(gentle music) - Well, here we are.

Welcome, Cynthia.

- It's great to be here, Bill.

- Good to have you at Maine Public Book Club.

And, boy, do I have a lot of questions for you.

I was riveted by this book, not only because of, well, lots of things, the way you structured it, the plot itself.

But, first, I wanna talk about the location, because this is a part of the world where very few people ever go.

And yet you write in such a way that brought me there.

And I was just fascinated by the people, the landscape, the isolation.

What prompted you to write a book about the Arctic Circle and the far reaches of Norway?

- Well, I, well, back in my childhood, I used to love reading about doomed polar explorers.

That was my favorite.

Mostly because I never understood why any explorer would want to risk everything, their lives, et cetera, just to find something new.

Of course, as I got older, I understood that human knowledge was an important thing in and of itself, and of course, there was the glory of being the first.

And as I got older, I began to realize as most people have, the problems of confronting the Arctic.

And one night, or one morning I should say, I had a strange dream that I woke from that was obviously set somewhere Arctic like.

I had been reading about the Arctic.

And I thought it would be interesting to turn away from the personal that I was writing about towards something that I felt was completely different for me, a new challenge.

And just about that time, I believe in fate, a friend of mine posted on Facebook that she had been rejected from an artist scientist residency aboard a ship that traveled the coast of Svalbard, which I had never heard of either.

And I thought, wow, you know, that would be really cool.

So I applied and got in.

And that's where it really started with that trip.

- Oh.

- It was the first time I had been north of the Arctic Circle.

I travel a lot but never there.

And it's kind of unusual because even though I live in Maine, I really hate the cold weather.

I hate snow.

- So why not go north?

- I hate ice.

I don't like slipping.

And, but I love the feeling of it.

When you're in that kind of setting, it's a different kind of feeling than being let's say in Florida or where have you.

- Yeah.

- I like that feeling of almost being wrapped in a cocoon and experiencing a completely different way of life.

- Yeah.

- A different sensibility.

I find that you're really attuned more to sights and sounds there because the landscape is so pristine generally.

And certainly traveling on the west coast of Svalbard, which is primarily where we traveled, most of it is not developed.

- Yeah, yeah.

- There are towns, but- - [Bill] You're very isolated.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

Tell me, how long did the trip last?

How long was the residence?

- That original one was 15 days on the land, or I mean, sorry, on the sea.

And a couple of days on either side to get acclimated first and to get the rules down because there are rules to traveling in the Arctic.

- Yeah, yeah.

- One of my favorite stories was, you can't leave anything behind.

And one of the women on the trip lost one of those hair like.

- Scrunchie things?

- Yeah, not even a scrunchie, just one of the little tiny elastics.

And we were on this remote beach and we all had to fan out and find this elastic.

- Oh my.

- Which we did.

- Wow.

- So that's how serious they are - Yeah.

- about keeping things the way you found them.

- Have a favorite quote from this book?

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Now, back to the book.

Well, that makes me, what time of year was it I should ask because looking for that elastic would be pretty much impossible in 24 hours of darkness.

- In the south, yeah.

- But was it during the day?

- It was June.

And actually June is fairly mild, especially now.

I'd say the average temperature is around 32.

And you're dressed for it and there's very little snow.

The beaches are mostly rocks.

You have to go up into the hills and the mountains to get the ice and snow in June.

I mean, I've been there in other seasons.

I was there in what they call the dark season, which opens on October 26th.

And then I was also there for two months during the truly dark season in January, February and early March, which is the coldest season.

And where there really is pure dark for much of that time.

- Yeah.

Well, as we spoke the other day and as I told you, I was reading this book, what was it, in April.

And I thought, the days are getting longer.

And I thought, thank goodness I'm not reading this in December.

- Yeah.

- I don't know if I could take it.

When did?

This is such a complex story and it's told in a complex way.

When did the, how did it germinate?

What gave you the idea to write about Tor and Astrid?

And was it, did they appear instantly?

Or was it just the concept of writing about a whaler that piqued your interest?

- No, it was actually when I went on this residency.

You always for a residency have to say, what's your project plan?

And my project plan was I wanna be inspired by something, which is very unusual.

I was really surprised they even took me with that kind of plan.

- Yeah.

- But I knew- - Real specific.

- Yes, exactly.

I normally do have a much more specific idea, - Yeah, yeah.

- but I had no idea what I was gonna encounter.

I had no idea what it was gonna be like to be in the Arctic.

And the way that these things work is primarily the ship would anchor offshore and you take a Zodiac over to a beach.

And one of those very last landings was to an old beluga whaling station, a place called Bamsebu.

And we landed there in the most amazing site, disturbing but amazing, where these hundreds and hundreds of whale bones that are piled on the beach.

There's a law on Svalbard that you can't touch artifacts from prior to 1946.

So they're there forever.

And I have to say that about half the ship went back to the ship because it was quite disturbing.

I am, as I said earlier, a morbid person I suppose.

I said a whale cemetery.

Like where did this come from?

How did this happen?

What would it be like to do summer whaling here?

And I thought what I was going to do was go back home and find out all about this whaler, but I could never find anything more than a paragraph about him.

And so I decided to use the setting and make up my own story.

- Oh, okay.

- That's how it started.

- Okay.

And the setting, you mentioned 1946, which coincides somewhat with, well, the war and which seems to be a real line of demarcation in the life of this community, this area.

Why then?

What was it about mid 20th century that you could go way, way, way back I suppose, because it had been going on for a long time, but what made you zoom in on that particular time?

- Well, the 1930s was when this whaler actually was there - Oh, okay.

- doing beluga whaling.

- I see.

- And so for me, as a starting point, so that I wasn't totally making everything up and having people come to me and say, well, they didn't do beluga whaling on Van Keulenfjorden - Oh, yeah, sure.

- in the 1930s.

At least that would be true.

And then I had him, Tor, the beluga whaler, comes back after the war to look back on the year that he and his wife spend on Svalbard during his summer whaling season.

And the coming back after the war, I always saw it as a retrospective narration.

So on his part, it is him trying to figure out all of the things that he might've done, could've done.

You know, the usual kind of regrets that you have, thinking oh, if I'd only done this, maybe this would've happened.

It was quite lucky in a sense that the war happened in terms of writing, because it was such a rich before and after.

The run up to the war, which I knew nothing about Norway's participation at that time.

The run up to the war, what was happening in Europe, and then what happened on Svalbard during the war.

It was a very strategic place because the Germans who had taken over Norway in World War II, unlike in World War I, where Norway was neutral, they wanted Svalbard because the Arctic predicts the weather in Europe.

And so they had weather stations there.

So they take over Svalbard.

And then of course, when the Norwegians finally come back and reclaim it, the Germans destroy basically everything that the Norwegians didn't destroy when they left, because they didn't wanna leave behind.

There's tremendous coal deposits which were very valuable and so forth and so on.

And so, the war became a really interesting part of my research.

What was Norway's role?

Why did it go to the German side?

What was the resistance like?

There were just so many great stories.

- Yeah.

And I imagine it probably still lingers to this day.

I mean, a place is forever changed by that kind of intervention.

- Well, you had that, the German desire to have Norwegian women, have their children, it's, you know, that program.

- Oh, sure, yeah.

- And there have been documentaries as late as the 2000s where the children of the children are still struggling with the legacy.

- Oh, with the legacy.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

Interesting.

- Yeah.

- Well, let's talk about these characters now.

Because this is, as I said earlier, it's a complicated, you know, there's a rhythm to this story, that once you get into it, it makes perfect sense.

Where Tor is telling it 10 years retrospectively.

Whereas, Astrid, is that how you?

- Astrid, yeah.

- Astrid is real time narration to her deceased son Birk.

I always wonder 'cause because they're living together, very much together on the summer that they're up there at the camp, but they're in different universes.

And it struck me how two people can be in such close proximity to each other for such a long time, yet be so removed mentally, emotionally, maybe spiritually from where the other person is.

Were you rooting for either of them?

Or do you- - I always root for my characters.

- Okay, which one?

- I have a real soft spot.

- Which one?

Who's your favorite?

Let me put it that way.

- I don't have a favorite.

- Okay, okay.

- I really don't.

- Okay.

- It actually started, you know, with the whaler.

- Okay.

- And, I knew nothing about whaling, I mean, zero.

Other than, you know, - Yeah.

- just general stuff you hear.

So the research was very important just to learn the practical aspects of, you know, what was it like to catch beluga whales in that fjord.

And what were a whaling crew like?

- Sounds kind of savage - Yes.

- You know?

- And my whaling crew, I have to admit, I think is very toned down compared to say, a book like "The North Water."

But I also toned it down, I think, in the presence of a woman, which is very unusual for them, that at least some of the crew is trying to behave let's just say.

- Yeah, right.

Some, but not all.

- Some not all.

- [Bill] Right, right.

- And I also feel that the guts of the story is really what you just said.

They had a strong marriage, but the death of their son really drives a wedge.

And that, and I'm not telling you anything that you wouldn't learn in the first 25 pages, that's what they call the inciting incident.

And Astrid has not recovered in any way.

And she feels very much distanced from her husband who doesn't seem to be suffering as much.

And my impression is that he is suffering, but in a different way.

And her suffering is more obvious.

- [Bill] Yeah.

- And so they think- - As was her experience with Birk's death, I mean, she was right there - Yes, yes.

- when it happened.

- And, well, there's also the guilt.

- Yes, the guilt, right.

That she looked the other way.

- I mean, some of that was based on, I had a friend, or actually my brother had a really good friend who lost a child to drowning.

And I remember thinking, what would that be like?

The parents, it was the opening day of a swim club, and the women are there with their kids chattering and the kid drowns.

And to me, the horror of losing a child, let alone one where you feel like you could have done something, adds that extra layer of guilt.

And also, I do think in quiet ways, Tor blamed her, as maybe would be natural, but he would never voice that he blamed her.

Like it might have also been better just to have a huge argument, - Yeah.

- and bring it to the surface.

- Right.

- And so they go away thinking that just being away together is going to repair their marriage.

And of course, there are all sorts of other things that come up, including getting stranded there over winter.

- [Bill] Right.

- That actually, in some ways, the being stranded does bring them together.

But I'll leave it there.

- Yeah.

Well, let's talk about that because that's when things really start to slide.

And Astrid, there's a lot of mental health or mental illness in this story.

Not just her, but some of the other, particularly women that you read about, - Yeah.

- who have made the same journey, usually, you know, along with a man.

And, for whatever reason, it breaks them.

I don't know if that's the darkness or the isolation or all of that.

But when she, when they suddenly realize this is not the idyllic summer that we thought we were gonna have, we're stuck here, - Yeah.

- and it's gonna be the complete opposite of that, she starts to slide.

And never really pulls up out of that.

Talk to me about how he deals with that because it seems to me that he was oblivious to a lot of it.

- I don't really think of Tor as being oblivious.

I think of him as often doing the wrong thing at the right time or the right thing at the wrong time.

- Okay.

His heart's in the right place, yeah.

- He never quite understands.

And you have to remember that back in those days, something like postpartum depression was not even defined - Right.

- as something that women went through.

They were just hysterical or what have you.

- [Bill] But this is kind of a classic case.

- Yeah.

- With the death of, previous death of the child - Child, yeah.

- layered on top of it.

- Yeah.

And I think, in fact, I remember, Claire Messud, who is a very well-known writer at the time I was writing this said something like, people just don't write fiction about postpartum depression.

Which I thought was very interesting because I was in the midst of thinking about it and wondering if that was a subject that one could deal with.

And as I said, I don't think Tor, Tor is not intentionally doing the wrong thing.

I think he thinks almost romantically like she did that somehow time was going to heal.

And they slowly discovered that that's not all that's needed for tragedy or for grief.

I will say that I was also writing this when my father was dying and I was taking care of him, and my mother had already died.

And I kind of channeled some of my anger, I should say, that I was not experiencing grief in that beautiful linear way that you're supposed to.

And so part of what I was trying to do here was to say that people experience grief in different ways and it's not just a linear pattern for a lot of us.

I've since learned that most people feel like, oh, well, I got past that, now I should be.

- One stage after another.

- Yeah.

And I just.

- And they kind of overlap.

- And I still don't find that.

- Yeah.

- I still find I wake up in the morning sometimes and think, oh, if I could just tell my mom, and then of course.

- Yeah.

- I mean, you know, intellectually, - Oh, sure.

- the person's gone.

- But you have those moments too.

- Yeah.

- Like she does with Birk every time she sits down to write.

- Yes, yes.

- But there's a line late in the book that I think captures what you're saying, the unbearable reality of grief.

- Yes.

- Meaning, it never goes away.

It changes, but it's always there.

- What's interesting is when I was writing, I thought I was writing something completely different.

I had always written stories based on something I had experienced directly, you know, my personal history as an Italian granddaughter, et cetera.

And I remember I got to, there's another line toward, not toward the end, about 2/3 of the way where Astrid says something like grief is like walking on an ice flow, it fools you into believing you're standing on something solid, - Right, right.

- only to break up underneath you.

- Break underneath you, yeah.

- And that, all of the sudden, seriously I thought, oh, my gosh, I'm writing about something very personal here.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Did you think as you developed this story that, well, did you know how it was gonna end?

Let me put it that way.

- That's an interesting question.

This is, I had a wonderful teacher whose name was Mack McEvoy.

And my very first book was a jumble.

I had a draft.

And he said, you know, this book ends here.

And it was on the word hello.

And so, in sort of to honor him, I thought somehow this book is gonna end with the word hello.

- End with hello, yeah.

- And it ends in the Norwegian word for hello.

- Right, right.

- And that was my only guidepost - Ah.

- as far as the ending.

- But in terms of Astrid taking her own life, was that something that you conceived of very early on, or was it just, was it at that point, just an inevitable outcome for her?

- I did they do.

- That she could not.

She could not come up out of her grief.

- I thought that that was how the story would be framed, given the opening sequence where she's doing the strip tease and goes into the ocean.

- Which I have to say, I'll interrupt for a sec, was shocking to, you know?

- Okay.

- Because I'm thinking.

- Good.

- I'm reading it going.

Well, I think we're headed toward the Pollyanna ending, you know?

- [Cynthia] Yeah, yeah.

- And they're dancing around and it's like, it doesn't get any better than this.

And then, ugh, - Yeah.

- when she walks off and he starts counting down.

- Yeah.

- And I'm thinking, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And sure enough.

- So I did have that idea of framing it.

And then I didn't wanna leave it there.

I wanted to go beyond that with his own walking into the water and returning and end it in a, I'm essentially a hopeful person, so I had to end it somewhere where he's come to terms with the fact that he can't really come to terms, which I think is fine in life.

It is what it is.

What happened happened.

And he has these children.

- It's a hopeful note though.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I mean, at least it ends on a note of hope, even though they've lost their mother, he's lost his wife, but at least they're moving forward at that.

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Now back to the episode.

Let me ask you, I mentioned earlier the structure of the book where we're alternating between Tor in 1947 and Astrid writing her letters 10 years earlier.

As a writer, was it hard for you to manage what essentially, I mean, there's one through timeline for the narrative, but yet there are things happening on either side of that time divide.

Did you use?

How did you keep that all straight, I guess?

How did you know when to cut away from one and go to the other?

- I will tell you that I originally intended this as a retrospective narration.

Totally Tor's point of view.

Beginning, middle, end, rising out, you know, - Yup, sure.

- that kind of thing.

- Sure, yeah.

- And I wrote about 80 pages and I thought, this is going really well, but Astrid's voice - She's missing.

- is missing.

- [Bill] Yeah.

- And I've told this story before where I was at one of my residencies in Svalbard, and I was sitting at my desk for two weeks literally not doing anything because I was resisting, resisting putting Astrid's voice in there.

Because I knew how hard it was gonna be.

- Yeah.

- Not because I didn't think I could do it or what have you.

- Sure.

- But I knew it was just gonna add a whole new layer of stuff.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- And so, at one point, I sat down and said, well, I'm not writing anyhow I might as well.

What would her voice sound like?

And that's where the dear Birk comes in, because you feel how strongly she wants him to be present.

- [Bill] Right.

- And it's a way for her to keep him alive in her world.

And so I thought, okay, letters, and dear Birk, et cetera, et cetera.

And that, I wrote one letter, that opening letter, and I thought, well, that's not too bad.

And then I wrote another one.

And then I thought, oh, well, now I'm stuck.

- Now you're in trouble.

- Because it's a dual narrative, dual timeline.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Really tough to write.

- Yeah.

- And keeping things straight time-wise.

- And knowing when to, when to break.

- When to cut.

- Well, the other trick there is she's the through line.

- Yes.

- She's telling the story 1937, '38.

And for him, looking back at these letters, which he has with him on Svalbard, he needs to reflect on them, but I don't want it to be repetitive.

That's the real trick to what I had to do.

- Exactly.

Yeah, and it's more supportive I found.

You know, where you'll get something from her perspective and then all of a sudden, he's chiming in.

And you're looking sometimes overlapping, looking at the exact same situation, but from a entirely different perspective.

- [Cynthia] Yes.

- And so it's one story, yes, but it's two stories in one.

- Yeah.

And but then also you have to be careful to move things forward.

- Sure, not get stuck.

- Especially with him.

He could just be sitting, - [Bill] Yeah.

- contemplating his navel as they say.

- Yeah.

- And that would not be very interesting for the reader.

- Sure, sure.

I want to leave a little time for you to do a little reading for us, but I also just want to ask you about the dark.

You experienced 24 hours of darkness, right?

- Yes, I did.

- Did did you freak out?

- No.

And this is something people say, I could never go to Svalbard, I could never live in the darkness.

And I think that the darkness has its own beauty.

And especially, I specifically was there in the darkness to feel what it felt like.

And there are times where there are no stars, the moon's gone, it's very dark.

- Yeah.

- But there are also times where the stars are out and the moon is full.

And I actually took a guide with me out up on a mountaintop, on a full moon night on purpose to feel like what it feels like to be bathed in moonlight.

And it is just extraordinarily beautiful.

And I- - Not unlike going outside on a full moon when there's snow on the ground.

- Yes, yes.

- Everything comes to life.

- It's just.

And then even in June, although I did this in the winter, but even in June, the way the sun for example reflects on the snow, like it's a different kind of feeling.

And we do get that feeling here to some extent, but we don't get that.

- Nothing like that.

Yeah, sure.

- Yeah.

- You get a sunrise.

- Yeah.

Well, we get a little bit of sun in the winter.

- Could you share a little reading with us on this?

- Sure.

- Because I think you're coming from the beginning of the book here, right?

- Yeah, I'm just gonna read the first page.

- Okay.

- And this is Tor's point of view.

- Which really sets that.

- And it opens on June 18th, 1947.

"Even on this desolate stretch of stony Arctic shore, on the archipelago of Svalbard, halfway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole, I must tell you there are constellations.

Here, the sun shines day and night from mid-April to late August.

One can be fooled into believing summer will never end.

Yet the summer solstice, the day of no night, is also the moment the sun begins its retreat.

Only the seasoned Arctic dweller would notice the minute differences in the sunlight's quality on either side of the solstice, the fulcrum upon which the season turns, time and space converge balanced for a moment then reel apart.

Norwegians celebrate Midsummer's Eve by lighting a bonfire around which we dance and drink and sing.

But like everything else in life, our joy comes tempered with the knowledge that sadness nips at our heels always.

The bonfire reminds us that the sun is once again, slowly sinking down, that in time we'll endure the companion days of no day.

Perhaps if on that evening by the bay, Astrid and I had thought of this precarious balance, this tipping point between the sun's ascension and declination, we would have felt the undertow that foretold the time to come."

- Talk about foreshadowing.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- There's a little bit in there.

- Well, I wish we had more.

I will say this on June 22nd every year I look at my wife and I say, days are getting shorter again.

- Yeah.

So you would notice those minute differences.

- That resonated with me in a big way.

- Yes, yes, yes.

- So anyway, I wish we had more time, but this just a fascinating read.

And I have to commend you on taking on a very complex, challenging topic and really knocking it out of the park so.

- Well, thank you so much, Bill.

I had a great time here.

- Oh, great, thanks for joining us.

- Yes.

(gentle music)