We hope you’re reading along with the Cityline Book Club and enjoying Caught by Lisa Moore! Our Cityline team has been totally sucked in by this engaging, fast-paced novel, and several of us are clamouring to read more of Moore’s previous works. To help our book club get some additional insight into Moore as a writer, we asked her 10 questions about her writing habits and favourite books.
1. What was your favourite book as a child?
I loved Harriet the Spy. I loved that Harriet wrote the truth about the people she spied on because she wanted to know what it was to be human, all the different ways there are to live a life, what makes people tick. She was scathing and uncompromising in her spy journal, inadvertently hilarious. She learned to be more compassionate. Harriet learned to dig deeper when she explored the characters of those around her. I loved Harriet’s unwavering conviction that she would be a writer throughout. How dedicated she was. And I loved the New York neighborhood she explored.
2. What’s your current favourite book?
I have deeply enjoyed re-reading The Wild Palms by William Faulkner. It is so full of motion. The flooded, churning Mississippi, a convict who is set free to rescue a very pregnant woman who has washed up in the branches of a tree, surrounded by dangerous currents, dead cows, destroyed houses. All this poor convict wants to do is get back to the safety of his jail cell. That’s only half the story in this slim novel. I love how Faulkner makes his sentences take on the rhythm of the action in his scenes. If the river is charging forward, unbound, crushing everything in its path, Faulkner’s sentences also rush forward, sometimes for whole paragraphs, and you can hear the turbulence of the water in his language. But he’s also very, very funny. And frighteningly dark.
3. Was there a moment when you first knew you wanted to be a writer?
For me, reading and writing are almost the same thing. The suspension of disbelief, what an intense pleasure! I remember being in grade four, in the school cafeteria, eating my hot dog and half moon cake with the noise of maybe a hundred students all around me. Chairs scraping the tiles, talking, yelling, laughter, messages on the intercom, and I opened whatever book I was reading. And when I next looked up, the cafeteria had emptied out, I was the only one left. I hadn’t noticed everybody leaving. I was in the grip of whatever story I was reading. It seemed like magic to me. I knew I always wanted to be able to do that: experience the imaginary world that deeply, instantly. Be able to slip into it completely. Allow my imagination free reign.
4. What is your favourite music to write to?
Philip Glass, Thelonious Monk, Keith Jarrett. Music that ranges all over, in terms of mood and emotion. But I also like the noise of a café, or the engine of a plane, or the street noises from my neighborhood.
5. What author do you wish you could write like?
I admire Anne Enright’s undiluted emotion, magnificent sentences. I love that I can hear the voice of her narrators, as if they are in the same room as me, speaking to me. I love that she writes about motherhood and sex and love, vulnerability and strength – and that it all looks brand new. She’s audacious. I’d like to be that audacious.
6. Where is your favourite place to write?
We have a very old house around the bay in Newfoundland. No running water, old wavery glass in the windows, big crab apple tree out front. The ocean is right across the road, there’s a river behind us, and a long empty field of blueberries with a couple of chairs out there. I sit out there at six in the morning, when the sun is coming up (in the summer of course!) and write in a notebook. That’s my favourite place to write.
7. What time of day do you do your best writing?
Between 5:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m.
8. What was your last great read?
I am reading Thomas McGuane’s Ninety-Two in the Shade. Pretty vivid stuff.
9. What is the last book you gave as a gift?
This All Happened by Michael Winter.
10. What do you do when you’re not writing?
I swim in the lake, go for a run with our English Setter (who takes my wrist in his teeth or nips at my arms to keep me moving), shop for second-hand clothes (the more colourful the better), talk with my kids, cook with my husband, read, read, read!
Are you enjoying Caught so far? Share your thoughts in the comments – we can’t wait to discuss it with you. Stay tuned for an exclusive recording of Moore reading a passage from the novel, coming up right here in the Cityline Book Club next week!
Photo credit: Nathalie Marsh