It has been almost two decades since Heather O’Neill released her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals. The critically acclaimed book won both the 2007 Canada Reads Award and the Hugh MacLellan Prize for Fiction. Since then, the Montreal-based scribe – who is of Irish and French descent – has been as busy as she has been successful, publishing an array of award-winning novels, short stories, and essays. Recently, Celtic Life International Executive Editor Stephen Patrick Clare spoke with the scribe about her latest work, The Capital of Dreams – a vivid, breathtaking dark fairytale of life, death, and betrayal.

CL: You are a native Montrealer.
HON: Yes, I was born here and have lived the majority of my life here. I left a couple of times but kept returning. Being here in the 1990s and early 2000s was the perfect place for a young artist – it was cheap, safe, and bubbling with creativity. I lived in the Plateau district then, and it was standard to go out at 3am, stumble out of a pub, and get creative with somebody. I currently live in Outremont, so I’m still close to that neighbourhood.

CL: Are you still stumbling out of pubs at 3am?
HON: Haha. I can’t say that those days are over entirely, however the hangovers are far worse than they used to be. Let’s just say that I have learned to temper my after-hours creativity.

CL: One of the things about the new book is its economy – you leave a lot to the imagination. Was that something you did consciously, or did it happen organically?
HON: Over time I became more of being a craft person. My sense of creating stories has become stronger. When I started writing, I felt like I was a poet, and I had these imagery and visceral moments. With experience, I developed confidence in building worlds through structure, and it has been interesting to see my technique evolve and to have a sense of the ending and all the twists and turns it takes to get there. I can now see the bigger picture as I am creating it.

CL: Miles Davis said that music is the space between the notes.
HON: I love that. I love writers who write in a simple and yet devastating way, creating all these moments that just stuck with me – they created worlds without having to spell everything out. And I wanted to achieve that kind of simplicity with The Capital of Dreams – almost like a children’s book, or maybe a fairytale.

CL: There is a lot of dark humor in there.
HON: I have always liked how Samual Beckett dealt with trauma in a funny and absurd way in his plays, and I tried to capture and convey some of that in the new book with Sofia (protagonist). It is as if she tries on different philosophies the way she might try on different clothes while playing dress-up. I wanted to offset some of the darkness with that childlike sense of wonder and play, especially wordplay. So, yes, there is a certain a sense of silliness about the whole thing which was intentional.

SPC: As comedy was once born out of tragedy.
HON: Yes, because that is real life. I mean, comedians will often tell anecdotes about terrible things in a funny way to make people laugh – and that is a gift, when you really think about it. It is a coping mechanism. That’s why we will often see or hear people laugh at what seems the most inappropriate of times. And yet, in one sense, it is a completely normal, and even healthy way to process trauma.

SPC: Was the new narrative a deliberate attempt to create a modern, or post-modern fable?
HON: The idea of developing contemporary mythologies is more important than ever, if only to better reflect the new complexities of the modern world. We seek and find truth through storytelling – we have been doing that as a species since we first developed language and art – and we must make some sense out of the times, especially for younger generations who are trying to process and heal whatever collective or individual trauma they might be experiencing.

SPC: Similar to the reviews for Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, a number of critics and readers have noted that the book simmers in the subconscious after reading it – like a timed or delayed release of emotions, ideas, moods, etc.
HON: So far, the response has been fantastic. It is resonating with readers, maybe in the same way that Life of Pi touched some sort of collective nerve, and I simply couldn’t be more thrilled.

SPC: What has the feedback been like from the people around you?
HON: I am very close with my daughter, who lives across the street, and it was funny to have her perspective because when I was creating the character of Sofia’s mom Clara Bottom – who is my first mother character, as I have always written motherless characters – I made her egotistical and arrogant, and my daughter was like “oh, so that’s you!” or “that’s your evil avatar!” which kind of kept it light and in perspective for me.

SPC: So how much of you found its way into the book?
HON: When I write each of the characters, there is always some aspect of me pushed in a different direction, or I just take parts of myself and then integrate them with other people. So, there is always a little dose of me in whatever I create. That’s unavoidable, really, with any work of art. We are all a little elegantly demented that way.

SPC: Elegantly demented?
HON: That the part of being an artist that I have always been attracted to, writing in beautiful ways about what might be ugly or grotesque. We don’t need artists to tell us that something that is beautiful is beautiful – artists are far more effective when they take something horrid or terrible or painful and present it in a beautiful way.

SPC: That is something that only comes with time and experience. You wouldn’t have been able to write this book 20 years ago.
HON: Yes, exactly. And, like any craft, it really is about putting in the hours. There is no substitute for simply sitting down and getting on with it.

SPC: So, does that speak to how your creative process has evolved over the years?
HON: It’s funny – like, odd or strange funny – there are often times when I am feeling inspired to write and nothing comes of it at all. And then there are times when I feel like I am slogging through the mud creatively but end up with a few good lines. And then it can be the other way, so I don’t know if I have a set formula per se. Sometimes, when the characters won’t ‘come out’ I will ‘go in’ to meet them. Does that make sense? And I still write freehand, because the process it helps me to access parts of my mind that I wouldn’t be able to otherwise. My pens and pencils are sort of like magic wands that way.

SPC: What is the role of a creative in society today?
HON: Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it? And it is one that we have wrestled with for centuries – art for art’s sake, or art for mankind’s sake? And there is more conversation about that now than ever before. Do you just go into hiding and do what you do for the sake of it, or is there some bigger purpose at play there? For me, I’m a bit of both, but I think I fall on the side of the latter. And the way I do that is through my writing.

SPC: Again, something that only comes with experience.
HON: I have found that, as I have matured, I have a greater sense of the world around me, my place in it, and my responsibility towards it. When we are younger, we are all we really think about.

SPC: What’s next on your creative agenda?
HON: I wrote a serialized novel for the Montreal Gazette, so that will be coming out as a complete little piece sometime soon, and I am currently working on another novel which will be about witches.

@lethal_heroine
@oneillreads