Victoria author Margaret Thompson’s new novel, The Cuckoo’s Child (Brindle and Glass) is a compelling exploration of a character’s loss of both son and brother, as well as her own sense of identity. Overall, it’s a hopeful narrative about accepting life’s mysteries. Thompson says her initial idea for the novel sprang from a 1980s news report about a kidnapped boy who had been missing for 12 years but then suddenly turned up at a police station. She says her first draft “hibernated in a drawer for several years” until she “dusted it off” and did the final editing. Thompson is the author of an award-winning young adult novel, short stories and two collections of personal essays. She’s a past president of the Federation of BC Writers. This month she will be reading April 15 at 7 p.m. as part of Russell Books “At The Mike” Fiction Night . On May 23, she will give a 4 p.m. reading at Salt Spring Library. Coastal Spectator Editor Lynne Van Luven and Thompson conducted the following conversation via e-mail just after The Cuckoo’s Child was published.
It is always interesting to read novels by writers one knows because their invention of characters and creation of narrative are studded by facts and events in the public domain. What tactics do you deploy to balance all three?
Tactics sounds frighteningly intentional! I think the process has something to do with different compartments in the brain contributing to the mix. The characters come from the creative department; they are almost entirely inventions, though Magnus owes a lot to a head gardener I once knew, and there are a few people who might find something familiar about the three Wimbledon ladies [from whom Livvy Alvarsson rents a room]. I think it’s essential to fabricate the characters because that is the only way to maintain any sort of control over them. Even then, they sometimes get away from you and insist on having their own way. It’s handy, though, to be able to slot them into some kind of framework, and that’s where facts from the information vault come in. The inclusion of fact—things like geography, architecture, the Second World War, the Thatcher era, and the hurricane which flattened 15,000,000 trees in the UK—lends reality, but also imposes limitations that may affect the narrative. The novel’s present, for instance, is the late 1980s; most people at the time had barely heard of computers and certainly didn’t possess their own; there was no Internet, no email, no social networking, so the kind of search Livvy undertakes would of necessity entail a journey and personal effort. The last element to include is memory—untrustworthy by definition, but essential for colour and warmth. I may not remember the exact dates of my visits to the estate I based Hescot Park on, but I can vividly remember every detail of the place and how it made me feel.
The Cuckoo’s Child is a compelling meld of family mystery and searing meditation upon loss. Can you talk about the impetus to combine those themes?
Like most undertakings, things started simply and got more complicated the more I thought about them. I think that long-ago news item about the kidnapped boy had planted the seed of loss, but it took a little jolt in my own life to bring the family mystery idea to the surface. I would have said my family history was boringly transparent until the day shortly after my father died when my mother said, à propos of nothing at all, “Of course, he had another wife before me.” Nothing sinister about that, but it drove home the truism that every family has its secrets! I already knew I wanted to explore loss—how would it be, I wondered, if I took away the family anchorage, too? What effect would that have on the sense of identity?
I notice that, as your novel’s setting ranges from Sechelt to Prince George to London to the English countryside, the narrative action moves naturally through geography once familiar to you. Did you have to revisit these sites or did you write solely from memory?
I had to do a bit of research on places like London and Brighton, but that was just for general topography rather than precise detail, and I wasn’t above taking liberties, either! Most of the details of the various settings came from my own memories.
I don’t want us to give away the novel’s conclusion but I do want to know if you struggled with keeping the ending credible without being sentimental. Can you comment on that?
Fiction rather encourages the inclination to play God, but I am no sentimentalist and I do distrust the pat ending. I wanted an ending that allows Livvy to embrace her future with confidence, but realism ensured that it wouldn’t turn out exactly as she hopes. Life just isn’t like that. So, I deliberately took away as I restored, and left loose ends, some that may turn out well, and others that will never be explained.
I loved Livvy’s dry, sharp comments about teaching that I deduce are drawn from your own experience. I find it interesting that Daniel’s disappearance finds its way into Neil’s art—that is, he is eventually able to externalize his pain at the loss of his son, while Livvy seems to have more difficulty in “dealing” with loss, hence her need to try and “save” Stephen. Can you talk a bit about how that came about in the narration?
Making Livvy a teacher was well nigh irresistible! And the staff meeting scene came from the heart; that Them/Us vibe was so much a flavour of the time during the 80s. As for the art, that arose from a need to turn up the narrative heat a bit. It’s another truism that everyone grieves in his or her own way; it stood to reason that Neil would not react in exactly the same way as Livvy and that his way could be alienating for someone who doesn’t share it. It’s also true that losing a child often puts a huge strain on the parents’ relationship. I didn’t want that rupture—I wasn’t looking to make Livvy a sort of female Job!— but having her run that risk and experience further drift and isolation seemed dramatically feasible. Neil’s art serves another purpose, too. Daniel himself sees it as his father’s way of keeping him alive, which suggests that even though Livvy’s literal attempt to save Stephen fails, there are other ways for her to preserve her brother.
