Frances Boyle is the author of the new novel Skin Hunger. Her other books include the story collection Seeking Shade. She lives in Ottawa.
Q: What inspired you to write Skin Hunger, and how did you create your characters Rowan and Evie?
A: Several different strands pulled together as inspiration for Skin Hunger, and led to the emergence of Evie and Rowan.
The first was a strong sense of wanting to explore in fiction some of the mental health challenges that my mother experienced, including hospitalization. This was never discussed at home so imagination (and research) gave me an entry point.
I knew I wouldn't try to tell my mother's story, so I worked out a very different life trajectory for Evie and wrote my way into it.
The daughter, now Rowan, took a bit longer to become clear to me. I eventually started thinking about the vital nature of human touch, and exploring the impact that being deprived of maternal touch in childhood might have. That led to Rowan as someone who becomes a people pleaser in search of acceptance, connection and love.
The final strand, the animal rights activism, came when I remembered images of experiments on baby monkeys clinging to wire-frame, terry cloth covered artificial "mothers" for the small comfort they provided. I am not a "plotter," so the experiences that both Evie and Rowan go through in the story developed as I wrote and shaped their personalities.
Q: How would you describe the dynamic between them?
A: Rowan is separated from her mother, Evie, for much of the book, so the dynamic is largely one of longing and regret.
Evie feels her child was stolen from her, and reassembles a life around this aching absence. Rowan struggles with the belief that her mother abandoned her, and allows herself to feel both anger and hurt while yearning for the comfort of mother love.
Despite the separation, there remains a thin vibrating wire of connection between them, which I show in Evie's occasional premonitions about events in her daughter's life, and Rowan's musings about what she might have inherited from Evie.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Skin Hunger is a translation of the Danish term "Hudsult," meaning starved for touch. I think I first encountered it in Robin Beth Schaer's moving poem "Holdfast" that I quote as one of the book's epigraphs (the poem also refers to the monkey experiments).
I'd already been building my draft around the idea of touch deprivation for some time, and hearing the term clicked it firmly into place. I knew I had my title.
Q: The author Jack Wang said of the novel, “Alternating between the wayward lives of Evie and Rowan, the novel explores how absence, captivity, and privation affect humans and animals alike.” What do you think of that description?
A: I think that Jack really captured a good part of what I was getting at in Skin Hunger. I'm incredibly grateful for his empathetic reading, and kind comments. As I've already mentioned, absence and privation are integral to who Rowan and Evie are.
I also see the impact of captivity as key. Evie is literally captive in mental institutions, while Rowan's passions are a reaction to the injustices of animals held captive, whether for entertainment, as in zoos and aquariums, for science or to provide food for humans.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: My current project is a collection of short stories (which will be my second, after 2020's Seeking Shade). The new manuscript has the working title "Turbulence" and most of the stories deal with characters navigating turbulent currents of family, relationships and life.
The collection veers more overtly to the speculative than my previous work. A couple of the stories are published, others are out on submission while still others are at far earlier stages of draft.
I'm also slowly writing and piecing together a new poetry collection that returns to the themes of mental health challenges through a recurring metaphor of water.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I'm delighted to be asked to contribute, and very thankful to anyone who picks up a copy of Skin Hunger!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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