Are you reading along with the Cityline Book Club? We hope you’re enjoying All the Broken Things by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer — our Cityline team has been loving the mix of an urban tale and a wilderness story, and we’ve become completely captivated by the amazing friendship of Bo and Bear. To help our book club get some additional insight into Kuitenbrouwer 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 Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and Just So Stories. He’s not in vogue, I suppose, but Kipling’s prose rhythm is worth studying for any writer. He captures the reader in it and it’s very beautiful, languid, and lovely to read aloud. I also adore his two stories “Riki-Tiki-Tavi” and “The White Seal.” So, perhaps I should amend to say that I loved all of Kipling’s children stories when I was a young girl.
2. What’s your current favourite book?
It is hard to pick favourites. I try to enjoy a book for what it tries to do and really give the work credit as I read it. It is not easy to make something. I had not read Carson McCullers until this past year and I love The Collected Stories, particularly “The Member of the Wedding,” which is an ingenious short story a pre-pubescent girl who falls in love with her brother’s wedding and contrives to, essentially, marry his marriage. It’s very funny and also very odd and wonderfully sad.
3. Was there a moment when you first knew you wanted to be a writer?
I think I knew I wanted to be a writer out of kindergarten, or, as soon as I learned how to write. My first novel involved a great deal of pink rooms and a clown. I kept it in my bottom drawer. My second book was non-fiction: an encyclopedia of reptiles.
4. What is your favourite music to write to?
I never listen to music when I write. I find it distracting and interfering. I start writing to that rhythm and not my own.
5. Name a writer whose style you admire and tell us why.
I’ve been immensely enjoying the style of Yoko Ogawa for the last few years, as her work is slowly translated. It’s a strange thing to say I enjoy her style when I can’t read it in the original language. I have always enjoyed reading work in translation. It always has some trace of the translator, I guess, and there is something about that which has always excited me. I used to try to write work that sounded as if it had been translated and once a misguided reviewer, in a dire attempt at criticism, accused my work of sounding translated, which, of course, made me so very pleased. Ogawa’s work has gothic elements to it. What impresses me is her stout refusal to foreshadow. You never ever know or have a feeling for the awful thing that awaits you in her work. I particularly like her story “Dormitory” from The Diving Pool. Read it. Seriously. It’s outstanding.
6. Where is your favourite place to write?
My favourite place to write is no where and every where. I rove when I write.
7. What time of day do you do your best writing?
I don’t have a set practice. I write when I get that feeling that I have to. I write to release that feeling and I write to see what comes out.
8. What was your last great read?
I think the last novel that really astounded me was Summer by Edith Wharton. Written in 1917, it is the story of Charity Royall, who is “rescued” from impoverishment and wildness; her mother is a prostitute. In many ways, this novel is an indictment of civility and an ode to our inner wildness.
9. What is the last book you gave as a gift?
I have wrapped and ready to give a copy of Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking. Pippi is the most important novel-child that all real children should meet. They might also do well to meet Ronia, Lindren’s Robber Daughter.
10. What do you do when you’re not writing?
When I am not writing, lately, I study literature at the University of Toronto, where I am working toward a PhD.
Are you enjoying All the Broken Things so far? Share your thoughts in the comments – we can’t wait to discuss it with you. Stay tuned for our video interview with Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, coming up right here in the Cityline Book Club next week!