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perennialcanada AUTHOR GUIDES ·BONNIE BURNARD Contents ·2 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND AWARDS ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Two major events influenced Bonnie Burnard’s writing Casino & Other Stories career. The first was living on the prairies, mainly in Regina, 0-00-648548-0; $17.95 with her children and husband. Saskatchewan during the HarperPerennialCanada paperback edition/ A Phyllis seventies was a haven for writers. It was home to a support- Bruce Book ive writing community, the literary journal Grain, Canada’s first provincial arts council, and a well-run public library. A Good House But with three children under the age of four, it was diffi- 0-00-648526-X; $19.95 cult for her to write at home. Burnard would travel to Fort HarperPerennialCanada paperback edition/ A Phyllis San, a former sanatorium transformed into an artists’ Bruce Book colony, a place that gave her both the space to write and a support community to draw upon. Having three children under the age of four at the time, it was difficult for her to write at home. She would write a story at Fort San and then AWARDS take the draft home with her for revisions. Sometimes she would produce only one story in a summer. A Good House won the Giller Prize in 1999. The other major, although distant, influence was Marian Engel. During the late seventies, while auditing a creative writing class, Burnard attended a reading by Engel. She told described Marian Engel to Sandra Martin in Quill and Quire in 1999:

She was middle-aged, she didn’t have on expen- sive, floaty clothes, she wasn’t wearing a suede suit, she was just what she would have been at home... She just walked in and sat down and read—and the seriousness with which she listened to the questions, and tried to answer them.... She respected them.... I have never been an arty type, never been a woman who dressed like that, and I saw that Marian Engel had been able to do it as she was. She had not altered her essential self and I thought I had to do all the romantic arts stuff, the garret, all that nonsense. I wanted a middle-class life, I loved my husband, I loved my house.

In 1995, Bonnie Burnard was the recipient of the Marian Engel Award, given to honour a woman writer in mid-career.

Women of Influence, her first collection of short stories, won the Commonwealth Best First Book Award. Casino and Other Stories, her second collection, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and was awarded the Saskatchewan Book of the perennialcanada AUTHOR GUIDES ·BONNIE BURNARD Introduction ·3 Year Award. A Good House won the prestigious Giller Prize distance and longer absences between family members, in 1999 and has been published in at least thirteen other people usually find that they do belong in one kind of fam- countries. Carol Shields, writing in the Ottawa Citizen, ily or another. It’s what we’re born into, it’s sometimes what described A Good House as “the finest novel published in we work very hard to break away from, and often it’s the some years in our country. Its grace, its generosity, its most complicated thing to leave when we die,” says humanity are present on each of its pages.” Phyllis Bruce, Burnard about the role of family. In A Good House, we fol- Burnard’s editor, commented that “her prose is highly pol- low the lives of an extended family over several decades; as ished… She worked on every sentence until it was per- their relationships tighten and stretch, the concept of fami- fect—her attention to detail is amazing but she is also ly is continually redefined. understated in her presentation.” The narrator in A Good House skips through time, periodi- Bonnie Burnard is a writer, a creative writing teacher and cally touching upon the lives of the characters from the reviewer whose work has been widely anthologized and dram- fifties to the nineties, showing us what life has brought atized on CBC Radio. She has been a guest lecturer at writing them. Like ours, the characters’ lives in A Good House take and literary conferences in South Africa, Sweden, Germany, unexpected twists and turns. Murray marries the wrong and England. Born in southwestern Ontario, she lived for woman, has an affair, and then unexpectedly finds love in many years in Regina and now lives in London, Ontario. middle age with another woman. Daphne never marries, and instead finds happiness as the mother of two daughters. Bonnie Burnard writes that “maybe happiness is a combination of two simple things: the instinct to celebrate like ABOUT BONNIE BURNARD’S WORK mad when your luck is holding and the tenacity, the decency to hold true (to family, to a lover, to friends) when luck Phyllis Bruce describes Bonnie Burnard’s writing style as goes bad.” “deceptively simple.” Underneath the surface simplicity of her understated writing lie “dark currents of feeling” and it’s Tenacity is the glue that holds the Chambers’ clan together. this tension between the surface reality and the psychologi- As Burnard said about family life in the short Giller movie cal depths of the characters’ lives that hooks the reader into on A Good House, you want to get off the train but you can’t the pages of her work. In A Good House and Casino & Other because other people are depending on you. Although the Stories we are pulled beneath the surface of convention into Chambers are all essentially good people, they can tell one uncharted and often unpredictable emotional territory as another white lies, withhold information, and give in to Burnard uncovers the significance of the unspoken and the jealousy and lust. They are, in other words, an ordinary remarkable within the seemingly commonplace. family bonded by blood and inheritance.

The complexity that lies within everyday life is revealed in Phyllis Bruce describes Bonnie Burnard’s exploration of the Casino & Other Stories. In the short story “Crush,” the role of time in our lives as “a fascination with fate.” While we coming of age of a young woman undercuts the typical can look back on our lives and try to bring understanding to middle-class reaction to female sexuality. A young woman them, we don’t know what the future holds. The narrator in who has developed a crush on the bread man that she baby- the story “Casino” details the characters’ lives in a few short sits for, greets him topless at the door of her mother’s house paragraphs. Duncan, a teenager who imitates James Dean on a hot summer afternoon. The bread man’s reaction is and slacks off in school, will become a lawyer, marry twice fear, the mother’s is worry and shame, while the young and have five kids. Donna, the woman he dated at the casi- woman defiantly claims her feelings of desire. no who pushed him to learn algebra, will have a hysterecto- my at twenty-three and will marry no one. Jack is skinny, a A Good House is centred on family, an aspect of all our lives hard worker, good company and friends with Duncan. He that is often anything but ordinary. “Even now, with greater “believes in the future.” Tired of working harder than his perennialcanada AUTHOR GUIDES ·BONNIE BURNARD Introduction ·4 classmates, Jack will drop out of school and work joe-jobs three children under the age of four. At home, I could revise my until he becomes a manager at an arena in a nearby town. work but I couldn’t begin a new story. While in university, “he will meet his residence roommate’s cousin right before Christmas in his first year and start to Fort San was a peaceful and private place. I could go through date her, seriously.” She will tell him all the things he has the day and not talk to anyone if I didn’t want to. The meals always wanted to hear. They will marry and have kids, she were provided. I had nothing to worry about, everything was will have a torrid affair that Jack will know nothing about, taken care of. and Jack will remain skinny and not remember who he hung out with during his summers at Casino. Q. Your characters and their lives are so real. Are they based upon actual people? In an age of irony, it is both unusual and refreshing to read about characters who, despite their human foibles, face life’s A. No. They are entirely fictional. But their traits, habits, and tragedies with strength, tenacity, and humour. Bonnie appearances are drawn from real people, and they are recog- Burnard writes, “Although I am as susceptible as anyone to nized by people. Margaret in A Good House licks her fingers to cynicism, I now recognize skepticism as a much more use- shape her eyebrow. I’ve seen a woman do this. And Daphne ful response to my world. Perhaps these shifts have been shows off her legs because she has nice legs. I have seen countless prompted by middle age, by a life already more than half- women do this. So again, these details are drawn from real peo- lived; perhaps they are simply a way to make room in my ple. thoughts for hope, which I find I do not want to live without.” Through the lives of Bonnie Burnard’s characters, we Q. Was the transition from writing short stories to writ- are seduced by the familiar, only to be surprised by the ing a novel difficult? unexpected. From small-town Ontario to a hotel in Vancouver, we are given a fresh perspective on the everyday A. No, I was ready. I knew that I wanted to stay with the char- worlds that we inhabit. acters a lot longer and I felt comfortable about doing this. In the title story “Casino” there are four main characters and the story covers their distant futures. When I wrote that I knew that I was ready. I was interested in a longer life span and so I was in need AN INTERVIEW WITH BONNIE BURNARD of a novel. Also, I wanted a whole lot of people. It would be too crowded for a short story. Q. When did you first realize that you wanted to write? Q. In A Good House, you span the lives of an extended A. I never thought about being a writer. I just thought about family over several decades. When did you decide to struc- writing. I started when I was thirty-three just after my son was ture the novel this way? born. A. I knew from the beginning. I was interested in how things Q. What role did Fort San play in the beginning of your have changed for families over the last fifty years. Families have writing life? made a lot of adjustments over the last fifty years. This change is an indication of strength. Families can be anything at all. A. It was essential at the time. I met writers who were published. It’s the same as any profession. I learned where to sub- In the fifties, the idea of family was much more defined. We mit material. were fooling ourselves culturally by defining the family so nar- rowly—defining it as two parents and 2.5 kids. It also gave me the time to write. I went for a week every summer. Sometimes I would just write one story a summer. I had

perennialcanada AUTHOR GUIDES ·BONNIE BURNARD Introduction ·5 Before the fifties, families were far more expansive. Your uncle Q. You mentioned the word fate. In both your short sto- might be living in a room over the garage. And now families ries and in A Good House, the role of fate is explored. The can be anything at all. characters start off rather hopeful and life brings along unexpected and often challenging surprises. Q. Where did the story of A Good House come from? Did you know the characters and how their lives would unfold A. Nobody gets to have a pristine life. Well, maybe for a time, before you started writing it, or did their lives unfold and like the first twenty years. I’m interested in how people manage personalities develop as you were writing? with what life gives them. Usually, they are hurt or limited in some way. I’m interested in how people react to what life brings A. The first scene that I wrote was the circus scene where them. Daphne falls and is hurt. The second scene was the discussion between Margaret, when she is in her eighties, and Patrick. And I’m interested in strength. I’m not interested in weakness. The discussion has an undercurrent of tension. Before I wrote Based on what I’ve witnessed, most people are strong. I’ve seen the scene, I heard the voice of an older woman and her middle- a lot more strength than weakness in most people. aged stepson and I knew that the father of the stepson was not as he had been. So I wrote this conversation. Then I realized that I had to fill in the previous forty years, to show what brought about this discussion.

For a time I thought that this discussion would end the novel. But I wanted a party at the end, for everyone to be together at a party. There had been funerals in the novel. Celebrations and family gatherings are also a part of life. So I wanted it to end with a celebration.

Q. In Casino & Other Stories and A Good House there are many strong female characters, like the young woman in “Crush” who challenges the socially acceptable ideas of female sexuality. Is there anything in particular that drew you to this subject?

A. Well, it’s fascinating. The last few decades have brought about tremendous change. Now, everything is up for grabs because the power base has shifted. Daphne in A Good House represents, without meaning to be hurtful or bull-headed, this idea. She wants to question what’s normal and she wants to make her own choices. But her motivation comes from person- al needs and hopes. The politics of her choices and needs can be read from a distance.

The characters’ fates are connected with a changing world for women. Margaret represents what used to be the role for women. She has a practical marriage and it is a good thing for her, too.

perennialcanada AUTHOR GUIDES ·BONNIE BURNARD Introduction ·6 A GOOD HOUSE hidden resentments to become the calm emotional anchor of the family.

B Witness to the loves, losses, trials and joys of the Chambers family, we watch them build and rebuild their ties to one another and their sense of both love and family. Burnard’s A Good House is a deep read. You keep finding keen powers of observation and her sensitivity to emotion- more and more satisfaction in the unshowy craft, al nuance have created people that we can all recognize, and the unique vision of this writer who can tell you a story that is as moving as it is profound. hard truths, hopefully.” —Alice Munro, author of The Love of a Good Woman QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION In A Good House, Bonnie Burnard imbues the apparently ordinary lives of her characters with an 1) In a Globe and Mail interview in 1999, Bonnie integrity and a depth of emotion that in the end Burnard describes a good house as “a base, a place of make them unforgettable. Following the history of a comfort, a place that has gone through celebration and southern Ontario family over a period of fifty years, mourning… It’s where someone decides to be.” What the novel gives us the sweep of whole lives lived so do you think makes a good house? that we come away with what feels like wisdom, a sense of the moments that truly give value and 2) Before Sylvia dies she tells Patrick, Daphne, Paul, and meaning to a life. Murray about the unique goodness within each of —The 1999 Giller Prize Jury them. What role do words of praise and anger, which we are given as children, play in our lives? A Good House opens with Bill Chambers’ return from the Second World War to his family in Stonebrook, Ontario. 3) Murray tells Daphne that he will leave his wife, An epic novel spanning five decades, three generations and Charlotte, if Daphne will marry him. Daphne responds five houses, it paints a compassionate portrait of the friends to Murray’s suggestion with the claim that that is not and family of the Chambers clan as time both widens and how the story is told or the song is sung. Murray deepens the bonds between them. answers that “songs and stories ... do not offer reliable guidance for life.” Is this true? Or is it also possible to Bill Chambers returns from the war missing fingers on learn about living through the fictional lives of charac- his right hand but with the will to keep his family life ters? intact. With his job at the local hardware store and the future stretching out before him he wants and hopes for 4) When it is discovered that Paul and Andy’s mentally the best for his wife, Sylvia, and their three children, handicapped daughter, Meg, is having sex with her Patrick, Daphne, and Paul. But tragedy soon strikes the friend Matthew, who has Down’s Syndrome, Meg’s Chambers family. drug dose is increased and the two young people are more vigilantly supervised. Both Matthew’s and Meg’s Yet through this and further trials, the Chambers family parents are aware that these feelings are natural, and mysteriously and magically holds together as the idea of yet Matthew and Meg are still dissuaded from having family is stretched and redefined. After Daphne has an acci- sex. How do the different characters react to these dent, Murray spends more and more time with the family feelings and to Matthew and Meg’s actions? and is accepted like a third son. Margaret, who nurses Sylvia during her cancer, marries Bill and, with time, overcomes perennialcanada AUTHOR GUIDES ·BONNIE BURNARD Casino & Other Stories ·7 5) Patrick’s anger is manifested in silence, “the threat you A. The construction of A Good House arrived whole. There was couldn’t quite hear.” How does each character deal never any consideration given to altering it. The narrative with anger? would visit the many members of the extended Chambers family intermittently, over half a century. Given enough time, I 6) In A Good House, white lies are told. Soon after knew that things, almost everything, would change for these Margaret marries Bill, she tries to identify with people and I wanted to watch as they withstood it. The word Patrick by telling him that she played ball with his that refused to leave my head was unanticipated, an impera- mom. And for the sake of preserving his friendship, tive to the human condition which is voiced late in the story by Murray lies to Patrick about his past relations with Patrick, when he is talking to his stepmother, Margaret, about Daphne. Most of the characters see white lies as the all the things that have happened, when he asks her: Who means to smooth over rough and potentially damag- knew? ing situations. Is the telling of white lies a necessary means to preserving relationships? Q. None of the characters ever speaks in the first person. Why did you choose this method for telling the story of 7) While adultery, failed marriages, loss, and tragedy the Chambers family? find their way into A Good House, the foundation of the novel is the strength of family. So many stories are A. The entire story is told in the third person because of what I written about the rupturing of lives by tragedy, it is call the position of the narrative ‘camera.’ I wanted the camera unusual to read about a family that, for the most part, to move with the characters, and from one character to anoth- works. Why do you think that stories like this one are er. A first person telling would have allowed one character, and less frequently told? it would likely have been Margaret, to become more compelling than the others, and this seemed to me limiting, just as it would 8) Each section of the book is separated by the year that be unwise in any real family to assume that one person is more it covers. Why do you think A Good House is struc- compelling than another. tured this way? Q. At the heart of the clan are the Chambers women. 9) Katherine Govier in Time magazine commented that They seem to be the keepers of the flame somehow, par- the hero of this novel is the family itself. What do you ticularly Margaret… Can you comment? think of this observation? A. I don’t agree that the women in A Good House are the heart of the story. They are perhaps simply more articulate, or more in the habit of articulation, as women sometimes are. Margaret AN INTERVIEW WITH BONNIE BURNARD is indeed a kind of centre; she knows full well she was chosen to ABOUT A Good House replace another woman, another wife and mother, and she knows from the start that this is no small undertaking. But this Q. As a reader, I felt that I was being guided very gently family, this story, would be bereft without its men. through the lives of all the different family members, catching up with them every couple of years or so, finding Q. The Chambers are a traditional family, but even so, out about all the triumphs, all the difficulties, and all the divorce, infidelity, secrets, and lies enter the bigger pic- tragedies. One critic said: “Burnard revels in the small ture. What were you trying to say about contemporary moments and incidents that are passed like rolls around family life and its imperfections? the dinner table from one woman to another in the con- struing of family history.” Can you comment? How did A. The divorces, infidelities, secrets, and lies that occur in the the idea for this construction come to you? Chambers family are simply the result of the human condition, which is, by anyone’s definition, imperfect. Unlike the family perennialcanada AUTHOR GUIDES ·BONNIE BURNARD Casino & Other Stories ·8 values people, I suppose I believe that the function of family is Q. One might say that the craft of writing itself is also like not preventative or judgmental but restorative. There’s an old, building a house, and that you—and all the other great old hymn with the line: “Come home. Come home. Ye who are women writers out there—have built the foundations for weary, come home.” In the hymn there is a clear religious con- “a good house.” Where would you like to see women’s lit- notation to the word ‘home’ but what I hear in those words is erature go from here? that even for the foolish, the careless, the unlucky, there might be a place of rest. Perhaps I mean to say that the family is a A. I don’t like to say the words “women’s literature.” There is only microcosm for life: a bit of this, a bit of that, some harm, some human literature, some of it written by men, some by women. In succour. Certainly the response to the thought that we are not the last few decades two movements have changed the literary alone can range from “thank heaven” to “good grief.” landscape: the near completion of the move from a semi-rural to an urban culture, and immigration. Younger writers are writ- Q. One of the characters, Daphne, chooses to become a ing from their positions in this changed culture, which can make single mother and never reveals the identity of the father their work seem quite different, at least on first reading. But, of of her two children. Why? course, the best of them are writing about the human condition, about change and courage and doubt and risk, about the errors A. Daphne’s decision to have children without marrying, and made by the human heart and the corrections. to be discreet about the identity of the father is a way of claim- ing happiness for herself, and usefulness. The two decisions are Q. What does it take to build “a good house”? quite separate. She doesn’t marry because she is incapable of trust, which is perhaps an irrational but, in her particular case, A. People, or at least the luckiest among us, make their own inevitable result of an extreme incident in her childhood. She good houses. A house is a structure, a shelter from the elements, wants children for the usual reasons: to love something larger but it seems to me that a shared house is the place where we than, or beyond, herself. Although having illegitimate children learn that love is something we can make from chaos, with our when she does is deemed a social misstep, perhaps even a moral words and gestures and movements, but particularly with our error, it is a very rational, loving decision. I brought her grown words. The stories we tell about our young selves, the memories daughters to life in the last section of A Good House to give that insist on their place in our present reality, are often made evidence of the moral rightness of Daphne’s life. from the words spoken to us at some crucial time, by some crucial person: a father, a sister, a mother, a brother. Q. Margaret seems to be the glue that holds the family together. She marries Bill soon after his wife Sylvia dies of Q. So much in this novel rings true about small towns and cancer, and enters another woman’s home where the chil- real lives lived in those places. Did any parts of the novel, dren are already teenagers. At one point, she tells a white or any of its characters, come from real life? lie … Can you explain why? A. I spent the first eighteen years of my life in a small Ontario A. When Margaret marries Bill, after Sylvia’s death, she moves town near Lake Huron, so the particular images and tone are into a house filled with late adolescent children. Margaret is a meant to be true to life, at least to my life. But because fiction smart woman; she recognizes immediately that keeping on top will not stand for rules and regulations, I changed things as of the laundry will be the least of her responsibilities. Because necessary. In the end, this town is an imagined town, true in she is the least wounded, she witnesses most clearly, cannot help its parts to many different towns. The characters are not based but watch and hear, how grief occupies the house, how it moves on anyone I knew, although many of the people I knew could through Bill and his children, and their friend Murray. have said or done the things my characters say and do. As well Because she is a pragmatist, she does what she believes would be as realizing credible, individual fictional characters that could best, for all of them, including herself. Telling Patrick a consol- move a story through to its end, I was trying to capture a larg- ing story about his dead mother is natural to her, and easy. er style, a way of being that was particular to a time and place. The intention was not to praise it or romanticize it, simply to perennialcanada AUTHOR GUIDES ·BONNIE BURNARD A Good House ·9 make it fictionally real, because it was real and still is, for ing a worthy book that won’t sell very well. Along with many many people. provincial institutions, the Canada Council also provides small but adequate grants, which allow writers to keep writing. If Q. A Good House is thoroughly unique, but it also fits into our writers are quite good now, and I believe they are, it is a literary tradition of women writers. Can you comment? because we live in a country that desires literary excellence. Who are some of the writers you admire? Q. Some of the Canadian press tried to categorize this novel A. I have been influenced a great deal by a variety of writers, as a “feel-good” novel, and you really rebelled against that. particularly women writers. I don’t have a master list, and my As a reader, I found something beautiful but also inexpress- interest changes with time, but I would have to include the late ibly sad about this story. Children grow up and leave; a Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro, Carol Shields, Eudora Welty, granddaughter is born brain-damaged; a son is killed in an Bobbie Ann Mason, even Dorothy Parker. Although I am accident; and Bill develops Alzheimer’s and goes through a inspired by the craft and grateful for the humanity or the wit personality change … There are so many losses, even in the or the gentleness or the sheer nerve in the writing, I have prob- life of this “happy” family. Can you discuss more? ably been most influenced by the sureness of the work. Each of these women has discovered and held fast to a very solid and A. The losses in A Good House might seem to be excessive but, extremely wise literary voice. given the time span of the novel, in my experience and from what I have witnessed, they are not at all excessive. Because this Q. A Good House won the 1999 Giller Prize. Previous is an extended family, there are more people at risk, more peo- winners include Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler, and ple for the reader to watch. At the end of the novel, Margaret Alice Munro. Can you tell us the background of this in particular seems to comprehend that the absence of loss is not award? happiness, it is only good, and only temporarily good luck. Maybe happiness is a combination of two simple things: the A. The Giller Prize was established in 1994 by Jack instinct to celebrate like mad when your luck is holding and the Rabinovitch to honour the memory of his late wife Doris tenacity, the decency to hold true (to family, to a lover, to Giller, a book-loving journalist who lived and worked in both friends) when luck goes bad. If this is true, then I have written Montreal and Toronto. In that first year, David Staines, about a happy family. Mordecai Richler, and Alice Munro lent their prestige to the prize by sitting on the jury. It’s a wonderful evening. Jack Rabinovitch invites four hundred guests to an open bar and a five-course dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto. There are usually five shortlisted writers and no one but the jury knows which book has won until the announcement is made.

Q. There seem to be so many incredible writers coming out of Canada in recent years, yourself included. Is there a reason for the new emergence of this generation of great writers in Canada? Or is it just that they are recognized and appreciated more now than ever?

A. There has been a kind of burst of good Canadian writing in the last two or three decades. Although I can’t guess exactly why this is so, some of the credit must go to a country-wide array of small publishers supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, publishers who often take the first chance on a writer, publish- perennialcanada AUTHOR GUIDES ·BONNIE BURNARD A Good House ·10