Welcome to the book show, A Celebration of Reading and Writers.
I'm Joe Donaue.
After two acclaimed historical novels, one of Canada's most celebrated writers, now gives
us the contemporary story of a man studying the suddenly confusing shape his life has
taken and why and what his responsibilities as a husband, a father, a brother and an uncle
truly are.
Canada's box new novel is going home again in it.
We meet Charlie Belarose as marriages on the skids, his business taking him from one country
to another in a separation from his daughter, a constant heartbreak.
He then decides to move back to his native Canada and begin to confront the things he
has in dare to in decades.
It's a great pleasure to welcome, Dennis, back to this week's book show.
Thank you very much for being with us.
I appreciate it.
My pleasure.
Thank you.
Give us an idea of what brought you to this particular place to a man in this particular
position.
Well, I don't know how other writers work, but the way I work, I usually start with a
context.
I don't really start with a theme.
I didn't set out to write a novel about a guy in his mid 40s going through the domestic
trials that he's going through.
I just wanted to write a story that was closer to home for years.
I've been writing historical fiction or fiction set in the past with some connection to
war.
And I was very drawn to those big conflicts, those big dramas.
And I felt, although those novels are very authentic and close to my heart, I wanted
to write something that was a little more local in a sense and also more universal because
happily many of us, or most of us, don't ever come very close to a war zone as my characters
in the previous novels do.
I want to write something that might have more to say to people in their day-to-day lives
who are going through the conflicts and the dramas that most of us do, falling in and out
of love, challenges with family, with children, with grandparents, that sort of thing.
I just felt more drawn to that at this point of my life.
When you start small with just a voice, is it a constant challenge to have that voice
actually talk back to you or more often and not do you end up trashing that and waiting
for the next voice?
Well, it's true.
I do write a lot of different drafts.
It takes me quite a while because, as I said, I don't start with a theme and I don't
start with some intention to make a point about whatever it is that I end up writing about.
In fact, but I only discovered that years after I begin the project.
And so you're very right.
The voice is very central and I will experiment with a voice.
I'll start with maybe a formal voice or informal voice, chatty voice, or whatever it is until
I stumble across something that actually means something to me that feels and sounds
very authentic.
Really, that's the only way that I find my characters because I guess I am a voice
writer.
That's one of the first things that sort of catches me when I read other writers' work.
And yeah, it takes a lot of drafts.
It takes a lot of sort of listening to the sound of my characters speak to me in my own
head as I work through their lives.
And then eventually I come to either agree or enjoy that voice or discard it and start
again.
What do you think there was about Charlie's voice in particular that struck you?
That you knew it was something that you wanted to proceed?
Well, I liked his voice because it's also crossing over into the discussion about style.
It's a very transparent style or tone.
And I liked the honesty.
I liked how he is a very forthcoming narrator.
He doesn't have much to hide.
He doesn't know very much about his own life in certain respects at least.
But he's a very honest narrator and he's not what you'd call a limited or an unreliable
narrator.
He's very interested in getting to the heart of the matter where concerns his emotions
and his relationships with his estranged wife and his daughter and his brother.
Yeah, so I think he's a...
I think I was drawn to the authenticity and to the honesty that Charlie brings to the
page.
And I think that's interesting because as you mentioned there are so many strong characters
and he's influenced by them.
He's a estranged wife and his ex-girlfriend and his daughter and his brother.
When you look at it, how does his relationship with one character help us to ultimately understand
the relationship that he has with another character?
Well, I think characters are best revealed to the writer and to the reader through the
series of conflicts and crises that they encounter as the book proceeds.
We don't write novels in which the character's life is steady and unchanging.
Writers are drawn to conflict.
Without conflict, there's no dynamic movement in a novel.
And we don't really see how a character reacts to certain situations.
Martin Luther King in a very different context said the ultimate measure of a man is not
where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of
change and controversy.
And those characters he's surrounded by constantly challenge him and lead him to down avenues
that he wouldn't walk down otherwise.
It's those moments of change in his life that I'm drawn to as a writer that I feel best
reveal a character to himself and to the reader.
And I assume it wouldn't be as much fun to write if the character wasn't such a mess.
Exactly.
I mean, maybe a bit of a saddest when it comes to my characters, but I think the writer's
job is really two places, many obstacles in front of his characters as is reasonable and
believable and watch how those characters deal with the issues.
I would end up writing a Starry I'd romance if I didn't throw as much controversy and
challenge in his direction as I can.
So Charlie travels the world.
He's managing the language academies that he establishes in various cities.
And the novel is set primarily in Toronto and Madrid.
Talk a little bit about how those two cities serve as counterpoints in the novel.
Well as a young man in his 20, he drops out of university with this desire to discover
the world.
And then he's going to get into this sort of Leonard Cohen fantasy of going to Greece and
getting a small place there and living this poet's life.
Something intervenes.
He isn't able to go to Athens but ends up in Madrid and stays there.
And so his initial impulse is to get out of Dodge as fast as he can to discover the world.
So Madrid becomes, oh, is that first, you know, the brass ring?
That's the great destination where he can explore the world and become himself.
And 20 years later, Toronto, his hometown, becomes that as well.
Although it comes with a little bit of baggage because back home is waiting for him all sorts
of surprises and changes that he doesn't expect at all.
So there is a certain degree of point counterpoint absolutely in Madrid and Toronto both at different
times in his life represent hope and change.
He turns to Toronto after 20 years of Madrid leaving a marriage, hoping that he will be
able to resuscitate something that's broken in his heart.
But he finds something that's quite unexpected.
And then idea of cities to be escaped from and to escape to, I think is something that
a lot of us can relate to, maybe not so much in cities but in situations.
Absolutely.
You know, we have many of us all sorts of secret dialogues that have, we have going on in
our heads fantasy lives, things that we wish were different about our life.
And Charlie is no different though he is quite active in his fantasy life in terms of what
he believes he should do.
He's not a shrinking flower, he doesn't sit around in moat, he's a very active and engaging
man.
He doesn't know exactly what is in his heart half the time but I really don't think many
of us do.
So it's kind of interesting to watch him stumble along his life being quite productive and
engaged in his life but also stepping in a few potholes along the way.
There's great emotional loss that he deals with in the novel but he has a lot of courage
along the way as well.
Yeah, I mean, I didn't want to write a character who was damaged to such a degree that he became
locked into his paralysis, his emotional paralysis and all.
There's nothing like that happens in this book.
Charlie is very engaged and very honest about the setbacks that he's that he's that engage
him.
So he is, he's an intelligent man.
He has a strong business and a deep abiding love for his 12 and 13 year old daughter
and his two nephews and in fact his brother who is nothing but a pain in the neck.
So he is actively engaged in trying to figure out what's going on emotionally in the lives
of other people around him and with his own life.
Is it a challenge in writing a story like this to have a character with all of this emotional
baggage and not have pity be a part of the equation?
Yeah, well, I guess pity is not a very, I don't know, attractive emotion.
I suppose, I mean, he does not pity himself if that's what we're talking about.
There's no self pity.
He's too smart for that.
He's too self-respecting for that.
But he is very aware of the setbacks that have assailed him.
But wants to change his situation desperately.
He encounters a very unpleasant brother really when he returns to Toronto after all these
years.
A brother who he hopes has changed his ways because when they were younger men and children
his brother Nate was was really a negative force in his life and he is full of hope that
20 years later his brother has grown up into a respecting and respectful man.
But he finds something quite different much to his dismay.
And I guess that is a fascinating thing.
Abon, his return to Toronto of the relationship that you write about with his brother Nate,
certainly a fragile relationship one that is complicated by many factors, rivalry and
revenge and loyalty.
And ultimately, I mean, it's a really difficult thing to disentangle yourself from when you
have a relationship that has been so troubled and trying to resurrect it into something positive.
Yeah.
Well, these brothers, I mean, I really do think they love each other as brothers do.
Although Nate really can't get up out of his issues.
And I don't know why he's a very problematic character and at every turn he complicates
his brother's life to his best ability.
You know, sometimes writers stumble into characters that intrigue them, that fascinate
them, but are really inexplicable.
I believe he's a very believable character and his actions are very believable.
But for the life of me, I don't know why he confounds his brother like this.
There are levels of jealousy and rivalry, certainly, where that comes from there are hints in
the text about relationships between them and their parents who are deceased.
But Charlie as the narrator and as the victim of these conflicting emotions, keeps trying
to come back again and again despite the hard knocks that his brother levels against him.
And that is where the family bond is so strong that the blood that runs through his veins
is the same that runs through his brothers and that feeling that you can't leave that.
That you have to call back.
Yeah, it's very strange.
I mean, we probably all know people like this in our lives who will talk about a sibling
with nothing but confusion in their heads and hearts.
You know, love being the principal one, but also the feeling that why do they continue
to do these things to themselves and to the ones they love?
It's a sign of a character who is very confusing, but also in terms of writing a very interesting
character to write about because the contradictions we find in the novels that we love, at least
me, are really not explainable.
They're not sort of a one-tone kind of character.
They're full of contradiction and controversy.
I can't imagine writing a character who is all good or all bad.
I mean, I can't imagine writing a character who wears only a black hat or only a white
hat.
That character would be a little fast-cil, I think.
I think we all carry in our hearts some controversy and some confusion.
I'm drawn to this as a writer because it keeps me thinking on the page as well.
Writing for me is very much a process of discovery.
If I begin to understand a character that's wonderful, but if I solve a character, I think
the book dies for me because you can know somebody for 35 years.
Once you believe that you know everything about them, I think one of the greatest joys
in a relationship which is discovery, I think that ends.
The writing process for me is very much a question of discovery.
My characters, when they're most alive for me and my head, they continue to represent
levels of mystery that draw me forward into the novel.
Dennis Box new novel is going home again.
It is published by Kanoff.
You talk about the mystery and there is, as you shift between past and present in the
novel, it builds up toward a revelation.
And at what point did you always know that that was going to be part of the occasion?
Yeah, right.
No, not at all.
Not at all.
The same idea about the mystery.
And my drafts, they take me in all sorts of different directions and usually I end up
writing myself into a corner, have to backtrack or even sometimes trash the draft altogether.
So no, these moments of revelation in the actual plot, they occur to me really as I'm writing.
As I came to the point, I felt in my own mind and a heart, the same degree, I think,
a degree of surprise as I hope the reader will feel as they read this book.
If the book, I think, has any merit at all, it's in the organic nature that it rolls out.
There is no sort of artificial construction.
I don't sort of draw a map and a guideline and sort of a framework for the book.
That's all very organic and I stumble across things in a way that really are wonderful
and surprising to me as the writer as I write.
And these moments are among the greatest moments that I feel when I'm sitting down and
working, it's that sort of that charge.
Like, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening.
This is, you know, so there's this moment where I feel the writing process meets the reading
process and I at that moment am both the reader and the writer and it's a great thrill.
And I think those moments happen occasionally and they're really, really one lovely.
In terms of the writing process, but the book I have, you know, that's up to you to judge,
but the writing process, yeah.
Well, it is love and I would think it would be exciting to realize that you're as involved
as you hope the reader will be.
Right, it's sort of like walking down the street of a new city a city you've never been
to and turning in the corner and seeing this lovely vista that really just speaks to
you.
Because there before you, although you had no idea you were expecting to see something
like that.
It's also fascinating.
We've been talking an awful lot about the sibling relationship, the relationship that
Charlie has with his brother Nate, but a large part of this is also about the relationship
with his daughter and the guilt that he feels and that the struggles that she has to forgive
him for moving away.
And that's a very different relationship, of course.
Well, there's no relationship stronger between a parent and his or her child.
Charlie is aware of this.
Charlie is deeply committed to a strong relationship with his daughter and he leaves Madrid to
return to Toronto after he separates from the mother of his child.
And he is heartbroken and he's devastated, but he feels that this is the only way he can
save himself.
He returns to Toronto.
He's back on the ground in Toronto and he can't shake the feeling that he's abandoned
his daughter, although he has every intention of crossing the Atlantic once a month and spending
long weekends and so on.
Things complicate themselves and the feeling that he has abandoned his daughter grows and
begins to haunt him and makes him live a life that is well, very engaged and active.
It's a very lonely life in a sense because those with children can understand the feeling
of absolute commitment to their child and those frequent feelings of failure that we feel
when we don't live up to our own standards in terms of how we should live our lives vis-à-vis
the children that we brought into the world.
So he's very conflicted.
He's mourning, but he's also taken by the Russian thrill of being a single man now for the
first time in 20 years.
So he tries to wear that optimism that comes with his newfound independence, but it's always
tempered by the understanding that he may have acted rashly and with self-interest as opposed
to the interest of his daughter.
And it helps prioritize things for him.
Oh, absolutely.
And he ultimately does what I think is the right thing, which is returning to Madrid.
That also activates another sort of controversial challenge in his life.
But what he does ultimately is what he believes to be the right thing.
He is not the sort of character who knows one thing, but does the opposite.
He is really defined and guided by his heart and what he understands as being the best
intention.
The title of the novel is going home again and not to read too deeply into it, but it
is an interesting question that you bring up of what we consider home to be.
Yeah, home is where you live, where you want to live, where you need to live, and home
is where his children, where his child is.
He is a man who is, I would say, he's conflicted by the fact that he needs to live in two places
at once.
He is trapped in a sense by his nostalgia.
And I've always understood nostalgia as being that desire to be in more than one place
at a time.
I think this recurs in my writing fairly frequently.
In my previous books, there are characters who are very nostalgic.
And I don't know why I'm drawn to it.
It might be because my parents came from far away.
They came from Germany in the 50s.
And as a youngster in Canada, I grew up looking at photographs of another world and hearing
stories about another world.
And so I don't know.
My young imagination began to develop in two directions, the ability to see and to imagine
what was in front of me, but also what happened off screen, as it were.
And so that motif returns in my novel's characters who have one thing in front of them
and at the same time miss something that they don't have in front of them.
The epigraph of the novel comes from John Benville, move on, move on as we are directed to do
at the scene of an accident or a crime.
And that really does tie everything together, doesn't it?
Yeah, well, John Benville being a brilliant writer.
I've read a bunch of his books and that struck me at the time because I thought, I just
finished writing this and I read that passage in a novel that he'd written.
And I thought, well, isn't that lovely?
There's kind of an older wiser narrator and I thought Charlie could use a bit of advice.
It seems that an accident or a crime, I mean, so many of us begin our relationships with
the highest of hopes and full of hearts and great measures of optimism.
But so often, especially nowadays, love affairs end up looking like an accident scene and
very often the victims, the two lovers in question end up feeling that they have been the
victims of an accident, of a crime in a way.
So there are many crimes of the heart in this novel as well as literal crimes.
But I just thought the Benville quote said something that was very astute in that sense
that love ends up sometimes, sadly, as more of an accident than anything else.
The new novel is going home again.
It is published by Kanoff.
Dennis Bach, thank you so much for joining us.
A great pleasure to have you on the program and I wish you all the luck in the world with
future work as well.
Many thanks.
Thank you, Joe.
Great pleasure.
Thank you.
We enjoy hearing from our listeners about the show.
You can email us at book at wamc.org.
You can listen again to this or find past book shows at wamc.org.
Sarah Ladouk produces our program book Marcus for next week and thanks for listening.
For the book show, I'm Joe Donnier.
