FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
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| BOOKS Interview with Lynn Coady Strange Heaven is a ruthless book, ruthlessly honest and ruthlessly funny. Writer Lynn Coady feels that you have to be ruthless to write fiction. Still, she wonders whether she may face future lawsuits from certain "characters" once she's made her millions. "It wasn't hard to write - it's hard to have it published now, the repercussions of it. When I was writing the thing I never thought about getting it published and if I had I'm sure I would have been censoring myself all the way." Thank God she didn't. Imagine how the following phrase would read if it was watered down: "Back to her ways, back to her ways. I can Jesus friggin bastard see it now. Right back on the proverbial fucking horse she gets, never learning a goddamned Jesus bastard thing." Strange Heaven, a fictional story based largely on Coady's own experiences growing up in the Maritimes, is on-your-arse funny. It deals intelligently and irreverently with Bridget Murphy and her family in the months following Bridget's pregnancy. Bridget carries the child to term, gives birth, gives the child up for adoption and is promptly sent to a psych ward where she is treated for a severe case of... apathy? She then returns to her family - consisting of a fire-breathing father, mentally-handicapped uncle, senile grandmother, mentally abusive ex-boyfriend and perpetually drunk-but-happy uncle. Is truth stranger than fiction? "I've got a lot of stuff about my own grandmother in the book, I have an uncle who is mentally handicapped. They're two of the most unique people I've ever met. They both have very unique ways of speaking and interacting with other people. And you can't just let fodder like that go by." But it isn't her uncle and her grandmother that Coady is worried about offending. "They're not going to mind because my uncle doesn't mind anything and grandma is dead. There are other people from whom I've borrowed and I might get into a bit of trouble there. I try not to think about it too much." Coady says she knew all along that her family and friends were inherently comic in the way they acted and spoke. "There is something about that Maritime outlook. I don't know what causes it but there is something about that strong sense of irony and self-depreciation - sometimes a little too strong - that lends itself to humor." She is considerably more nervous about reading from her work while in the Maritimes than in the Prairies, for obvious reasons, and despite pressure from her publicist has drawn the line at reading in her home town. "I think that the people who would come to see me would do it more out of curiosity than as a literary thing. 'Oh let's go see the Coady girl read from her dirty book.' I don't think I could handle that," she says. Coady has worked hard at becoming much more than that Coady girl. After finishing her undergraduate degree in Ottawa she spent time trying to live in "the real world." She was saved from it when she was offered a prestigious fellowship to write at the University of BC. She moved from one coast to the other and found the true strength in her voice. Although Coady has had many of her works published in journals and magazines throughout Canada and the Maritimes, she feels like she has established herself more in Vancouver than anywhere else. She is already working on her next project, a play set to go up in Vancouver at the end of June, upon her return from her book tour. Coady's ruthlessness will ensure that she's not a struggling artist for very long, although her imminent success may prove double-edged (those nasty lawsuits). |
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