| Eden Robinson has a bright personality and an infectious laugh that belie the dark underpinnings of her writing. Before the age of 30, she had written a successful and critically acclaimed book of short stories, Traplines, and begun Monkey Beach, a semi-autobiographical novel that would go on to be shortlisted for a Governor General’s Award and the Giller Prize. Both of these works deal with unhappiness, self-destruction and death, chronicling the darker side of human relationships.
Ten years on, she has produced her second novel, Blood Sports, and is on a cross-country tour promoting it.
"When I began working on it, I was writing a different novel in the morning and working on Blood Sports in the afternoon," she says. Over time, the latter project became her main focus. Robinson is not known for speed – "I’m a turtle-writer," she says with a laugh – and admits it’s taken her as many as 30 drafts to complete a story. The ideas behind Blood Sports had been in her mind for a long time and, in fact, her short story "Contact Sports," published 10 years ago, shares characters and plot details with her new novel.
Blood Sports is set in rundown East Vancouver and revolves around the relationship between Tom, his ex-junkie girlfriend Paulie, and Jeremy, Tom’s suave, psychopathic cousin. While Tom and Paulie try to make a new life for themselves and their daughter, Melody, they are haunted by the ghosts of the past: Jeremy, a longtime criminal, manipulated both Tom and Paulie as teenagers, partly to use them for his criminal ends, and partly out of sheer sadism and a strange obsession with Tom. Four years on, Jeremy is in prison and his former associates show up to kidnap Tom, Paulie and Melody, holding them hostage in an attempt to recover money Jeremy has cheated them out of.
With her straightforward style, using the cadences of modern speech and slang, Robinson begins the novel by grounding it in a sense of realism – describing the lives of Tom and Paulie, interspersing scenes of domesticity with glimpses of life in East Vancouver. Soon, however, the story starts to become surreal, evolving into a fantastical crime novel and moving between the past and the present to simultaneously describe the evolution of Tom and Paulie’s relationship alongside the mental confusion and destructiveness of Jeremy’s manipulation of Tom. Touches of realism continue to appear throughout the novel and, aided by skilful descriptive flourishes, prevent it from becoming a flight of fancy while adding to its complexity.
Robinson says that Blood Sports began as an attempt to write a tender love story between Tom and Paulie, but morphed into something quite different.
"Originally, Jeremy was only supposed to appear in flashbacks," she says, "but he kept creeping in more and more." Somewhere along the line, she also discovered that she was "really good at writing torture." Indeed, some of the novel’s most graphic sequences are her clinical descriptions of the torture inflicted on Tom by Jeremy and later by the criminals who kidnap and ransom him.
Robinson also reveals that the characters of Paulie and Melody were not supposed to figure in the story originally, but ultimately entered the scene as the novel took shape – almost against the author’s will. "I was so upset they had a baby," she says, laughing.
Robinson’s sardonic sense of humour comes through both in person and in her writing. Discussing a recent operation, she tells of how a doctor allowed her to keep two gallstones removed from her gallbladder and jokes that she wants to turn them into a pair of earrings. In the context of her writing, her sense of humour helps to temper the high seriousness that might otherwise accompany the awful things that happen to the characters. Blood Sports is peppered with darkly comic images that also suggest a visual sensibility in her work, which seems informed by movies and television.
"I was a TV-holic for many years," admits Robinson. Videotapes also play a role in the novel, as Jeremy obsessively records his crimes – particularly the times he tortures Tom. Transcripts of these videotapes make up a large section early in the book and help to fill in the details of Tom and Jeremy’s past. With the transcripts, says Robinson, it was possible to fill in details without adopting a character’s point of view and with "a lot less judgment in the narration."
Critics have cited numerous influences on Robinson’s work, comparing her writing with everything from Southern Gothic to Stephen King, and she readily acknowledges the influence that horror has had on her as a writer.
"There’s something in the claustrophobic mood of horror that resonates with depression," she says, revealing that she has struggled with that affliction.
Refreshing for some readers will be the novel’s deliberate sense of place. Much like Monkey Beach, which was set in the northern B.C. community of Kitimat, Blood Sports eschews the notion that novels, particularly fantastical ones, must be set in completely fictional locales. The story is distinctly set in a real neighbourhood in Vancouver – albeit a distorted version of the city.
"I couldn’t set the novel anywhere else," says Robinson, "but it bites me in the ass when I try to get an American publisher."
On occasion, Robinson’s strengths can become pitfalls. While the novel is carefully constructed, at times plot details remain murky or are difficult to pick up. And although Robinson’s writing style, with its use of contemporary speech, makes the novel a quick read, it also means actions are sometimes difficult to follow, particularly when the reader isn’t attuned to contemporary slang.
The last 10 years have seen Robinson move from a young university student to an internationally acclaimed and successful writer, but she has little to say about fame, joking that it hasn’t been as "stalker-inspiring" as she had thought.
"Maybe stalkers just don’t want to come up to Kitimat," she says.
When asked what’s next, Robinson lists off a number of projects, including a potential sequel to Blood Sports. "Death Sports," she says, "the finale. It’s still percolating at the moment. Look for it in 2017." |
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