The qualities of Jessica Grant’s writing are beyond words, and for that reason, she might be the freshest, most readably original voice in the country. In the spring of 2010, the country clearly agreed with that sentiment. Her debut novel, Come, Thou Tortoise — a Globe & Mail Book of the Year — won the heavy-hitting Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the prestigious Winterset Award, and the Newfoundland & Labrador Downhome Fiction Award. She also won The National Post’s Canada Also Reads competition, garnering close to 50% of the votes, and is one of the ten official selections for the 2010 Evergreen Award.
Come, Thou Tortoise is an innovative, unprecedented, unforgettable gem, and, pardon the cliché but I mean it: There is nothing quite like this. The story, the tone, the characters, the ultra-modern diction, the delivery: all Jessica Grant’s. Grant’s crisp, accurate descriptions dance the story so vividly off the pages as the story’s heroine, Audrey Flowers, sees and describes the world in a consistently unique way: “Why did she name her horse [Rambo] after that sweaty, bullety Sylvester Stallone?” Bullety; no one has ever used that adjective before, that apt neologism. As mentioned in her acknowledgements, it is a very “punny” novel, Grant plain has fun with language. Her outwardly off-kilter novel works because it is balanced with a sadness not milked into melodrama like most writers would do. This is a book you will never forget.
Every story has been told, writers are getting sharper and more talented, but no one except Jessica Grant is writing so fresh and so clean in a way that is accessible to a broad audience. Her first book, a collection of shorts, Making Light of Tragedy, is an original piece of work, perhaps most notable for its off-kilter, endearing, and often over-contemplative characters. Every story is delectably unpredictable and delivered in a distinctive way. She’s unique, vibrant, fun, or at times sad-sans-pathos. “I jogged down the walk from my building, hopscotching over the ice patches.” Hopscotching as a verb. She experiments with structure, has fun with language, and her characters are all experiencing some facet of life too few of us can tune into. Whether you want to read something for its creative merit, its originality, or because it’s plain fun to read, buy this book and meet these characters. I’ll reel it in, but I’m blowing nothing out of proportion: these stories have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, and the opening story alone won the country’s top short fiction award, The Journey Prize, in addition to the heavy-hitting Western Magazine Award.
Search Salty Ink’s archives for Salty ink’s reviews of her books, or, click on a book cover below to read more about that book at their publishers’ websites.
Salty Ink Q&A with Jessica Grant
Off the top of your head, without struggling for “favourites,” name one or two books you really liked by a fellow Atlantic Canadian author.
Mean Boy by Lynn Coady.
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston.
If you weren’t a writer and professor, you’d be a … ?
Good conversationalist. That is my dream. To be, I believe the word is, scintillating.
What, in your mind, marked a turning point or real upswing in your writing career?
Coming home to Newfoundland. I’d been away for ten years and I came home and, just like that, I wrote differently. I don’t know why this is. I’d like to say it was all Newfoundland, but I think the time I spent in the States was crucial. The U.S. is a very dreamy, literary place. Something of that sunk in. But I couldn’t write while I was living there.
For you, what makes for a good book?
I have to be surprised. I am very demanding about surprises. I don’t mean in terms of plot. I mean the ideas have to surprise me. They have to surprise me by being true. I have to fall off the sentences in amazement. Also, the voice must be earnest; even in its irony, the voice must be looking earnestly outward, trying to communicate.
In Come, Thou Tortoise, in a mistaken act of heroics, Audrey disarms an air marshal aboard a flight. Later, her father builds an airplane in the basement to help her get over a fear flying. In your short story, “The Plane Princess,” a woman finds a flight attendant badge, and on her next flight, wears it and acts out a fantasy she’s “one of them.” A.) are you aware of your fixation with airport culture and currently working towards a pilot’s license? B.) where do all of your original ideas come from, are they the product of exploring a fleeting thought and really running with it?
A.) Yes, it’s an obsession. I’m possibly at my happiest in an airport. What’s that movie where Tom Hanks gets trapped in a terminal. Terminal. I loved that movie. I love watching planes take off. I love watching them land. I think they’re amazing. Very few people seem to feel this.
B.) I don’t know how to answer this part. I like part A a lot, but part B is hard. Maybe some of the ideas come from odd thoughts I’m about to dismiss, because I think they aren’t worth their salt, but then I say, hey, maybe you are salty enough, come here, let’s put you on the page and see how you shake out.
Your work features a great deal of animals, and to a lesser degree, scientists devoting their life to obscure and specific research related to lab animals. These elements of Come, Thou Tortoise and some of your short fiction, like “Humanesque,” are well-informed. Do you have a background in the life sciences or is this the product of research? Are you an animal lover or just fascinated by esoteric scientific research? What’s the deal?
My mother is a psychology professor who studies animal behaviour. She has a lab. In that lab there have been rats and goldfish. I’ve had close encounters with both.
Am I an animal lover? I love the animals I’ve known personally. They are, in no particular order:
A horse (Mick), four hamsters (Pumpkin, Pumpkin II, Squeaky, Mogul [as in a ski bump, not a business tycoon]), six cats (Cedes, Tosca, Aida, Cosi, Lumpy, Mittens), a dog (Yoldi), a tortoise (Scooter), a caterpillar (Pilly).
Yes, I read author bios and acknowledgements, and it says in your bio for Making Light of Tragedy that you’ve written music in addition to literature. Elaborate, and is this something you still dabble in?
I no longer dabble, thanks be to Jesus. I used to play guitar (not well) and write intense political songs that made people uncomfortable – which I enjoyed. This was when I was living in the States. I played open mics and after a while got gigs and a bass player and a CD. We travelled around with our gear in a van. It was not a cool van. I played in Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Hartford CT, Ithaca NY. I’m kind of proud of that. But I’d be mortified for anyone to hear now what I was playing then.
Salty Ink has twice spoken of your “not milking the sadder aspects of the story into melodrama ,” and your “sad-without-pathos moments.” It works, it suits your style and delivery of the story, but is it a conscious choice you make as a writer, to not tug too overtly at a reader’s heartstrings or to do so at length?
When I started writing, I had no sense of humour and I wanted to make my readers cry. This was in my late teens, early twenties. I tried to write a novel. It was quite bad. In fact, that whole novel ended up compressed into a single sentence in one of the stories in Making Light of Tragedy. What does this have to do with not pulling on the reader’s heartstrings. I don’t know. But again, I’d say it’s about the idea dictating its treatment. You remain true to the idea. The reader’s heartstrings shouldn’t come into your brain while you write. (That’s quite an image – sorry.)
If a bad storm trapped you in cabin for a full week, who’d you rather spend the week with, Audrey Flowers or Uncle Thoby?
That’s the kind of hypothetical question my grandmother used to ask, and not about characters, but about real people, and the question would usually involve leaving someone to die in the desert. Actually writing a novel is kind of like being trapped in a cabin with your characters, except for years, not a week. And so you have to love them a whole lot. I’d be happy with either Audrey or Uncle Thoby. In fact, I would not say no to spending time with either. I miss them.
Audrey “Oddly” Flowers is accused of being IQ-challenged throughout the book. I prefer to think of her as ethereal and open-minded. Certainly endearing. You?
Yeah, the novel treats the idea of IQ with irony. I hope this comes across. Skulls can be measured. Brains can be measured. But inner life – or intelligence – can’t be. We are immeasurable. We are universes. This is a paradox. We’re finite. But we’re infinite. This paradox is made manifest in the book through Winnifred, the tortoise, who is a portable room, and whose room is both involuted, like a galaxy, and cosy. We are portable rooms too. Or take the human brain in Audrey’s father’s lab. Audrey can’t get over how small it is. She can hold it in her lap. And yet, it’s a person. It makes no sense to her how small a human brain is. But back to IQ: An IQ test, as her dad tells her, is a test that measures how similar your brain is to the brain that made up the test. Audrey’s brain is not similar to the brain that made up the test. But is she less busy on the inside? No.
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great interview. Thank you!