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| Photo by Christos Christodoulopoulos |
Catriona Silvey is the author of the new novel Love and Other Paradoxes. She also has written the novel Meet Me in Another Life. She lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Q: What inspired you to write Love and Other Paradoxes, and how did you create your characters Joe and Esi?
A: The story is set at the University of Cambridge, where I did my undergraduate degree. It’s an institution that’s very grounded (some might say stuck!) in the past, but it’s also often been a source of the artists, authors, and scientists of the future. That tension inspired the character of Joe, a student who dreams of becoming a famous poet.
When Joe finds out that his future self is a famous poet, and that his success will be down to his great love and muse, Diana, he has to figure out how to preserve that future when he runs into Diana in the present.
Meanwhile, Esi, the time traveller who accidentally let this information slip, is on a mission of her own to change the past.
The idea felt like the perfect premise for a romantic comedy – especially when I realised that in the course of trying to secure his future with Diana, Joe was going to find himself falling for Esi instead!
Q: The writer Mike Chen said of the book, “Like Cyrano de Bergerac filtered through Back To The Future and a 2000s coat of paint, Love And Other Paradoxes is a fun and surprising dive into love and destiny – or lack thereof.” What do you think of that description?
A: I love Mike’s work, especially his time loop romance A Quantum Love Story, so I was honoured and delighted that he enjoyed Love and Other Paradoxes!
I was also tickled that he picked up on the Cyrano aspect, because that part of the plot – Esi becoming Joe’s dating coach to help him win over Diana – was something I’d really worked on during edits.
It also surprised me how many early readers appreciated the 2000s nostalgia in the book. For me, it was just easiest to set the story during the time when I was a student, but in many ways, it now seems like a different world – no smartphones, no social media, a very different relationship to the internet. I think a lot of us miss the relative simplicity of that digital landscape.
Q: Did you need to do any research to write the book, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: I did some research into locations in Cambridge – I’ve lived there many times in my life, but when it came to the specifics of what it was like in 2005-2006, I was initially relying on my memory.
When I bought an out-of-date street map to serve as my own personal time portal, I was surprised by what I didn’t remember – I had to change bits of description to avoid sending the characters down roads that didn’t exist yet!
I also did a lot of reading around different models of time travel. While the book doesn’t go deeply into how time travel works, Joe’s best friend Rob is studying physics, and at one point Joe asks him for advice regarding his temporal dilemma.
I knew Rob’s response would be comically unhelpful, but I wanted to drop some vaguely plausible technobabble in there as a treat for readers like me who love to nerd out about this stuff.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?
A: Mainly, I just hope they have a great time! But I also hope the story makes readers think about how our dreams of a specific future, or our fixation on the past, can stop us from making the most of our life as it is in the present.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m editing what will be my third published novel – details are still under wraps, but it will be very different from both Love and Other Paradoxes and my debut, Meet Me in Another Life. My goal is to write a lot of different kinds of books, so I’m thrilled that so far it seems to be working out!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: If you’d like to stay updated on my future books, you can sign up to my newsletter at https://catrionasilvey.com/!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Catriona Silvey.
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