Lisa Moore's new novel This Is How We Love delves into the complexity of family ties
'I want readers to feel like they have experienced the lives of other people'
Newfoundland-based writer Lisa Moore is a four-time nominee for the Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novels Open, Alligator, and Caught as well as the short story collection Something for Everyone.
She has also won the Commonwealth Fiction Prize, the Writers' Trust Engel Findley Award, and her novel February was the winner of Canada Reads in 2013.
Moore often sets her stories in Newfoundland, where she was born and raised and lives with her family. Her latest novel, This Is How We Love, is also set in St. John's and follows the aftermath of a brutal attack where a young man is beaten and stabbed. The story explores questions about what makes a family, how family shapes us and whether we really choose who we love.
She spoke with CBC Books about the themes and process of writing This Is How We Love.
The gift of story
"I don't have a dedicated workspace. I'm a nomad — I can work anywhere. I often write longhand, and I work with a laptop on my lap. During the pandemic, I was in the country, and so I was often writing next to the wood stove.
The more I teach, the more I realize that everybody has a story — and also that stories are gifts.
"I get up at five, and I try to do the first drafts when my mind is still soft — or there's no critic — and I'll write maybe an hour and a half, two hours, and then the rest of the day I teach creative writing as well, at Memorial [University].
"So the rest of my afternoon is about returning to that work and trying to shape it and see where it might fit with whatever I did in the morning, but also looking at student work and talking to students. And I find that deeply inspiring. The more I teach, the more I realize that everybody has a story and that all those stories form a community — and also that stories are gifts."
Close to home
"I think St. John's is such fertile ground for stories because I've travelled a lot, but I've mostly lived there my whole life — it's home. And so I know a lot of people there really well, and I've seen the city change and clocked those changes.
"It's very close to the ocean — you can walk for five minutes and be on a cliff, and a wild fox can go by and there are crashing waves below. We're also an oil-producing province even now — we're dependent on resource extraction in a deeply problematic way. And all of those things affect the way we live and what's happening to us.
"We're in a bad financial state in Newfoundland, and I'm recognizing how difficult that is — we feel it in our bodies, you know? I mean, even food is about three times more expensive when you go to the grocery store in Newfoundland as it is in Toronto."
Examining stark realities
"I've seen violence escalate in St. John's over the last decade or so. And I know that a lot of young men are carrying knives, even in high school. It's kind of ubiquitous — and also ordinary. I think young people feel that it's an ordinary thing to do in a way that certainly wasn't the case when I was growing up. There's a frustration that I think is intergenerational that is bursting out possibly because of drugs, but also just because of intergenerational precarity, and the stripping away of a social safety net.
"I began to become afraid for the young people I know walking home at night after a night in a bar or from a night shift in the service industry. And it was easy to imagine that something terrible could happen. And I guess I began to write that story because I knew terrible things were happening, and it was escalating.
There's a frustration that I think is intergenerational that is bursting out possibly because of drugs, but also just because of intergenerational precarity, and the stripping away of a social safety net.
"I wanted to write this book because I felt like it would help me understand the history of what brought us here to this moment. I didn't want the stabbing that begins the book to be seen as an inexplicable or evil event — I wanted to show that it came from a long stream of frustration and deprivation and fear and lack of care in young people's lives.
"Even those who are sometimes protected can fall into that sphere of influence."
Community care
"We have been living for a long time now in a boom-and-bust economy. So it's kind of a roller-coaster ride. And that throws people's livelihoods into chaos. But there's also — especially in the arts community, but all over — a great feeling of connectivity. There's a feeling of looking out for your neighbour and caring for people.
"Part of the novel is about 'Snowmageddon,' the weather event we had in 2019. And I was reminded during an interview of how a group of people got together and called themselves 'snow angels' and went door-to-door delivering food and shoveling people out and just that sense of just how desperate people were to make sure everybody was okay."
Trusting the subconscious
"When I'm writing, I am very much dependent on what I call my subconscious. It's that moment someone else might call a daydream, where you fall into an imaginary space and follow the action. I go with whatever's happening, and then I stand back from it and look at what I've written and wonder what it means and where it came from.
"And it is in that freedom that I think that truths come — or as close as we get to the truth. And sometimes they're uncomfortable truths — sometimes they're disturbing. And sometimes they're about the greatest moments of joy or laughter or humour that we experience.
The book is about the pleasures of loving deeply, and it's about how much it matters to us as human beings to love freely.
"The book is really about both those things. It is about the pleasures of loving deeply, and it's about how much it matters to us as human beings to love freely. In terms of theme, I wanted to think about what love really is, and how we go about doing it."
Listen | Lisa Moore on The Next Chapter:
High stakes
"Every book is a risk — it's a challenge. You don't know the shape of it until you've finished it. You don't know what it is you're after. It's like a dog chasing a rabbit through the woods — you can smell the scent, but you're just going on speed. I think it's thrilling because of that.
"I don't know of any writers who absolutely know what's coming. I'm sure many writers have a better idea of the whole trajectory of a novel before they sit down than I do. I don't mind not knowing that. But I think everybody is surprised at the end of a spurt of writing by what hit the page.
It's this heart-racing desire to reach people, and it's always such a beautiful surprise when someone seems to get what you're doing.
"There's been the same amount of pressure with each book, because I want everything to be beautiful. I want it to touch people; I want people to connect with it. And I recognize how difficult it is to always communicate clearly.
"As the world changes, so do stories, and you have to keep up with the world. Even if you're writing historical fiction, you're writing about the present moment. So I think it's always this heart-racing challenge and desire to reach people, and it's always such a beautiful surprise when someone seems to get what you're doing. I think it's important to allow yourself to take risks — and in writing, it is a risk. And that's what's at stake all the time."
Readers' response
"I want readers to think about what they're feeling — I want them to be moved. I want them to feel like they have experienced the lives of other people — they've suspended disbelief, and actually experience those lives as deeply as I experienced them when I imagine them.
I want the reader to have been consumed by the story, to have hopefully had a bodily reaction to it — to laugh, to cry, to feel deeply.
"And I want them to feel enlivened by it. I mean, this is what every writer wants. I want the reader to have been consumed by the story, to have hopefully had a bodily reaction to it — to laugh, to cry, to feel deeply. And then it's up to them what they've done with that experience, or if it's meaningful."
The power of connection
"How one defines success is something that I think about when a book is coming into the world, which is the moment I'm in right now. Of course everybody wants their book to be enjoyed by as many individuals as possible. But to have even one person recount to you how they were lost in a scene or an image, or a reader who tells you at a party or something that they loved it, they [become] part of that thing I made.
"I'm suspicious of the word 'success,' because as a teacher, I know how many magnificent stories there are — I've seen the most magnificent stories that struggled to get published. So a better word for me would maybe be 'connection.' And of course my imagination runs off with, 'Oh, wouldn't it be great to make a gazillion dollars,' or whatever.
"But I quickly recognized as soon as someone says to me that they lived in that book, however briefly, that that is the joyous moment."
Lisa Moore's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
