When you lose your grip on something you believe in, when that one thing you know to be true slips away, how do you react? In his Giller-nominated short story collection Whirl Away (Thomas Allen Publishers), author Russell Wangersky explores the idea of what happens to people when their lives begin to fall apart.
Through a dozen stories and just over 200 pages, Wangersky profiles a variety of characters who struggle when they lose control of parts of their lives. “What happens when you lose an anchor like that? You keep doing it anyway,” explains Wangersky in a recent interview with Cityline.ca. “You get really stupid. Like if your best way of dealing with an emotional situation is to be a complete stone-face and just be entirely stoic, when that all starts to fall off the rails you think that things will get better if you’re even more stoic. And then you start to really spin.”
Wangersky compares this spinning phenomenon with how couples are constantly trying to understand their partner’s point of view when they get into an argument. “I’m terrible at arguing, so maybe that’s why it fascinates me!” jokes Wangersky. He explains how he loves to examine two different sides of an argument or set apart each partner’s problems in their relationship. Wangersky explores these ideas throughout the collection, particularly in a pair of linked stories (“Family Law” and “Open Arms”) that feature some of the same characters.
But although the “whirling” theme runs strongly throughout the collection, Wangersky explains that he didn’t start with a theme, and that he ended up with this one somewhat by default. “The way I work in almost all the stuff I do is that I hear something or I see something and I wonder what the logical or illogical conclusion of this means,” says Wangersky.
Most of the time, his stories develop from odd snippets of conversation that pique his interest. He told Cityline.ca about a story he developed after looking at a house for sale: “It was attached, a rural house in St. John’s, and I said ‘Are the neighbours noisy?’ And the realtor said, ‘Oh no, the lady next door is really quiet, she only has one eye.’ And I wanted to know what about having one eye would make you quiet.”
Other times, Wangersky admits that he creates stories from his own real-life experiences and how he perceives events in his day-to-day life. “You see something in your family or with your partner and you think ‘what would it be like to live inside that world view?’” explains Wangersky. “It’s not so much writing about them and their experiences, but putting that sort of skin on and walking around in it.”
With a day job as a journalist, Wangersky’s life is often all about writing. Currently he’s working on a novel, something he jokes is “not as much fun” as writing short stories. “They’re longer, you can’t get away from it, and the tone is much harder. You can’t be as playful,” he explains. “With short stories, if you don’t feel like working on this one, you can write another one or start somewhere else! You can do something different. Or, because they’re so short, you can try to end them in different ways.”
Speaking to Cityline.ca less than a week before finding out if he’s the winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, one of Canada’s largest literary awards, Wangersky is still debating whether or not to write an acceptance speech (his agent wants him to be prepared, while Wangersky is afraid of being too presumptuous). It’s clear that he’s nervous about the big night, but he’s also humbled and honoured by the attention: “It’s crazy mayhem. I mean, I write in the kitchen. The most attention I get is from my cats.”
Our friends at Thomas Allen Publishers have generously offered us three signed copies of Whirl Away to give away online. For your chance to win, email submissions@cityline.ca,
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