Picture: David White
Having set aside a considerable portion of the Book Club budget to hire hoods for standover assignments (please see Listen to The Forrests), we aim to “persuade” as many New Zealand authors as possible to take part in our new Question Time slot, in which throughout the month you can post questions for them about their book in the comment thread below and then they will dip in and out of the thread to answer you. Once again, Emily Perkins was game, so if there’s any aspect of The Forrests you’re wondering about, wonder no more – just ask away. She’s been warned you can be a tough crowd, but please be gentle with her …
Emily Perkins May 28 2012, 2:59pm
Thank you. I had some experience of being around dementia through relatives I was close to, and did some research into a particular form of dementia and its effects on the sufferer and on carers. It's very much fictionalised, though - I wanted to keep Dorothy's sense of self there as much as possible, right to the end of the book.
Best
Emily
Emily Perkins May 28 2012, 2:55pm
Firstly, how lovely for your friends in their 90s - it would be wonderful if we could all get to that age in good heart. In terms of the time frame, the push into the future doesn't include a bunch of technological predictions, in the same way that the 'past' sections aren't encumbered with period detail. Simplest thing to say about this is that I spent a lot of time thinking about those things, but came to the decision that it's not that kind of novel, and they would be a distraction from what I did want to focus on.
In terms of the aging process, I was - and am - interested in the way time speeds up as we get older, and how circumstances go on changing. And a key line for me is Daniel's, that 'life can change if you're lucky enough to be around for it'. Aging can be hard but I'm pretty sure it's better than the alternative!
Best,
Emily
Maureen Jansen May 26 2012, 7:03pm
What did you draw on for Dorothy's experience of old age and dementia? I found it very authentic!
dorothy May 22 2012, 2:50pm
I found your novel fascinating, and not overly depressing at all in the first 40 years - very much a collection of slice of life moments. But I did get a little annoyed with the time frame in the second part of the book. Given that Dorothy is 10 in the year 1970 and is clearly over 65 in the last chapter, this novel must end in the year 2025, 13 years from now - which seems a little odd. Also, being just over 50 myself, I do think you are a bit hard on the aging process and what it does to people's minds and relationships (even when they are suffering from terminal illness). Both Dorothy and Daniel seem old beyond their years by the end of the book but I have friends in their nineties who are energetic of both mind and body (and still very funny and naughty). Is there anything you would like to say on how you view aging - both for your characters and yourself?
Dorothy
Emily Perkins May 16 2012, 1:43pm
Thanks for your question. I suppose to me it is an action that says just how complicated she feels about Daniel at that moment, and how angry she is with him. There are ways to connect the frog to the commune but I'm reluctant to draw too much into that... I agree the discarding of his lucky mascot does seem like foreshadowing. Now that I'm writing this I think of that Greek legend about Melager - here is a link to it -
http://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Heroes/Meleager/meleager.html
- but I certainly can't claim that this was in my mind as some kind of classical reference when I was writing that chapter! (Further digression: the myth of Atalanta and the Golden Apples was one of my favourite stories of childhood.)
Cheers
Emily
Emily Perkins May 16 2012, 1:28pm
School reunions are ripe for the picking aren't they - it seemed like an obvious experience to put Dorothy through, especially as the shared family childhood has taken on new significance for her by that stage in the book. And I was taken by the opportunity to show the past and the present banging up against each other inside characters. What happens to people that you couldn't possibly predict from their lives at 14 or 16.
(I did go back to my old school a few years ago just to look around, and was quite haunted by being in that physical space again - a very weird feeling. I'd do it again, but a reunion, no!)
Cheers,
Emily
Teresa Gordon May 16 2012, 11:25am
I'm no literary academic, nor am I used to asking authors questions, but here we go anyway....
I really enjoyed The Forrests. As a mother of young children I could relate well to many parts of the story. I also enjoyed being able to fill in the gaps between chapters with my own imagination.
There was one part of the story that threw me off-guard. The moment when Evelyn throws the dead, desiccated frog in the fire I was absolutely sure was going to mean Daniel would meet a hideous fate. Could you please comment on what this act actually symbolised?
emmamccleary May 16 2012, 11:17am
The writing was pitch perfect and you did such a fantastic job of making me feel as awkward as if I was a fourth former again. I've just never understood people's need to go to school reunions and revisit the past and wonder where your inspiration for this part of the book came from?
Emily Perkins May 12 2012, 8:57am
Sorry for the slow reply. Let's just say it involved a forgotten password and a lack of technical coordination on my part.
Early on in drafting The Forrests I wrote versions of chapters 2 and 18, and because they dealt with the character at different ages they started to define the scope of the book.
I prefer writing without the pressure of chronological order because it's a way of keeping the writing (language) alive, without getting bogged down in the plot. The cause and effect can then rise up and surprise me rather than being prescribed - if I know too well what's going to happen, that limits the discoveries along the way, and one of the pleasures of writing for me is in finding out things I didn't know. It usually takes me at least a first draft to figure out what the story is, and then there's all the reshaping and structural work (lots of it!) once I have that.
Cheers, Emily
Megan Dunn May 10 2012, 8:40am
I'm really interested (and feel encouraged too...) that you don't write chronologically. What problems does that present during the process? When did you write the end of The Forrests? And when did you write the beginning? Do you ever feel like that cause and effect of the action gets lost when you write in this way? I am assuming from your interview this may be the way you've written all your novels?...
Thanks, Megan