FFWD Weekly
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Wordfest by FFWD Staff Interview with Eden Robinson Eden Robinson is one of the friendliest, most genuine people you could come across. She laughs eagerly and with good reason. It's rare indeed when an author meets success so quick and pure. In 1996, Robinson’s Traplines collection was selected as the New York Times Notable Book of the Year – she notes with a guffaw that it received a scathing review by a Times critic. Now it’s 2000, and you can forget the sophomore jinx – Monkey Beach, her debut novel set in Kitamaat, B.C., has been shortlisted for the Giller. This is no mean feat: this year's panel was Jane Urquhart, Alistair MacLeod and Margaret Atwood. If Robinson is giddy, she masks it in her writing. Monkey Beach has its moments of romping hilarity, but in all it is a sobering look at female maturity. Robinson writes from instinct. She describes Lisamarie, the novel's protagonist, as an amalgam of many people. "Her family is a template through which I describe the Haisla community" – the community Robinson herself was raised in. Lisamarie is an impetuous, tempestuous child, full of wild intelligence and sensitivity. Hearing Robinson's husky laugh and engaging her outgoing persona suggests what she admits: personal experience informs her prose. But she writes as she laughs – from her belly – so not every image is easily articulated or its function fully defined. "The section near the end in which Lisa drives with Frank (Lisa's closest childhood friend), the funeral got longer and longer on its own. I just went with it – thank God for editors!" And Robinson, one suspects, accepts certain rough edges, because they reflect reality. Robinson is the gallivanting opposite of a recluse: she has spent the last 18 months travelling about and abroad, from Scotland to London to Portland, where her sister, she notes with obvious delight, bore the family's first grandchild. Does Aunt Robinson have any time for writing? Clearly the answer is yes – she has not one, but two major novels in simultaneous progress. "I used to laugh at writers who couldn't decide," she utters with good-natured woe, "and call them waffly. Not anymore!" Like any true writer, she reveals nothing about these two works, and when asked what she does when not writing and researching, "considering other occupations" is her ready witty reply. But Robinson is joking – she loves writing. And her complete lack of pretentiousness is a welcome breath of fresh literary air. Check her out at WordFest this week, where she'll likely read from Monkey Beach, make a few self-deprecating remarks, maim you with humour and kill you with kindness. And what of the Giller? "It's an honour just to be nominated," she crows, and you actually believe her. Well, hell – she doesn't seem to be fretting, but if she bags that $25,000, it's a raging certainty she'll laugh herself to the bank.

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