Alternating narratives weave together Feather and Bubbles’ odyssey. The two women travel south from Canada to Mexico where Bubbles’ long-dead mother, grandmother, and grandfather turn up, enlivening the narrative with their hilarious antics.
In Mexico, where reality and magic co-exist, Feather gets a new sense of her mother, and Bubbles’ quest for her mother’s ashes—and a new man—increases her zest for life. Unlike most women her age, fun-loving Bubbles takes risks, believing she’s immortal. She doesn’t hold back in any way, eating heartily and lusting after strangers, exulting in her youthful spirit.
Readers will believe they’ve found the fountain of youth themselves in this character. At ninety, Bubbles comes into her own, coming to age, proving it’s never too late to fulfill one’s dreams.
1.
What
inspired you to write Fling?
I think it began because I was curious about my mother’s mother,
someone I had never met. My grandfather, a former Scottish schoolmaster, had
immigrated to Calgary, Canada, hoping to find a better life there for himself
and his family. Meanwhile, WWI broke out, and his wife and four kids couldn’t
join him for seven years. When they did, my grandmother couldn’t adjust to the
brutal winters or to her abusive husband. After being there a year, she moved
out, refusing to put up with my grandpa’s meanness, and became a housekeeper
for a wealthy family. The story is that her boss took her to Mexico with him.
She never returned. I wanted to try and recreate what life might have been
like for her once she left Canada, and that then brought in a number of other
characters that inhabit the novel.
2.
Can
you please describe the relationship between Bubbles and Feather?
As with many mothers and daughters,
it’s a complex one. Abandonment is a theme that runs through all of the female
characters’ lives in Fling! That sets
up a dynamic of mistrust and recriminations. These things surface in the novel
as each woman comes to a new understanding of her relationship with her mother.
3.
What
was the hardest part about writing this book?
Finding the right voice. When I first
started working on the novel, I wanted to write a lyrical narrative, but the
characters refused to be portrayed in that way. They were feisty, zany,
comical. So I had to adapt my approach to their stories by letting them show me
the way. The results are what Lewis Buzbee, professor of creative writing in
USF’s MFA program, calls the madcap journey of an aging mother and her
adult daughter from cold Protestant Canada into the hallucinogenic heart of
Mexico's magic, where the past literally comes to life. Every page is a surprise…”
4.
What
do you hope readers will gain from your book?
Deeper insight into the complexities
of family dynamics. Every family is different, of course, but each one has secrets
and buried stories. Bringing those things to the surface can be healing, just
as they are in a good individual therapy or psychoanalysis. As Lionel Trilling
has said, novels read us as much as we read them. So I would hope that readers
of Fling! might come to some new
understanding of themselves. Also, some characters in the book are searching
for the fountain of youth, and my belief is that it exists in the imagination.
Without a fertile one, we are already dead.
5.
What
inspired you to be a writer?
I don’t think I was inspired to be a
writer because that suggests a level of choice.
I am a writer. Writing chose me. It’s as necessary to me as
eating. If I don’t write, I’m cranky and irritable. Ask my husband!
6.
What
do you like best and what do you like least about being a writer?
I love entering new worlds and
exploring new characters and making unexpected discoveries as a narrative
unfolds. I never know where a work is going. It’s totally spontaneous. That’s
the fun and adventure of writing. But it’s also one of the more difficult parts
because I have to trust each time that material will surface, and I will
eventually have a story to tell. The other thing I love about writing is
revision. To me, that’s where the real writing happens. I already have
something tangible to work with, so the fear of not finding my way is lessened.
7.
Who
are some of your favorite authors?
I have so many that I’ll never be able to cover them all here! I love
the Norwegian novelist Per Petterson and have read all of his books. I’ve also
read most of Gabriel Marquez’s work. One
Hundred Years of Solitude found me at a time when I needed a model for the
magical realism approach that seems natural to me and inhabits much of my work.
I love that book and return to it
often for inspiration.
In another mode, Roberto Bolano, a Chilean writer, has also inspired
me. He diverges from the more familiar magical realist vein and creates his own
genre. I’ve read most of his books now, and they construct a world that seems
like a parallel universe to ours. He also steps beyond the usual fiction
boundaries, violating our expectations of how a novel should unfold or end. I’m
always entranced by his work.
And I haven’t mentioned W.G. Sebald yet, another writer who died far
too young. He’s also invented a new genre, a hybrid novel form. Again, I’ve
read all of his work, and I’m stunned by it.
I’m sorry that all of these authors are men when there are so many
female writers I love as well. How can I not mention my countrywoman Alice
Munro? Or Irish writer Anne Enright. I’ll read anything she writes because of
her sharp wit and illuminations of contemporary life.
8.
If
your book would be turned into a movie, who would you imagine playing the part
of the main character? (Actor can be ANYONE, living or dead.)
No actors come readily to mind, I’m
afraid. Bubbles and Feather and all the rest are so distinctive to me that it’s
difficult to imagine someone being able to inhabit their characters.
9.
Are
you working on anything right now?
It’s hard to describe a latest project since I’m usually working on
more than one thing simultaneously. I’m revising my novel Bone Songs that will be published in 2016. I’m also working on a
novel whose focus is Tillie, a younger version of the main character in another
novel of mine, Freefall: a Divine Comedy. Its title is Tillie: A Portrait of a Canadian Girl in
Training. There’s a novella I’m about two thirds of the way through, The Sinner’s Club. And I have several short
stories in process.
10. And, finally, what do you think is in
store for the future of Latino literature?
Since my fiction has been so
influenced by the Latino sensibility (I haven’t mentioned here all of the Latino
writers that have helped shaped my work), I can only hope that it will continue
to flourish. It has such distinctive voices. I’ve already mentioned Roberto
Bolano, but there are many more I could name if there were the space. I think
each Latino writer I’ve read is unique in his/her approach to narrative and
offers a rich vein for readers to explore.
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