It might be a debut novel, but it seems strange to call it that, given how seasoned and stellar a writer Compton is. She’s been doing this for twenty years, teaches the stuff of writing, has contributed to the country’s finest publications, and her work has appeared in many journals. In fact, a chunk of this novel was shortlisted for the CBC’s annual short fiction award in 2004, and an excerpt was published in Riddle Fence.
Tide Road tells the story of a mother whose daughter drowned under unsettling circumstances, leaving behind troubling questions and a husband and daughter left stunned by her sudden absence. The police declare it an accidental drowning, but her mother Sonia suspects otherwise, including foul play at the hands of her son-in-law. Her daughter’s death forces Sonia to “revise her perception of her daughter’s life and dramatically change the way she lives her own.” It is a fantastic novel.
Compton’s crisp, bright writing, paired with Tide Road’s motif of dealing with loss, brings to mind Lisa Moore’s masterpiece, February. They share a similar narrative structure, and with a dazzling style, x-ray a compelling character’s life and coming to terms with how it’s been irrevocably changed. Compton’s novel and style, however similar, do stand on there own here, in a way that’s made her one of my favourite finds in Atlantic Canadian writers in recent years. The novel largely centres on these lines from the book:
Memory changes, as the events of history never do …it depends on where you start, on the details you attend to, and the ones you let slip away.
The Winnipeg Review called her writing “a beauty to behold.” Big praise that she lives up to. It’s got all the teeth, heart, punch, and tenderness I want out of a novel; it flared my desire to write myself, and that’s my favourite reaction to a book. Her style of storytelling does what it should with this story: It sets you in the shoes of a shocked mother and shaken family, where a mind wonders, wanders, and wants an answer it might never get. Her short, supple, non-linear chapters were just the right way to tell this story, as they do exactly what Richard Cumnyn’s endorsement promised, “deliver the truth with a kind of fierce economy [of words].”
I expect to see this novel turn up on some Atlantic Book Award shortlists soon …
What’s been a highlight or two for you and Tide Road this year?
It’s been thrilling to hear from readers who have been touched by the novel and its characters. Before publication, I’d not really imagined what this might be like. So I’ve been surprised and delighted to discover that when a reader speaks or writes to me about Tide Road, the experience feels just the same as when I read a book I love, then burst with wanting to tell people about it.
I love reading aloud from the novel because doing so allows me to be inside the story again, and to feel as I did when I was writing it. This too confirms my belief that writing and reading are somehow almost the same activity.
Off the top of your head, without struggling for “favourites,” name one or two books you really love by an Atlantic Canadian author.
This year I reread Lisa Moore’s February and Anne Simpson’s Falling, two gorgeous novels about loss. I love Anne and Lisa’s sentences and piercing insights, and the compelling uniqueness of each of their voices. I can’t wait for whatever they do next, and I know I’ll read both of these books again.
What are some of the best books you read in 2011?
Outside the Maritimes, two books I’ve admired this year are Helen Humphreys’ deft, mature and elegant The Reinvention of Love and Rosemary Nixon’s emotionally brave, smart and stunningly beautiful Kalila. These novels enlarged my life.
What makes a good book a good book, anyway?
A magnetic connection with its reader’s heart and mind. Since the reader is fifty percent of this equation, there can never be one good book: that definition is slightly different for each of us.
You teach creative writing. What’s one or two things you’d impart on any writer?
Listen to the story. It will tell you things.
What’s some writing advice you’ve read or been told, that’s stuck?
The brilliant American novelist Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping) has said: “Usually in fiction there’s something that leaps out—an image or a moment that is strong enough to center the story.” This is what she tries to teach her students. “If they can see it, they can exploit it, enhance it, and build a fiction that is subtle and new. I don’t try to teach technique, because frankly most technical problems go away when a writer realizes where the life of the story lies.”
Is there such thing as one writer we can all learn from?
Probably not, since we are all different.
What would you have to say to a bright-eyed first year English student with dreams of being a rich, widely heralded published author?
Oh, dear. Does this student buy lottery tickets?
I would say, Write because you love sentences. Understand that poverty and silence are the norm, and that the road to publication is unimaginably long. Savour sentences the way a sommelier savours wine. Taste broadly, and develop your palate. One day you will be rich (not monetarily).
What’s your favourite part of the writing process, your least favourite?
My favourite part of writing is revising. Least favourite: sorting out the muddle that is plot.
In Tide Road, a woman’s daughter simply vanishes, leaving her husband and young daughter bewildered, but Sonia suspects her daughter’s disappearance was no accident. What sparked your idea for this novel?
After the fact, it can be very difficult to tease out the true origins of a novel. Some decisions are the result of instinctive impulses, and some result from attempts to solve technical problems.
I lived happily for years with the setting and main character of the novel before I realized something dramatic had to happen. In a way, Sonia’s search for her daughter is a manifestation of an interior search for her own younger self. It’s possible I created the outer drama in order to justify the interior story that compelled me.
What was the biggest challenge of writing this novel?
The biggest challenge in the writing was finding the wisdom necessary to tell the story from Sonia’s point of view. Until the final revision, the novel was from her daughters’ perspectives.
I’ve heard it took you 7 or 8 years to write this wonderful novel. To what do you attribute sucking up most of that time?
Yes, Tide Road was eight years from start to finish.
Novels take time. Some of this is time is necessary to solve the emotional, intellectual and technical puzzles the novel presents. Some of it is simply a function of real life intervening. I moved house three times during the years I wrote Tide Road. I wrote it in all three Maritime provinces!
You’re an accomplished short story writer, but this is a debut novel. What was the hardest part of upping a story’s wordcount to novel length?
It’s not a matter of upping the word count so much as solving the dilemmas of a story that is too complex to be resolved in small span of words. A novel does, and should, require depth and breadth and time to complete.
Why do you write?
I write in order to discover what I know; because I love sentences—and words and lines; because, despite all my complaining, I have come to relish the vexing puzzle that is plot. And I write because I love to read: writing is like getting to read the story you most crave, every day.
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