be told?
I recently found an entry in one of my journals, circa 1973, setting out the part of this book that deals with Hetty and Giles. The book’s real genesis was my desire to “save” the past. Trollope identified this as one of his main reasons for writing — to arrest time at a particular moment, so one could return to it over and over. I have tried to write about “Shepton” (a place that really existed in my childhood), but it was not until I learned the truth of the past that I could render the materials of a loving memoir into a novel. About six years ago, I found a box in my parents’ barn containing the unopened burial certificate of my grandfather’s eight-year-old sister. When I realized that my beloved grandparents had suffered such losses (the story of Jonnie’s death is also true) then I knew how to “save” their story. Writing is about telling the truth.
I did a great deal of research into my father’s family, including going to the New England Antiquarian Society where the family papers are stored. My mother and I sat in the hushed rotunda of this imposing building, wearing white gloves, turning over the papers that once were tumbled in hatboxes in the attic of my grandparents’ house. (I’d played with these letters as a child.) I came across a letter that very morning written by my grandfather to his mother (my great-grandmother), telling the story of my father’s birth in an upstairs bedroom. It told what my grandmother had had for breakfast, and how my father came out “singing.” I was moved to tears. The past was alive.
I wrote much of The Hatbox Letters in the upper story of our sauna bath, a tiny wooden building in the woods, without electricity. I used a solar panel to keep my laptop alive.
What is it that you’re exploring in this book?
I am exploring how to deal with a sense of disbelief about the loss of the past. How can an epoch — that life, those people and places, the rich texture of a time — how can it be gone? In the middle of my own life, I felt the loss of my childhood’s world so acutely that I wondered why we bother to build lives, when everything vanishes. The book’s working title was Vanished Lives. I used a widow, Kate, as an embodiment of an extreme case of such loss. I explored her life in order to see how, and why, we go on shaping our lives in the face of death.
Who is your favourite character in the book, and why?
I grew to love Kate, of course; but the character I love the most is Hetty. I began to see that she was the book’s true heroine because of her capacity to love; especially her ability to accept, and embrace, Giles’s love for Jonnie.
Are there any tips you would give a book club to better navigate their discussion of the book?
Think of it as a psychological mystery story. Trace the story, in psychological terms, from the effect of loss on the characters, starting as far back as Lilian’s husband’s loss of his first wife. How did this affect Lilian? How did it affect Charles? How did the loss of Ellen affect Lilian and Charles? How did their grief affect Giles? How did it affect the way Lilian lived her life? And so on.
Look for parallels. There are two “second” wives. There are two families in the past, the Thomases and the Bakers. There are several different couples who lose a partner: Giles and Jonnie, Kate and Tom. How are they different?
How does the book use nature imagery? Why does Kate have a heritage garden? What is the point of the layers of ice in “Black Ice”? How does winter’s silence mirror Kate’s heart? What is the use of bird imagery? How many places do gardens appear and what do gardens teach us about change? Talk about mulch. What does it do, how is it made, how is it similar to what Kate is doing as she reads the letters?
Do you have a favourite story to tell about being interviewed for the book?
I loved being part of an international writers’ festival. I felt the privilege of this experience keenly in the lobby of the Palliser Hotel in Calgary. There I sat, waiting to be interviewed. At one side of the lobby, a writer was being filmed walking and talking. He did this, patiently, two or three times until the producer was satisfied. At the same time, another writer was sitting in an alcove, elbows on a marble-topped table, talking earnestly while his interviewer scribbled and checked his tape recorder. A very well-known author sat by herself in a soft chair, coffee on a table, obscured by a newspaper. A team of women conferred at another table, leaning over folders, camera equipment at their feet. My interviewer arrived, a young woman with laryngitis, and over a whispered conversation, we ate a superb lunch.
Another incident on this book tour was the day I arrived at the King Edward Hotel in Toronto. I was exhausted. I took a bath, wrapped up in the thick bathrobe provided, and crawled into bed. I knew I had two hours before a TV interview. I was just drifting off to sleep when the phone rang. It was my publicist, waiting in the hotel lobby. He asked if I had gotten his latest e-mail? (I hadn’t.) The time had been changed, and we were due at the studio in fifteen minutes. Imagine how I dressed, put on my makeup, and raced for the elevator with pounding heart. This little incident sums up life on the road during a book tour.
What questions are you never asked in interviews but wish you were?
I wish more people asked about the Hetty and Giles story, or about my relationship with my real grandparents and how that motivated the story.
Has a review or profile ever changed your perspective on your work?
Not really. One mentioned how I place my characters in the “great chain of being.” I like that, and found it fascinating to see my novel being seen as part of the context of my other work. Some years ago, a reviewer disliked my “nature” writing. I never read that review (but was told about it!) because it made me so upset. I mention this because I write what I know, and I write from the truth of who I am, and if someone doesn’t like that, there’s not much point in knowing about it, because you can’t (and shouldn’t) change your own truth. Generally speaking, I don’t like to read reviews or profiles of my work and myself. I find it weird and unsettling. I’d rather let my agent and publicist deal with that part of the process.
Which authors have been most influential to your own writing?
I’m certain that I was deeply influenced by the children’s books I read over and over. The Borrowers, The Children of Green Knowe, Little House on the Prairie, books by E.C. Spykman, too many to mention. I also read The Lord of the Rings when I was fifteen, and read it about once a year for much of my life. I was a closet Tolkien fan until the advent of the movies. I was strongly influenced by Virginia Woolf and Dylan Thomas, and by writers of the mid-nineteenth century and early twentieth: Dickens, the Brontës, D.H. Lawrence, Tolstoy, Hemingway. No one writer really stands out. I read widely, and always have.
If you weren’t writing, what would you want to be doing for a living? What are some of your other passions in life?
Making books of my own nature photography? Raising and training ponies? Singing professionally in a small chorus? Being a paid gardener at a large estate? Working full-time for an environmental group, such as the New Brunswick Conservation Council? These are all things that I do as an amateur, with the exception of photography, which I have done professionally but don’t have time for anymore. I have very large gardens, I have two ponies, and I sing in a chorus. I don’t spend any time thinking about what else I might be doing with my life, although I did when I was younger. It’s not something I ever ponder anymore.
If you could have written one book in history, what would that be?
The book that opened the real possibilities of the written word to me was To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf.