Marianne Ackerman

Plays Versus Novels, Life Versus Fiction

Q&A

Q: You’ve written four novels and more than a dozen plays. What are some of the differences?

MA: A novel is an intimate experience. Oyster opens with a woman in a bath, caught up in reverie during a heat wave. The telephone rings, an ominous sound, setting the story in motion. Play-going is a collective experience. The playwright’s challenge is to corral collective attention and hold it until the end. 

Q: Who is your ideal reader?

MA: A person in a bath, or off somewhere, lying down, turning the pages in a mode of concentration. Ideally, having to leave the act of reading for real life should feel intrusive. My aim is to take readers out of their own world and plant them firmly in another. To offer distraction from self-absorption, and thereby expand their capacity for empathy. I believe fiction can act as a balm on the messy turmoil of real life, at least temporarily.

As preparation for the publication of Oyster (my first novel since Pier’s Desire in 2010), I gave out some of my older books to women in my fitness club who don’t know me as a writer. The response included a slew of complicit smiles and nods as we spread out our mats. When they did make comments, they tended to whisper. I took that as a sign that novels are also good gossip.

Q: The narrator of Oyster, Amelia Cameron, has quite a lot in common with you: both established writers, born in Prince Edward County with siblings who still live there. Is this novel autobiographical?

MA:  I’m tempted to say no! Not at all. But then you bring up facts. I set out to capture what I know about life in the County, so it made sense to stay close to the bone. The opening incident – accidental death of the patriarch – did happen in our family. But the consequences were totally different. In fact, I wrote Oyster while my own story was still unfolding. The endings are completely different.

Q: How so?

MA: My family story is to some extent still unresolved. At least we haven’t found a way to face each other with warmth and honestly, after a fairly brutal experience of trying to share a heritage farm between six siblings. The Cameron family is a product of my alter ego. Their experience coalesces around a theme: what does it mean to hold onto the centre when events work in the opposite direction? I think that’s a central challenge of our time. I believe strongly in community, but that’s not always possible with family. I’m guessing many readers will know what I mean. So, Oyster is dedicated to them. The believers.

Q: What are you writing now? Can we expect a new novel soon?

MA: No, but I hope you will see a play by me in the not-too-distant future. I’ve written several over the past few years, and at least three are ready for production. The Night Before Lear – about a senior actress preparing to play Queen Lear, and her three troublesome daughters. Departure Plans – which I’m calling “an ode to the power of theatre”. And an ambitious adaptation of Susanna Moodie’s famous memoir, Roughing It in the Bush. My attention these days is on finding good homes for these scripts. I’m hungry for the collective sigh of an audience sitting in the dark, on the edge of their seats.