(photo: Bruce Erskine) Carol Bruneau is the author of two short story collections (After the Angel Mill and Depth Rapture) as well as the acclaimed novels Purple for Sky and Berth. Born in Halifax, Carol continues to live there with her husband and three sons, where she teaches at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. In 2001, Carol won the City of Dartmouth Fiction Prize and the Thomas H. Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize for Purple for Sky. Her latest novel, Glass Voices (Cormorant Books), is about the life of a woman who survives the Halifax Explosion of December 6, 1917.
What inspired you to write Glass Voices?
Having grown up in Halifax, I'd always been obsessed with the Explosion--the rubble is still around if you know where to look. I grew up not far from where the Mont Blanc's anchor came to rest, near the part of the city known as The Grounds in my book, that was an odd mix of rural & urban until it was developed in the 1980s. Over the years, the accounts of Explosion survivors always gripped me--accounts in newspapers and, particularly, the ones in Janet Kitz's book Shattered City. It was an image in this book of an orphaned, blinded infant on a relief train that captured my heart most, the tragedy--and all the questions--that surrounded this image. Not that my book is an attempt to tell this anonymous child's story--but writing Glass Voices was a way of dealing with such unanswerable questions as WHY? such innocents must suffer the things they do.
What was the hardest thing about writing this novel?
It took 8 years to write. The most challenging aspect was devising a dramatic structure that supported my fictional characters' stories as these unfold separately and yet in sync with the historic events at the heart of the book. The hardest thing was undertaking the seemingly endless revisions. But I had as my inspiration the actual survivors of the Explosion, and also my dad, a WWII veteran who was born the same year as the disaster--what models of perseverance and stick-with-it-ness! Compared to what such people have faced, my task was piddly indeed.
Who is your favourite character in the book, and why?
I love Lucy, of course--though I love her husband Harry too. But Lucy to me represents the double self in all of us: the higher-minded, more generous self that we would all aspire to, as well as the day-to-day and sometimes
petty & pedestrian self or personality that responds and reacts (sometimes less than charitably) to other people and situations often beyond one's control. Over and over again Lucy is called upon to rise above her own limitations--and she does. I admire that. I admire anyone who gets past unspeakable loss and moves forward. I admire anyone who can be selfless.
The Halifax Explosion was the largest man-made explosion prior to the atomic bomb. How does this event play a role in the novel?
The Explosion is integral to the book; it is at the heart of my characters' experience. The challenge was to put it into an historical perspective and allow the characters and their lives to emerge above and around and beyond it.
There's been lots of nonfiction published about the Explosion, and relatively little fiction, besides Hugh MacLennan's classic Barometer Rising that came out in the 1940s, and Robert MacNeil's Burden of Desire, published maybe 15 years ago. Both of these works deal with the catastrophe in its immediacy, without considering it in a wider context. For me the interest is how people manage to endure such a thing and move on, rebuilding their lives. So I wanted to catch up with survivors years later, and consider the event within more of a continuum. This became even more pressing following the events of 9/11--a very different catastrophe, obviously, yet roughly similar in terms of loss of life.
Glass Voices is about the life of a woman on the East Coast who survives the Halifax Explosion. What are the general themes that make the novel something that anyone can relate to?
The novel is an exploration of the inner resolve--faith? humour? stubbornness?--that enables a person to go on after suffering great loss. For Lucy--and for most people--giving up is not an option. On a more particular level, Glass Voices is about the resolve and determination of mothers and parents in general--the fact that we all want the best for our children, we all want above everything to keep them safe, and that in this world that is sometimes impossible. The novel is about facing the worst that can happen--it's about accepting what you can't change, and changing what you can.
You teach creative writing classes in Nova Scotia. What's the one piece of advice you would give to students?
I tell my students--and all writers who aspire to being published--that perseverance pays. Getting published is like a lottery; you can't win unless you're in. If you stick with what you love, eventually your number has to come up.
What, if anything, have you learned from your students?
I love being around new writers; their energy and enthusiasm is infectious. It always reminds me of the joy of writing, the fun of creating--something that gets forgotten sometimes under the weight of revision & the business &
the hard work of writing. There's something so great about watching a roomful of people writing, each of them wrapped up in the solitary joy of the imagination. This is why we write, to be in that space, in that moment. Being with new writers always brings me back to this joy. This is the best lesson any writer can learn.
Why did you decide to become a writer?
It started when I was in Grade 2, when I first learned to string words together into sentences. I quickly discovered the solitary joy of doing that, the "cone of silence" writing could put up around me. Around the same time, my sister was born and my parents would want me to help out with dishes, etc--though they'd never ask this if I were doing homework. You don't get much homework in Grade 2, so to maximize the quiet time at my desk, I started writing stories--a way of being, well, temporarily untouchable. You could say it became addictive.
Which one book would you recommend today?
As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner.
What do you think you would have been if you hadn't become a writer?
If I'd been any good at math, I might have liked to be a doctor.
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