Interview with author Caroline Moir

 

A warm welcome to Caroline Moir, whose novel Brockenspectre will be published by Victorina Press on 12th November.

THE BOOK

Brocken spectre: the magnified and detached shadow of an observer; typically on a mountain
 

The peace of an isolated Lake District university campus is disturbed by the arrival of mature student, Hild. For Miriam and Ed, the newcomer brings darkness and disorder which reshapes every aspect of their lives, and strikes at the core of their relationship.

Miriam is determined to exorcise the shadow Hild has cast, but how? And can she justify keeping another woman out of the light, the education, she has enjoyed?

Brockenspectre was shortlisted for the Sceptre Prize in 2013

You can pre-order a copy here.

 THE INTERVIEW

Congratulations on the publication of Brockenspectre. There is an intriguing story at its heart, but this novel also feels like a love letter to the Lake District – how important is a sense of place in your work?

I am not sure it is a love letter. I have a love-hate relationship with the Lake District – it rains a lot! In my early life rain was an event – I remember ‘swimming’ in the rain on a verandah as a young child. In the Lake District you factor it in to whatever you do.  But a sense of place is hugely important in my work. My first novel was largely set in the New Forest, my most recent novel is set in British Columbia, and in my memoir-in-short-story place is crucial. I think it is because I was brought up until I was thirteen abroad, paid long visits to my father in the Middle East, and have lived and worked in the USA and Canada.  For me places are characters in my fiction, and even, I think, in my plays.

I believe you wrote the original version of Brockenspectre quite a while ago. Tell me a little more about where the idea originally came from and how it has developed and changed?

The original stimulus was twofold. My husband was being stalked by a parishioner and one day I wondered whether you could get rid of someone by ‘writing them out’. Originally I didn’t want Hild, the stalker, to have a voice in case she dominated Miriam. However I felt that was too one-sided and I gave Hild, and Miriam’s partner, Ed, voices, which makes the novel less partisan, more understanding and more balanced. I was astounded the other day to read the first version and realised it began with the Christmas ball where the published version ends.

Who is your favourite character in Brockenspectre and what do you love (and hate!) about him or her?

I don’t have a favourite character in Brockenspectre but I am really interested in the two main characters, Miriam and Hild, what makes them tick, and how, despite their antipathy, they are similar. You can’t have one without the other.

 

I’ve heard you mention that some readers think Hild is not a real character, but rather a figment of Miriam’s imagination. Did you deliberately set out to create this ambiguity and mystery?

No, I didn’t. Because I didn’t want Miriam to have a one-way street of antagonism towards Hild, then Hild becomes like her and yet not like her. Curiously when I was first writing Brockenspectre, I was also reading a lot of Nathaniel Hawthorne who is a very unsettling author. I came across his novel The Marble Faun which I hadn’t read and discovered it also had two characters at odds with each other called Miriam and Hilda. That, and the fact that I began the novel on the day I started Margaret Atwood’s Robber Bride, having had it on my shelf for ages, and found it had a similar theme and opened on the same date, sent shivers down my spine which may have led to ambiguity and an almost claustrophobic atmosphere.

Who are your favourite writers and have they had an influence on your prose style?

I don’t have favourite writers – I have enthusiasms for one writer after another and bore my friends with my discoveries! I read a lot of European and fiction from round the world, particularly from the Americas and Caribbean. At the moment I am hooked on Monique Roffey and Tessa McWatt, who are British and published in this country, but whose settings and themes stem from their ethnicity and upbringing. Saying that one of the books about which I am persistently enthusiastic and which has influenced me stylistically is Train Dreams by the sadly now dead American writer, Denis Johnson. I marvel at the transparency of his prose.

Brockenspectre is your second novel – the first being Jemillia in 2007 – and you are also a playwright and short story writer. What are the different challenges you face when crafting these alternative forms?

I am a playwright by commission. I have considerable experience of youth and community theatre and when I started writing short stories and novels I tended to write them as if they were plays – lots of dialogue and not much else. I had to flesh the fiction out. I still have difficulty writing at length I have had short stories published but I am not sure that I am a classic short story writer. Though I very much enjoy reading both, I find it difficult to close my fiction, which I think is demanded by the novella and short stories – and plays. I like the open-endedness of the novel form.

Your publishers, Victorina Press, believe very strongly in the principles of bibliodiversity. What does this mean to you personally and was it a factor in your decision to submit your work to them?

For me bibliodiversity represents an opportunity to publish all kinds of authors and all kinds of genres from many different countries. Bibliodiversity is not restrictive. I submitted Brockenspectre to Victorina Press for precisely that reason. The novel doesn’t fit the current bill, because in it I examine what happens when ambitious women are in competition. I also submitted the novel and Brockenspectre is set in the English Lake District and Argentine and Chile. I greatly admire what Victorina Press is doing.  

What can we hope to see from you next? A new novel, another play, or something else?

I am working on a prequel to my very short novel – not a novella! – Hunting Jenet Nish which is set in British Columbia between 1914 and 1971, and which recounts Jenet Nish’s search for her mixed-race namesake

Thank you for talking to me today, Caroline. Good luck with Brockenspectre – I hope it flies off the shelves!

 

MORE ABOUT CAROLINE

Caroline Moir was born in the Sudan and has lived and worked in places as far apart as Newfoundland and Syria, Italy and Argentina. 

She is re-writing her first novel Jemillia, set in a future New Forest and Edinburgh, and has just completed Hunting Jenet Nish, set in British Columbia, the first of a historical trilogy.

As a playwright she was commissioned to write St Wilfrid of Ripon 2009, by Ripon Cathedral, and by Kendal Community Theatre A Passion for Kendal 2012, Lady Anne Clifford – a woman cast out 2013, and The Wednesday Play ~ plot to kill Jesus 2015. She was Literary Director for Kendal Yarns Festival of New Plays in 2016.
 
She has read her work for the BBC, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and at ‘Aye Write’ in Glasgow, and most recently at Lancaster LitFest 2019 and online with Yvonne Battle-Felton. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Glasgow University. 

Her memoir in short stories, the swaying corridors of the wagons-lits, was long listed for the Cinnamon Literature Award in 2020.

You can pre-order Brockenspectre here.