EMMA DONOGHUE in a round table with KEVIN BARRY and JOSHUA FERRIS Friday (October 22), 8 pm and reading with BARRY, MICHAEL LIST and ALISSA YORK Saturday (October 23), 3 pm, both at Studio Theatre.
If you ask Emma Donoghue the hardest part about being a Man Booker Prize shortlister, she’ll tell you it’s not losing. It’s the mammoth time commitment to media inquiries for her nominated novel, Room, that drains her the most.
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“I really wasn’t expecting to win, so it felt all right,” she allows after the announcement last Tuesday, “and I partied heartily afterwards with family and friends who had come from various gargling parts of Ireland and England.”
But prior to her trip to London, she dealt with a lot more publicity than she ever had before.
“They expect every author to answer every big question, like, ‘Comment on the state of current literature today,'” she bemoans. “That kind of question makes me run screaming. I’m not at my most intellectual right now. I’m sitting around thinking, ‘Should I get a manicure for the Booker gala?’ It’s as if getting on to the shortlist turns you into an airhead.”
Not for long. The brilliant author, famous for her historical novels such as Slammerkin and Life Mask, is brainy and entertaining, known for her research. Room, which lost the big prize but sits on both the Governor General and Writers Trust shortlists, is a contemporary novel told from the point of view of Jack, a five-year-old boy who was conceived via a rape and has been imprisoned with his mother since birth.
It’s actually not nearly as harrowing as it sounds, though Donoghue definitely had to push herself through the research.
“I didn’t just research what I would need to know about a child growing up in Room,” says the Dublin-born, London, Ontario-based writer, who’s held onto her charming Irish lilt. “I researched all the bad things we can do to children, and which ones survive and which ones can’t. I put myself through more than I needed to. People would ask me, ‘How could you bear to write about a child locked up?’ and I thought, ‘There’s a lot worse things that could happen to a child.'”
Despite his life experience, Jack turns out to be smart and resilient, which fit in with what Donoghue had learned.
“I remember reading an article on refugees who had just arrived from Haiti. The kids were playing soccer in the park while their parents were shaken and stunned and withdrawn. Kids have magical adaptive powers, and adults simply don’t.
“When I see my own children, I feel like every single cell of mine is fossilized and dry by comparison. I hold on to emotion much longer. Half an hour after an incident I’m still angry, and they’ve forgotten all about it.”
Donoghue assures me that she’s not done with historical fiction. Her next novel is set in 1870s San Francisco and involves a murder mystery and, yes, there’s queer content.
“I’ve never written historical fiction set in America, but San Francisco in the 1870s is actually more modern than Dublin of the 60s where I grew up. I’ve been using hard fact sources and death records, newspaper articles, lots of textual sources [i.e., court records], because the characters were often in conflict with the law. The main character was the only person in San Francisco arrested for cross-dressing.”
And don’t worry about Donoghue chasing fame and fortune – the Booker score hasn’t totally messed with her priorities.
“The success of Room is not going to make me chase success again,” she states emphatically. “The surest way to write a disastrous book is to try to recapture a mainstream audience. I’m not changing my approach to my career. I’ll just write what I like and let the readers catch up.”
Interview Clips
On media pressure after being shortlisted for the Man Booker prize
On the spoiler factor in a novel like Room
On why she set Room in America
susanc@nowtoronto.com
