Beth Castrodale is the author of the new novel The Inhabitants. Her other books include the novel I Mean You No Harm. She is the founding editor of the website Small Press Picks.
Q: What inspired you to write The Inhabitants, and how did you create your character Nilda?
A: I've always been drawn to ghost stories, and as a kid I used to write and illustrate my own spooky tales, sometimes making little staple-bound books of them.
The Inhabitants is essentially my grownup take on the kinds of stories that fascinated me as a child and that continue to captivate me: tales of haunted spaces, and what happens to those who enter them, intentionally or by circumstance.
As far as Nilda goes, I’ve always been drawn to writing about artists, especially visual artists. For one thing, I love reading and writing about creative processes. For another, visual and physical details are really important to me in capturing moods and scenes in my novels, and I enjoy seeing these details through an artist’s eyes.
I also thought that Nilda’s perspective as an artist would make her an especially sensitive resident of Farleigh House, the shadowy Victorian that’s the scene of much of the novel.
Nathaniel Farleigh, the architect who designed the house, was known for incorporating features that were believed to influence the mind, and throughout the novel, Nilda is especially susceptible to these features.
In a sense, Farleigh continues to haunt the house he created, and no one is more haunted by him–and by his work–than Nilda. She both identifies with his creative drive and is daunted by the products of that drive.
Q: The author Chauna Craig said of the book, “Take the classic Gothic element of a spooky old house, add a dash of modern #MeToo seasoning, and let everything simmer in the warmth of timeless maternal love, and you have Beth Castrodale’s deliciously clever new novel.” What do you think of that description?
A: I love the way that Chauna brought together aspects of the novel that I see as key elements of the narrative. We’ve already touched a bit on the spooky old house.
As far as the #MeToo angle goes, I’ll just say that a #MeToo-related offense against a dear friend of Nilda’s inspires Nilda to take a new direction with a portrait she’d been commissioned to paint, and this allows us to see her agency and strengths as an artist even as she’s struggling with other aspects of her life–for example, grief over the recent loss of her mother and unsettling events that have started to occur in the house she inherited, the house designed by Nathaniel Farleigh.
As far as maternal love goes, that’s a really important thread in the novel. Nilda is struggling to be an attentive and caring mom while she’s dealing with grief and other difficulties; her late mother, another artist, is continuing to have an influence on Nilda and on events in the novel; and Nilda’s housekeeper, Helen, is serving as a kind of mother figure for Nilda while also grieving the loss of her son.
Through all of these characters, we see that although maternal love is largely a force for good, its power can sometimes verge on destructiveness.
Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: With The Inhabitants, as with every other novel I've written, I like to have a general sense of the story arc early on, though I don't always have a vision for the ending.
I'm a big fan of rough outlines, which I've found invaluable for working out story arcs for first drafts, and for helping me complete those drafts in a reasonable time frame.
That said, I never hew strictly to outlines. They're just general guides, and once I get down to writing, stories and characters inevitably take on a life of their own. This was definitely the case with The Inhabitants, and I did a good amount of rethinking and rewriting over time.
One thing that came as a surprise to me was the twist at the end of the novel. I wasn't writing when I thought of it--I believe I was out for a run. When the idea struck me, I didn't have any doubt that I should go with it. It just felt completely right given the place the characters had arrived at by the end of the story.
The ending also spooked me, and I'm hoping it will have that effect on readers.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the novel?
A: Several possibilities come to mind. If I had to pick one, I hope the novel might encourage readers to reflect on places they’ve lived and how these places have affected them.
My view is that everywhere we live leaves some kind of mark on us, sometimes for the rest of our lives.
To give a couple of examples from my own life, memories of the first house I lived in–a brick ranch in a suburb of Pittsburgh–became inseparable from my ideas of what it means to feel safe and loved.
A lot of that had to do with my close relationship with my parents and brothers. But there was also something about the house itself that contributed to those feelings.
For one thing, it was small and cozy, and that made the land it sat on feel huge and protective. Though the yard was just a half-acre, that felt like a whole park to me at the time, and it was a great place to play and explore.
Then there was the first apartment I lived in alone, in a neighborhood of Boston. Although it had a lot of things going for it, the floors tilted slightly from back to front, and the landlord was scary and threatening.
Also, I lived there during my late 20s, when my life felt unsettled in a lot of ways. Looking back at that time, scenes of that apartment’s interior mingle with memories and feelings of being lost.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm working on a novel about a fourth-generation farmer who's struggling to hold onto her land in the face of pressure from a developer, and from a cousin who would benefit from the developer's plans. In the process, she ends up getting support from a farmhand drifter who turns out to have an agenda of her own.
The setting of this novel is based on a small farm that's still in my family and that's sacred ground for my cousins and me. So it's been rewarding to immerse myself in that setting for hours at a time.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I feel as if every novel I’ve written has taught me something new about writing and storytelling, and I’m really grateful for those lessons. Although setting and sense of place are important in all of my novels, writing The Inhabitants made me stretch myself in this regard as I got into the details of Farleigh House and how they influence Nilda.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment