Why Canadian children's writer Kenneth Oppel aims to be less critical of himself and others
CBC Radio | Posted: October 21, 2022 7:28 PM | Last Updated: October 21, 2022
When he was in high school, Kenneth Oppel wrote his first children's book. He sent it to the legendary children's writer Roald Dahl, who sent it to his agent. A few years later, it was published, and since then Oppel has written numerous acclaimed novels for middle-grade and young adult readers.
His latest novel Ghostlight is a spooky supernatural story set on Toronto Island. In it, a teen named Gabe, who revels in his job giving ghost tours, meets the ghost of Rebecca, a girl who died after a fall from Gibraltar Point Lighthouse in 1839. After learning that her death might not have been an accident, Gabe tries to solve the mystery and encounters more ghosts, some not quite as friendly as Rebecca.
Oppel took The Next Chapter's version of the Proust Questionnaire.
Name your favourite writers.
There are so many. I would go with George Eliot, Ian McEwan, Jonathan Franzen, Charlotte Brontë, Edith Wharton. In all cases, they're so good at immersing the reader in a fully-imagined world. The characters, the social milieu, the conflicts — you get a sense of these characters as people and how they react to virtually any situation.
You know how they feel about their clothing, how they feel about politics and how they feel about their children and spouses. It's that richness that I most admire in my favourite writers.
You know how they feel about their clothing, how they feel about politics and how they feel about their children and spouses. It's that richness that I most admire in my favourite writers.
Tell me about your favourite character in fiction.
One of my favourite characters is Lily Bart in Edith Wharton's House of Mirth. She's fallible. She is ambitious. She makes terrible choices sometimes, but at every point you fully empathize with her.
And again, there's just that depth of character and interiority. You feel like you are living through her experience and understanding the period that she's writing about and living in.
If you could change something about yourself, what would it be?
I would choose to be less critical in every way — of myself, of others. Not only because it's unpleasant, but also because it sort of shuts doors. When you're critical, you ignore things. You waste chances and opportunities to learn about yourself or about other people and different ways of seeing things.
When you're critical, you sort of ignore things. You waste chances and opportunities to learn about yourself or about other people and different ways of seeing things.
What is your greatest regret?
I have squandered opportunities, personally and professionally, through fear, probably. Pride, intellectual anxiety, all those things. Moments where I should have said, "Yes" and instead I said, "No."
What is your favourite journey?
I love train journeys. One of my favourite journeys was taking the train from Toronto to Vancouver: four nights, four days on a train. It was March, so I got to go through the snowy mountains.
I work really well on the train, too. I find something just very inspiring about being in this moving object. The view is amazing. If you get a meal, so much the better.
So I think if I had to pick a journey, it would always be something where I had that moment of just leaving the station, that really exciting moment where the journey's just beginning, there's so much potential and anything could happen.
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
The lowest depth of misery for me would probably involve estrangement or separation from my kids or my partner or loved ones or friends. I think that's pretty low.
The lowest depth of misery for me would probably involve estrangement or separation from my kids or my partner or loved ones or friends.
If you want even more abject misery, add sickness into it, too. That would be pretty, pretty deep misery.
What is your greatest achievement?
Personally, it would be having a part in raising my kids.
Professionally, I'd say one or two of my books that have special significance for me that I'm especially proud of — they would probably be Airborn and The Nest. Very different books, but Airborn is just a rollicking adventure and the spirit of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson. And to me, it was full of zest and sort of buoyancy and optimism.
And The Nest, just because, in a way, it's my most personal story. By the time I finished writing it, I realized it was really about our obsession with perfection and this idea of chasing normal. Those were things that were just very important to me personally.
Kenneth Oppel's comments have been edited for length and clarity.