Berth
by Carol Bruneau
Question and Answer with Carol Bruneau
1. It seems that the title of your book, BERTH, could have several meanings.
A berth could be a place for sleeping or a ship's place at the wharf.
When said out loud one automatically also thinks of birth, a beginning,
a coming into existence of something. Why did you use BERTH as the title
of your book?
In this novel I was interested in exploring how individuals navigate
a world where the only recognizable beacons are perceived and assumed
to be man-made. Willa, the central character, is thrown into such a world
when, as a small child who loses her mother, she falls into marriage and
motherhood. Berth signifies a kind of arrival, yes, a beginning, which
for Willa only comes when she stops searching outside herself for meaning
and substance, and confronts the emptiness within as the starting place
for love and responsibility. It's only when she faces her demons -- inertia,
a resistance to taking ownership of herself and her choices that stems
from resenting her earliest loss -- that she can find her place in the
world: a dock, a berth of her own making.
2. The chapter titles in BERTH refer to the sea and ships. These chapter
titles, however, do not seem to have a literal connection to the chapters
they head. What is the symbolism of the chapter titles in BERTH?
The chapter titles chart the progress of Willa's difficult "journey,"
from her arrival on the east coast, in "Winds," as a rootless,
unhappy military wife, to her dawning state of self-possession, in "Anchorage."
The navigational terms, based on traditional instruments, devices and
sailing methods, also reflect elements of the setting, an island in Halifax
Harbour where time takes on different meanings, a la "The Chronometer,"
and aspects of Willa's troubled relationship with Hugh, the island's lightkeeper.
Borrowed from a book of my grandfather's -- an orphan who sailed the world
at a young age -- such terms as "By the Stars" and "Dead
Reckoning" reflect the importance of intuition in any journey, physical
or spiritual. "Declination" refers, in a sense, to our eventual
arrival at a destination by routes that are anything but a straight line.
While the terms mark plot points, they are also intended to invest Willa's
journey with a symbolic theme, that is, the meandering path everyone takes
to selfhood, and how, by grace, fluke, will or a combination of these,
most of us make “Landfall”.
3. Willa is a unique main character in that often it is hard to like
her. In fact many times you want to shake her by the shoulders and tell
her to grow up. It is risky making your main character unlikable. Were
you nervous about doing this? Was it purposeful, or did Willa evolve into
a “bad” woman?
Yes, it is very risky, grappling with a character who is so obviously
flawed. For me, developing characters is a lot like raising children:
when they're small, you can direct who they are and what they want --
to a degree. But for them to grow up and come into their own, you have
to let go and allow them to do what they'll do, and hope that they'll
be all right.
Willa was difficult - like having a wayward daughter. I continually asked
of her, “what the heck is your problem?” In creating her, I
took what I consider an ordinary, less than ideal but relatively decent
life and started whittling --not so much to explore what makes a "bad"
woman, but to see what happens when you strip away the female relationships
that are like oxygen to most of us. Not only does Willa lack a mother,
she also has no sisters, blood or otherwise. Because of this major gap
in her life, she stumbles as a mother. Stumbling as a mother -- at times
even failing as a mother - only completes her alienation from a potential
network of women friends, the other young mothers she encounters. In rejecting
their small, tightly-focused world, Willa finds a certain "freedom"
that lies outside their moral boundaries - and, free of their influence,
she chooses badly.
But, on a very basic level, who can blame her? She's married to a man
who is mostly absent, her circumstances constantly dictated by his job.
Who doesn't, at least sometimes, dream of having more fun, a "better,"
more romantic life? In creating Willa initially I imagined an ordinary,
decent woman acting on impulse, the impulse to run away driven by loneliness.
It wasn't my intention to create a "bad" woman, but more to
explore as honestly as possible the conditions and consequences of lust.
One of the seven deadlies, it's more readily forgiven in men than in women.
Yes, Willa makes bad and eventually self-destructive choices; but does
this make her a "bad" woman? Would a guy in her position be
labeled a "bad" man? More to the point, I suppose, is the idea
that people become their choices; and therefore, personality and character
are not merely inborn, but a matter of ongoing prerogative.
4. Willa is a woman who makes bad choices and is essentially the author
of her own troubles. This is rare in literature and film today where the
woman is often portrayed as either a victim or a heroine. What did you
want to convey about women in BERTH?
Both feminism and popular culture, despite its lack of taboos, seem
to overlook the reality (and consequences ) of heterosexual lust as it's
felt by women. Willa becomes a victim of her lust, but it is only through
claiming it that she can move forward to any degree of self-possession.
In her own small
way she becomes, by the end, the heroine of her own life. While Willa's
journey into badness is extreme, overall it mirrors a certain reality,
that regardless of circumstances, women are as responsible as men for
seeking light -- and love, in all its forms -- where they can find it.
Whether this means rejecting victimhood or becoming a heroine is simply
a matter of scale; most of us women live somewhere in between. Living
a good life, regardless of one's gender, is a daily process of conscious
choice.
5. The environment, especially the sea and the island of Thrumcap are
very important in the book. Can you describe the significance of this
environment, especially the climactic storm that batters the island and
throws Willa and her son into a life and death struggle?
Thrumcap Island encapsulates both the romantic isolation and claustrophobia
of Willa's situation with Hugh and her circular journey towards selfhood.
Both the island and the sea serve not just as the realistic setting for
her story, but as symbols of Willa's -- and many individuals' -- struggle
to stay afloat in a capricious, often dangerous world.
Both the setting and the climactic storm are rooted in reality. Based
on McNabs Island at the southeastern end of Halifax Harbour, Thrumcap
bears the brunt of weather barreling in off the North Atlantic. Hurricane
Juan hit during my writing of Berth, and though not quite a gift,
it provided first-hand the ingredients of Willa's terrifying experience
of being at nature's mercy. In its extremity the storm is quite literally
the act of God that will either destroy Willa or save her.
The question of moral responsibility carries over in a subtle way to people's
responsibility towards the environment. Mercury contamination is a central
theme in Berth. Interwoven with plot; the broader theme is a reflection
on how people use and abuse the natural environment, behaving as though
its capacity for abuse and neglect is infinite. This ties in with the
way most of us live in a kind of oblivion, a blind faith that things will
carry on and be okay. So, Berth is, in many ways, an exploration
of faith and what passes for faith in our challenged, fallen world.
6. There are Sea King helicopters in BERTH. Sea Kings were the centre
of controversy several years ago when Jean Chrétien scraped the
Tory contract to replace the aging and arguably dangerous military Sea
Kings with new helicopters. The influence of military life is described
in detail in the book. What kind of research did you do on Sea Kings and
what is the east coast attitude towards the Sea King issue?
The military angle is what first inspired the novel -- a combination
of my growing up in a city where the Sea Kings have been a daily fixture
overhead, and a growing awareness of the sometimes deadly toll military
service exacts on its personnel. My earliest research for Berth
involved interviewing Sea
King crew members at their east coast base in Shearwater, and listening
to their anecdotes and experiences. I was and still am amazed by their
courage, camaraderie and fabulous sense of humour despite their being
at the mercy of obsolete aircraft that not only require constant maintenance,
but are often a danger to fly. While the men I interviewed defended the
choppers -- "Think of your favourite hot car back in 1960, "
one said -- I'd say the public consensus hereabouts is that it's scandalous
to endanger the lives of those we expect to defend us by denying them
proper equipment to do the job. A product of the Cold War, the Sea Kings
were designed to track submarines --before submarines were nukes, and
long, long before star wars and the war against terrorism.
Would I fly in a Sea King? To me, art isn't (yet) worth dying for. Sitting
inside some grounded specimens was enough.
7. Hugh is also a very interesting and complex character. Is Hugh based
on a real life person?
No, Hugh Gavin is purely a product of my imagination. I don't know
if anybody's gotten that his initials, HG, represent the chemical notation
for mercury. In creating him I was aiming for a blend of hottie and loser:
the bad, no, bruised apple who happens to have many endearing, attractive
attributes, especially to a woman afraid to look too far beneath the surface.
Really, the more Willa falls for him, the more elusive he becomes, often
mirroring back at her the glibness and superficiality she has so restlessly
sought to escape. He is at first all that (she thinks) she wants, but
the more she fixes on her
own vision of his desirability, the less desirable and real he becomes.
8. Hugh is a lighthouse keeper, a job that is on the decline with the
advent of mechanized lighthouses. Are there still lighthouse keepers in
the Maritimes? What do you think is the romantic allure of the lighthouse
keeper? Why is there also an element of tragedy that also surrounds the
idea of the lighthouse keeper?
With only a couple of exceptions, lighthouses on Canada's east coast
are all automated, and have been since the late 1980s, when Berth
is set. As part of my research, I interviewed a former lighthouse keeper
and family members of other lighthouse keepers affiliated with the Nova
Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society. I was blessed to hear many colourful
stories and anecdotes about this difficult but, in certain ways, romantic
way of life. An uncle of mine once worked as a lighthouse keeper on a
remote island north of Cape Breton Island, a place so isolated it's hard
to think of it as anything but challenging. While the purpose of keeping
a light was and is to save lives, the reality is that ships bigger than
apartment buildings sometimes vanish in the ocean. Living on the Atlantic,
even in an urban setting, serves as a constant reminder that nature is
bigger than us. Besides warning sailors away from hazards, lightkeepers,
especially on islands, were often the first on the scene picking up bodies.
9. In many ways BERTH is a local book - the life of a military wife
on the east coast of Canada. What are the general themes that make BERTH
something that anyone can relate to?
The urge to run away, to indulge in a fantasy, is something, surely,
most people harbour, if only momentarily. To act on the fantasy is quite
another thing, of course, and to suffer the consequences can be either
instructive or completely destructive. Berth is about living in
a world where ideals are
often empty of meaning, where the environment is less than pristine and
love simply a series of motions. On some level there are aspects of Willa's
world that apply well to the dot-com world where hope is computer-generated,
and moral responsibility to oneself and others reduced. The novel is
about seeking light where it is available; it's about making choices,
and how one's quality of life is a matter of choice, and not just circumstance.
10. Who and/or what influences Carol Bruneau?
Landscape and setting are a continual influence, as are people's stories
and anecdotes -- the small but serendipitous "clangs" when ideas
and images resonate. It's what lies under the surface of daily experience
that intrigues me; as a novelist I'm always looking for patterns and form.
Increasingly, I'm
influenced by visual art, whether sculpture or painting, and interested
in how the creative process crosses the boundaries between writing and
art.
My favourite writers change regularly, but I'm currently enthralled with
Virginia Woolf, and this after a lifelong love of Alice Munro and Margaret
Laurence and a more recent fixation on women writers from the American
South. And before any of that, William Faulkner, and from my earliest,
earliest memories, Lucy Maud Montgomery.
11. What are you working on now?
Another novel and a collection of short stories, and research into
women sculptors in late nineteenth century France.
Find
out more about Berth.
