Cordelia Strube is a playwright and the author of nine critically acclaimed novels. Her novel
Lemon was shortlisted for the 2010 Trillium Book Award, and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Two of her earlier novels,
Alex and Zee and
The Barking Dog, are being reissued this fall with ECW press. Strube’s most recent novel,
On the Shores of Darkness There is Light, is written from both the point of view of Harriet, an 11-year old girl, and of Irwin, a 14-year old boy with hydrocephalus.
MW: How would you describe the book?
CS: It’s looking at, with humour, the challenges of living with chronic, potentially fatal illness. I think what got me interested in the idea is what happens to the caregivers when someone is physically compromised. We always pay attention to the sick person, but what about the other people? What about the collateral damage?
MW: How do you manage to write about such difficult things with humour?
CS: Well if I brought you into a heavy topic and I don’t make you laugh you are going to put the book down. So if I am going to take you into a dark place I better show you some light. The backdrop of this book is what’s going on now in the world. I think that if we look at things more closely they become less scary … I find the human condition against the backdrop of the 21st century fascinating.
MW: What sustains you as you go into these dark places?
CS: I find it incredibly cathartic … When I go into that world oddly enough it makes me feel way better about my own -- exploring other peoples’ lives and the obstacles that people face that reveal nobility and grace. I’m interested in people who are kneecapped and get up and keep moving. I’m not interested in people who have it easy, sit around, order a macchiato and whine about what’s going on at the fitness club… although I might use that.
MW: What was it like to write from Harriet’s perspective?
CS: It was tough. I knew that I wanted to write a book from the point of view of a child … I had never trusted myself to completely sustain [the child point of view] through a novel. It was kind of crazy because I was so afraid of sounding twee … I can’t stand precocious kids in fiction or movies. What I kept stumbling into with Harriet was just pure survival; she’s a survivor and she figures stuff out, and she’s a problem solver. But she can be quite jarring and disturbing and, frankly, bitchy. She’s not like a cuddly toy, this character. People love this character because there’s a bit of Harriet in all of us. Harriet just tells it like it is.
Listen to the rest of the interview on our podcast where Cordelia Strube talks about growing up in Montreal, having a teenaged daughter and how she knew what was going to happen in On The Shores of Darkness.