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- [00:01]
Holly Gattery
This episode is brought to you by. Prime Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice off campus. Elle every year. After the Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point and more, slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime Girl. Winter is so last season and now spring's got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes.
- [00:38]
Joanne McCaig
Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs.
- [00:40]
Holly Gattery
You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders that perfect hang on the patio. Sundress those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done. Hoping it looks anything like the picture
- [00:52]
Joanne McCaig
when you tear open that envelope.
- [00:54]
Holly Gattery
It's time for a little in person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. Ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit red bull.com brightsummer ahead to learn more. See you this summer.
- [01:29]
Joanne McCaig
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:33]
Holly Gattery
Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I'm your host, Holly Gattery, and I'm thrilled to be joined Today by Joanne McCaig to talk about her fascinating new novel, Beneficiary, which is released with University of Calgary Press. Joanne, welcome to the show.
- [01:51]
Joanne McCaig
Thank you very much for inviting me.
- [01:54]
Holly Gattery
I have so many questions, but I'm going to give our listeners a heads up on your book and about you and kind of just restrain myself from diving into the deep end right away. So for our listeners, Beneficiary, as I said, is a really fascinating book and I think it raises so many important questions about wealth and also about empathy, our empathy as readers. And to whom and when do we extend it? Seren was doomed to a country club cage and a leash of pearls until out of the blue, on a Tuesday night in 1969, she found herself suddenly saying no. More than 50 years later, she looks back on her life and each choice that followed. Beautiful, tragic, and completely her own. Leaving her family for the freedom of the 1970s, she began a quest to discover how to live in this world as her true self. A quest that would take her from the heady countercultural milieu of communal houses on Vancouver island through marriage and motherhood, divorce and an unexpected inheritance that changed everything. Suddenly wealthy Thren must wrestle with money, with class, and what it means to have more than most. What does it mean to live truly through tragedy and heartbreak? How do we create ourselves in a world that keeps changing? What does it mean to have money when so many people don't? A richly written, fiercely feminist novel imbued with real bravery, Beneficiary weaves the past and present in a rich tapestry of life. Joanna Cague is the author of Textbook of the Rose and An Honest Woman. She is a proud owner of Shelf Life Books, an independent bookstore in her hometown of Calgary, Alberta, and definitely one of my favorite Canadian bookstores. So, Joanne. Yeah, I love it. I love it.
- [03:49]
Joanne McCaig
I'm glad you know it.
- [03:51]
Holly Gattery
Yes, I do. I regularly am bothering them about things in my role as publicist, and they're always responsive and wonderful, which is so lovely. So I'm going to dive right in because I want to give our, our listeners a little bit more of a foundation and where this book came from in your mind. I happen to have a little bit of background information, but I would love for you to explain where this book started.
- [04:16]
Joanne McCaig
Oh, sure. Well, the book actually began. I wrote the first two sections, the Vigo Reaction and Family Fugue, in the 90s when I was a young single mom. I was in grad school. Things were pretty challenging and, and then I, I couldn't, I couldn't. Well, they weren't quite cooked yet. They weren't quite ready to go. And, and I, I, I remember I kept sending VGO Reaction to, you know, there are very few venues available for Nollas. I think the only venue available was the Malahat Review Noela Contest. And I sent it there repeatedly. But, but I couldn't find a home for either of these and I couldn't kind of bring them to completion in a way I was satisfied with. So instead of throwing them away, I just put them in a drawer. And then the pandemic hit. The COVID 19 pandemic hit in 2020 and I rode it out in a little cabin in the mountains about four hours west of Calgary. And I, I picked up these two pieces again and I don't know, the wheels just started turning and I, over the course of the pandemic, I created the, the last three parts of the novel. Catastrophe, Plague and Beneficiary. And, and it was, it was, it was important to me. Like, you know, when, when, when I'm given the gift of an idea and something that excites me or moves me enough to want to write about it, then I. I kind of hate to waste that gift. Do you know what I mean? I kind of hate to just say, well, this doesn't work, and throw it away. So I. It was very gratifying for me to. To be able to come back to this material and, and find a way to. To make it work as. As part of a novel.
- [06:20]
Holly Gattery
Thank you for that. Yeah, I agree. I have a hard time letting go of ideas, too. I. I'll wait on them and I'll let them incubate, but I usually. I very seldom abandon an idea altogether. Usually it just needs a little bit more time in my head. So I want to talk about the Vigo reaction, because when I read that part, when I. When I read those words, and there's a. An epigraph from Viggo the Carpathians and Ghostbusters 2 that begins the book. And I was. I was hooked, right? I was like, okay, we're mentioning Ghostbusters. I'm. I'm in. This is my childhood. And it says, death is but a door, time is but a window. And so when we got to the Vegal reaction, I stopped. I ran out to grab my phone, because I don't read with my phone around me. Reading is a sacred act for me. And I looked it up because I was like, what is this? I must know. But it doesn't exist. I mean, it exists, but it's not a medical term. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that section of the book and, and how those themes play out.
- [07:25]
Joanne McCaig
Sure, sure. Yeah. Viggo is. He's a fictional creation of the creators of Ghostbusters too, which. Which my boys, who are now all adults, they were very fond of Ghostbusters. So in that section, we kind of meet Sarin as a. As a very beleaguered single mom. Her. Her husband has just left, she's got young kids, and we flashback to her teen years and so forth, and the energy of that section called the Vigo Reaction is. Is sort of twofold. So the term comes from Sarin having taken the kids to see Ghostbusters 2, and Viggo is the villain in Ghostbusters 2. And of course, the Ghostbusters defeat him and save the world, and all is well, and the kids are happy coming out of the theater and singing the Ghostbusters theme. But then subsequent nights later, they come running down to her bedroom in terror with nightmares about Vigo. So Cyren begins to think of this as The Vigo reaction, it's sort of the ripple effect, the after effect of a. Of a shocking experience. You kind of ride through it initially, but then there are ripples and after effects that can be a little surprising. And the way that plays out in that section of the novel, too, is that. Is that the reason for the breakup of Saren's marriage is a really devastating pregnancy loss, and the two people get through it initially, but then the ripple effect, and the after effect of that ultimately means that. That. That they can't continue on as a couple. And during this event, which is a pretty horrific event, Sarin mishears. Sarin experiences this terrible feeling, the worst feeling she's ever had. Pain, fear. Just a terrible, terrible moment. She asks the Doctor, well, what is this? And she thinks she hears him say, well, that's the Vigo reaction. And then, of course, that gets her going back to Ghostbusters, but in fact, she has misheard the Doctor and. And he's saying something else altogether.
- [09:54]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, I enjoyed that, especially because misunderstanding or misreading words have led to some of the most fun I've had with language in my entire life.
- [10:04]
Joanne McCaig
Exactly.
- [10:05]
Holly Gattery
And. And I've always enjoyed it. Even in my novel, the main character's name, ecology Paul, is based on a misunderstanding of somebody saying Apology Paul, and. And that's how the main character, which is a sock puppet, gets his name, is a misunderstanding of words. So I. I've always enjoyed that. And. And I. I do that with reading a lot. I'll be reading a book, and I'll get the words mixed up in my brain, and what I end up reading is something very cool, and I'll, like, jot it down, but it had nothing to do with what the writer was saying initially. I want to talk to you about the structure of your book, which I found really, really interesting. And I always love books that are told chronologically or they feel more like a tapestry or a mosaic than a tidy narrative, because in my. My experience of life is not a tidy narrative. My experience is, you know, I'll think of one thing and it will bleed into something else that's not linear at all. It's not like it. It's happening in. In chronological sequence. Everything's bleeding into everything else. And I found that's how I felt reading your book, and I loved the fact that it was moving around in time. And I would love to just hear you talk about the decision to go with that approach and also how you made it work.
- [11:24]
Joanne McCaig
Okay. Yeah. Well, that's a very good Question. Honestly, it's written that way because that's the only way I can write. You know, like I, like, like you, I, I don't experience my own life in a linear way, you know, Well, I, you know, I was born and then this happened and then that happened. And, and, and often if I'm presented with that in a novel, I don't, I don't find it particularly interesting. So, no, the way I write is very, very chaotic. There are lots of big sheets of newsprint involved and lots of felt markers and arrows and post it notes and. Yeah, you talked about how things bleed into each other and there's no real chronology. That's the way I work. I sort of have a thought. Well, there's this thing and then there's that thing over there. And I wonder what it would look like if those two things were brought together and how that would enrich or enliven that particular scene or that observation or whatever. So, yeah, my first novel, I hesitated to even call it a novel. I called it a tale because it was. There were six or eight loosely interrelated stories ending with a long novella, with a novella that featured the central character who'd sort of been going in and out of the previous stories. My second novel, An Honest Woman, had almost an erotic fantasy, a literary erotic fantasy at the heart that sort of started at the beginning and went to the end. But wrapped around that were layers of, of narrative involving two very, very different narrat narrators talking to each other. There was a lot of metafictional stuff and, you know, elbowing in the ribs and jokes and things like that. So it was a very. One of the editors who looked at it described it as an onion, as, as a, you know, like there were, there were sort of these layers of the onion around the central story. So with, with beneficiary, it was, it was quite similar. As I say, I had the first two pieces, but they, they were, well, I guess family fugues, roughly chronological. It's sort of a year in the life of this, you know, family going through a difficult time. But Vigo. Reaction flashes back. She's 32, she's 16, then she's 30 again, and then she's 19 and then she's in her 40s and so forth. And to me, like, I, I mean, I, I wish I could say, Holly, that I made the decision to write it that way, but that's just the way it came out. Like, I just, I couldn't think of a, a different way to tell that part of the story catastrophe again, catastrophe involves, you know, what a lot of people wouldn't think of as a catastrophe, which is an inheritance. But. But for Sarin, it's a very complicated and difficult moment that she finds herself in. And I wrestled with it and wrestled with it. And over the years, I started using the ABC Darium format. So A is for announcement. Well, that's the announcement of the father's passing, and then B is for brother in law and the complications from the estate and so on. And once I sort of latched onto the ABC Darium way of telling the story that just sort of made it feel manageable, I went, ah, okay, I think I can do it that way. And at the end of the. The last of the ABC Dariums is, I think it's Zone one. And if you go, if you're in the airport, you're lining up for your flight, there's Zone two, where everybody's lining up, except there's also Zone one for people who can afford business class. And so that's sort of a. I felt that that Zone one was a kind of appropriate way to end that part of the story, talking about the mixed blessing of. Of that kind of inheritance. Beneficiary sends an adult sarin. She's in her 50s or 60s by then, I think 50s, and sends her to three different places. She goes to a ski resort in the Alps in the hopes of sort of a reconciliation with her only surviving relative or sister. Shortly after that, she goes to work in a refugee camp in Lesbos. This section takes place in 2016 after the refugee crisis was in full swing there. And then two years later, she finds herself in Mexico and learns that her daughter is in the grip of addiction and desperately needs help. So that section's called Beneficiary. But I. I hope I'm playing with the word beneficiary in a way that's a little more complicated than somebody who's a lottery winner. You know, like all of us are the beneficiaries of the sociopolitical moment that we live in. You know, good or bad, we're the beneficiary of our life experience, of. Of our circumstances, accidents of birth and so forth. So I'm kind of hoping that section widens the reader's view of what it might mean to be a beneficiary.
- [17:31]
Holly Gattery
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- [17:36]
Joanne McCaig
Find savings on hanging baskets and flowers
- [17:39]
Holly Gattery
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- [18:01]
Joanne McCaig
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- [18:32]
New Books Network Announcer
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- [19:45]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, we always joke around our house that my kids inherit my legacy of heart disease and mental unease. So I, you know, it's, it's, I mean, it's interesting to see like the history of addiction that Sridh's children are inheriting. I mean, I was, I thought about a lot about that, probably because I am a recovered addict. So I mean, one of my main missions as a reader, one of my main missions as a human being is to never stop developing my powers of empathy. One of the reasons I wanted to pick up this book, and I was so fascinated about it when I first heard about it from your Press was because I didn't think I'd care about the problems of this very privileged white chick. I was like, well, that's a problem then, because we should care. I mean, it's not a competition. And I thought, well, in this economy, like, how much empathy do I have to give this situation? But I wanted to know. And one thing I found really fascinating about the book and one thing that I think so sold it on, sold it to me and made it work for me was I never felt that I was being asked to have empathy for sarin at all. I, I, I never got the impression that I was asked to feel sorry for anybody. This is just her life. And by the, by just not being asked and not feeling like I was being manipulated into feeling sorry for someone who is more privileged than most of us will ever be by feeling like that wasn't even an expectation, I actually ended up feeling quite bad for her and even seeing myself in parts of her not, not to, like, completely get into, you know, throw myself under the bus here. But, like, the parts where, like, it's mentioned that she's got, she got to this point in her life where she's pooping herself a little. I was like, oh, honey, like, I laughed. But it's just like, it's ridiculous because I'm infinitely interested in how our bodies fail us, especially as women. And so I found myself getting maybe inordinately interested in her then because all of that power, all this money, you know, she's still stuck in a bathroom stall with a, you know, very intelligently packed pair of spare panties, changing her underpants. Right. Like, it's, you know, it doesn't matter how much money you have, you're still at the mercy of time and, you know, you can't buy your way out of everything. And so there were, there was I, it was, for me, this book. I always think it'd be such a great book club book because I think it will bring out very different responses and different people. And I want to ask you about that because you have to have, I would assume you not, you have to have written this book, but I'm assuming you would have written this book knowing that this is a very privileged position that Sarah's in.
- [22:45]
Joanne McCaig
A very privileged position.
- [22:47]
Holly Gattery
Yeah. How do you, as an author, present this story in a way that, like I said, I, I felt myself having empathy by the virtue of not being asked to have any empathy for her. And it seemed like a really, I, I would think of it as a very challenging balance to achieve and yet somehow I found you Dibbit. Well, thank you. Yeah. And was. Was it something you were thinking about while you were writing it, or was it just like, I'm just going to tell this story the best way I know how and hope it works out?
- [23:19]
Joanne McCaig
Yeah, like. Like, again, you know, I, I wish I could say I was very deliberate and thoughtful about this, but, you know, no, it's, it's, it's. It's your, your second option. That's, that's just the way it came out. I do know that often in my writing, my, my readers don't find my central characters particularly lovable. You know, they find them a little difficult, they find them a little perverse, they find them a little cranky. And. And again, I don't deliberately make them that way. That's, that's just how they come out. But, but, you know, like, I don't. I, I'm not interested in goody2shoes or people that are sort of, you know, pure Tessie, pure heart or whatever, you know, like, remember. Remember reading Dickens as a kid, you know, and all, all the women he wrote about were either implacably evil or, like, impossibly saintly. They were like these little cardboard cutouts, you know, And I just thought. And I love Dickens. I did. But when it came to his writing about women, I just thought, ew. Like, he just doesn't get it at all. So it's really important for me that my central characters are complicated beings. You know, they have some good qualities, they have some unattractive qualities. They're kind of muddling along, doing the best they can, you know, and if people empathize with them, great. If they don't, that's fine too, you know, that's not, that's not what I'm after. I'm after telling an interesting story.
- [25:06]
Holly Gattery
I definitely don't have to like characters to empathize with them, which I think is something I've. I've learned as I've gotten older. If we take Adele Wiseman's Holder, for instance, from Crackpot, that character is incredibly complex, morally gray at best. And when I was younger, in my 20s, I just despised her and thought that meant I despised the book. And I got older, I realized what I hated about Hodo is what I hated about myself. And I gave her more grace. And I really enjoyed the book when I reread it. And I, I don't like. And to be clear, for listeners who are familiar with Hoda and Crackpot, I, uh, I. I found Seren 10 times more empathetic and less morally gray than Hoda was off the hop. But I, I think for me, the question was, why am I interested in a story about a very privileged person and her, her struggles? Because it's not something I can relate to. But of course, with reading, the whole point is to read things and perspectives you, you can't relate to. And I think one of the ways that you hooked me right from the beginning, if, if we're looking at part one in the Vigo reaction is we're, we're right there with Sirinha doing this really weird, quirky behavior which some people might consider a little bit morbid. But I was like, okay, you're strange. I'm in. Tell me more. And she's rolling around the hip joint of one of her deceased cats, which is still messed up, but so intriguing at the same time. And her relationship with that cat, to me, said so much about who she was as a person. I would just. I need to hear you talk about this relationship with this cat in this opening scene. Was this, like, probably wasn't always your opening scene, but deciding to lead with this really macabre, but also funny a scene where she's rolling around this little pea sized hip joint and she's talking about this cat. I would just love to hear about how you decided this is where you're going to open with, because I think it's such a marvelous introduction to your character.
- [27:22]
Joanne McCaig
Well, that's actually the part I've selected for the reading. Should I do that now?
- [27:26]
Holly Gattery
Oh, that would be amazing. Yes.
- [27:28]
Joanne McCaig
Okay. Yeah. So this is part one of the novel the Vigo Reaction. And this section is dated 1991, October. The hip joint of the domestic feline at 6 months of age is slightly smaller than a pea. How does Sarah know this? Well, she knows it because she has one in her purse. The call came one night a couple of weeks ago. The neighbor's voice, your little cat is gray, isn't it? Well, I'm afraid there's been an accident. Sarin stopped to rummage in the linen closet for an old towel, one that she wouldn't mind throwing away. Afterwards, the driver stood next to his car with Mort in his arms. He looked devastated, Mort merely irritable. The guy said, we love cats. She just ran right under. Please let us help with the vet bills. Sarin said, oh, heavens no. It's our fault. Bundling the cat in the towel and walking back to the house muttering, damn you, Mort. Why couldn't you get run over properly by a Camaro full of teenagers waving beer bottles and blaring acdc. They would have backed up and thumped over you again just for the hell of it. 9:30 on a school night, and Sarin dragged the kids out of bed for the drive to the animal emergency clinic, Emmy, crazed with pleasure at the drama of it all. But Justin fell back to sleep in the van, so she locked him inside and left him there while she and Emmy carried the cat in. When they came out 15 minutes later, the van door was open and her 5 year old son was barefoot on the sidewalk in his Pittsburgh Penguin pajamas talking to two young hookers at a payphone. Like his father, Justin has enough testosterone for two or three guys. Once last year he'd stood transfixed before a TV image of Madonna gyrating in pink satin and diamonds and after a few moments of contemplation declared, I yike her. When Saren came to pick Mort up after the surgery three days later, the vet said, don't you want to see the piece I took out? No, I don't think so. But there it was anyway. Mort's hip joint plunked down on the stainless steel table, a small gray marble, shiny pink tinged like a pearl, fragments of blood stained bones still attached in two places. The certificates on the vet's wall say he trained in Scotland, but he has an East European accent, always has Beethoven or Sibelius playing on the sound system, and a romantic last name, Zacharias. Mort's incision was 6 inches long, sloppily stitched, stained purple with iodine, the internal bruising livid on her blue white skin. As Saren gathered checkbook, antibiotic, and cat along with the liquor store box Mort had arrived in, the vet looked at the check and said, I've never seen that name before. Your first name, I mean, she answered, it's Welsh, like Serenade, but without the aid Saren. Then he picked up the hip joint and said, wait, you don't want this. It seemed to really matter to him, as if she wouldn't be getting her money's worth 175 bucks if she left it behind. Well, not really, but thank you. You could show it to your husband, he said. That got her thinking of TJ Gone. She could have said, I don't have a husband anymore. But then how to explain the six months gone bulge under her sweatshirt? So she put Mort's hip joint in her purse. Six months ago they had acquired the kitten, also by accident, for free. On Good Friday a neighbor invited them over just to have a look and Emma grabbed the little gray tabby, which immediately put out its claws and scratched her on the chin, so Emmy shrieked and tossed it onto the concrete floor, where it cried and limped away. The neighbor looked aghast at Sarin, who shrugged and said, guess we'll take that one, since we appear to have broken its legs. The kitten's legs weren't broken, though. Back at their place, she and Emma and Justin did all the welcome to your new home stuff, the dish of warmed milk, the sleeping box, the list of rules on the fridge. We do not pick up the kitten. We do not tease the kitten. We are always gentle with the kitten. Then the kids went to the grandma's for a sleepover. Mort curled up on the couch and Sarin had a long luxurious bath bath oil hummus exfoliating scrub, not just face and neck but everywhere, thighs, ass ending up so silky smooth she nearly slid off the edge of the tub while touching up her legs with the razor because the anchorman was coming over. She dressed in T shirt and jeans, but with white satin top pants and lacy camisole underneath, sort of a plain brown wrapper. Seducing the anchorman took six hours, two playoff hockey games and three bottles of wine. And so much talk. How do people do this again and again? She wondered. Not the sex, but all the lead up, all that talk, the backstory, the rationalizations, the new hopes. Bloody exhausting. But she got what she wanted from him and even managed to hustle him out the door and get to Shoppers Drug Mart in time to buy candy before Mum brought the kids home Saturday afternoon. A somewhat bedraggled and hungover Easter bunny did her bit late that night, and the usual riotous treasure hunt occurred Sunday morning. Even their old dog Reggie joined the fun by scarfing down an unguarded basket full of small foil wrapped chocolate eggs. He didn't die from the chocolate, but his poop was flecked with bright colored bits of foil for a week.
- [33:12]
Holly Gattery
Thank you. What a great scene.
- [33:15]
New Books Network Announcer
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- [34:04]
Holly Gattery
I mean, it's just chaos. And it's. Everything I came to at least relate to about Serene is just that. Not always great decision making. But, I mean, I. I don't even know what a good decision is anymore. And, I mean, where the decisions ended for her were probably close to the right places. I mean, it's a complicated book, and that's what I liked about it. That's why I think I want people to read this and I want to have a book club about it and I want other people's opinions, because I think so many people are going to have so many different takes on. On the book. Like, for instance. So that section deals with kind of a life of motherhood and nurturing. But we. We do enter large.
- [34:54]
Joanne McCaig
Large.
- [34:54]
Holly Gattery
And I don't. I don't feel like any of your book is large insofar as it doesn't feel like it's a lot to carry. It feels, like I said, more like a mosaic. But we enter sections where we have Serene, you know, doing the sex, drugs, and rock and roll thing. Very detached from her birth family. We have her as a teenager. There's that really stunning scene where she notices her mother being beautiful and charming and talking at a party and her father silencing her mother with just the smallest of movements, which is a really powerfully written scene that shows, with, you know, just one movement of a finger, how this radiant and vibrant woman was silenced by her husband and basically told to shut up. And I found that really telling and beautiful. So a lot of the. The Seren we get to know or Serene we get to know is not. I said it right the first time. No, is not the. The. The mother. It's this woman before the mother, this girl before the mother, and how she got to where she is now. And I. I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about where she came from, the family she was born into, because that's really interesting to me. And it's interesting especially insofar as it shows how you can have some siblings born into the same house, raised by the same parents, and they don't turn out the same.
- [36:30]
Joanne McCaig
Yeah, yeah, that. That scene, that early scene that you mentioned where Saren suddenly sees her mother as sort of her father's creature. That's a really important scene for her in your. You earlier mentioned that Tuesday night where Saren decides she's talking with her boyfriend and she decides to say no. And then a Few weeks later, she sees this thing with her mother and, and, and those two incidents really propel her into kind of asking some questions about the, the gender arrangements of. Is it, is it so much the privileged background? I suppose that's part of it, but also just the gender arrangements of the 1960s and 1970s, right, where, you know, a girl never phoned a boy, you know, a girl waited by the phone for a boy to call and invite her out on a date, right? There was just this very strict set of, of rules about how boys and girls and young men and young women interacted with, you know, the whole sort of dead march towards, you know, 2.5 kids in a three bedroom bungalow with a garage sort of thing. It was just the way, the way expectations were organized for her at that, at that point in her life. And 1969-70 is or is the rise of second wave feminism, right, that, you know, there's all these jokes about bra burning and all this, but things really had changed. Women had access to the pill, for example. And a big part of Saren's journey is what it was like to walk through that socio political moment, right, of well, maybe I don't have to do things the way my mother did. One of my favorite scenes in the novel comes at the end, which is one we haven't talked about yet. It's. Is it called plague now or distancing? I can't remember. But it's, it's when Saren's kind of looking back on her life during, during the, the COVID years and in, in isolation and she looks back on her mother's life and the choices that her mother made. And like you say, you know, it's very easy to dismiss someone, you know, to say, oh, she just was her husband, husband's creature. But Sarah is able to look back on her mother and say, well, the choices she made made it possible for me to have the life I have now, you know, and I'm grateful. I need to be very, very grateful to her for the doors she opened for me. So I don't think I answered your question.
- [39:25]
Holly Gattery
I think you did. I think you did. I mean, there's really. This is a really rangy novel. I feel like it has a lot of tentacles and I feel like there's so many aspects to discuss, like, you know, the, the wealth aspect and is it possible for anyone to actually love you if they know that you're wealthy? If they enter that relationship knowing, you know, you're not the millionaire next door, where nobody knows, but you actually, you know, they know. I mean, there's a pretty devastating reveal later on in the book that I felt like I'd been slapped across the face. And it, it was tough. I just don't want to give anything away. And, you know, there's that question. Then again, you know, and then there's the. My response to that is, well, that's a problem I'm willing to have, but it's still a legitimate question. Just because it's a problem I'm willing to have does not make any less of a legitimate question. And then there's these questions of legacies, of addiction, legacies of silence and shame that are discussed in this book. There's a Women's sexual liberation and freedom. That, That's a really fascinating thread that there is expectations on mothers and how. How oppressive they can be. I often say I, I'm a huge fan of mothering. I wouldn't have the four kids I had if I didn't love it so much. I, I'd have more if I could. I love mothering, but the whole, whole institution of motherhood is. I'm not into that. I'm not into anything that makes me feel like there's only one right way to act and only one right way to be. And it's something enforced by society with all its myopic and narrow definitions. I mean, I can't do it. And it was interesting for me to watch Seren navigate that and push back against that and the consequences of that. Interesting to see the relationship she had with her father. I mean, there was a lot of really fascinating, you know, themes and questions that are the. And these questions are opened up. And I would argue that your book isn't prescriptive. They're not answered. But they do encourage us to ask your book to me, encourage me to ask the questions. And there's one quote that I have actually quoted to several people. Sense and always quoting your book warmly and accurately when we're discussing wealth. You know, I work in the art, so it's not something most of us have, but something we think about and discuss a lot. And that's the quote where Sirinh's friend says something like about thinking about money as a form of energy you have to expend and to stop moralizing it that, you know, I'd really like you to talk about that because that was a. A way of thinking about money and wealth I'd. I'd never thought about. But like, I don't know if I've made this clear. Enough for our listeners. She is agonizing about the fact she has so much money, that she's inherited so much money. She, it doesn't sit well with her. Yeah. So I would love for you to talk about that quote and about money as energy and also maybe just tell her listeners a little bit more about how Siren is struggling with this influx of wealth. Because while her father is wealthy and she definitely had privilege associated with that wealth, she left and her father remarried and left the mother as well, and Lucerin's mother as well. And when she inherits this wealth, she has some strange attitudes and behaviors about it, even in regards to her children. And while I don't fully understand those motivations, I still found them really interesting. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot. And I'm also trying not to give anything away. So I'm trying to get you to talk about something without giving away the plot. So have fun. Right.
- [43:15]
Joanne McCaig
Well, let's see the quote that you mentioned that money, money is a kind of energy. Yeah. One of the, one of Saren's responses is to, is to decide to give half of it away. So one of the ways she does that is she starts a foundation, a charitable foundation, and she's working with a guy that she used to know on Vancouver Island. And he's kind of a quirky guy, and he has, he has a kind of more relaxed view of it. You know, he says, well, you know, you have, you have the ability to, to do some really interesting things now. You know, you can make some really cool stuff happen and it happened. And if you, if you can let go of some kind of moral dilemma surrounding it, we'll, we'll all be a lot better off. You know, I mean, his, his point is, well, this is the way it is. You know, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to beat yourself up or are you going to use this, this energy in a positive way to make good things happen in the world? And that's, that's very liberating for her. Another friend she has, she's is a, is an 18th century scholar, and she points out that, you know, if Saren had been born 200 years previous,
- [44:41]
Holly Gattery
she
- [44:41]
Joanne McCaig
would have, she would have been at the top of the social heap. You know, she wouldn't have been judged. Right. That, you know, having inherited wealth was sort of put you at, at the, at the top of the, of the pinnacle in the Jane Austen's world. For example, you know, Mr. Darcy has 30,000 a year, and that makes him a Very special and wonderful person. So, you know, it's a matter of perspective and. And sarin is. Is presented with those different perspectives. And again, it does come back to our sociology political moment. Like in this sociopolitical moment. Can you imagine a more damning thing to say about someone than to call them a billionaire? Like, really, like that is fully acceptable hatred. You can, you can openly have contempt for a billionaire, and with good reason. Right. But it's part of. It's part of the moment that we're living in now.
- [45:44]
Holly Gattery
Exactly. Yeah. Like I said, there's. I feel like there's so much to discuss. And I'm serious. I'm imploring our listeners, pick up this book as your next book club read. Honestly, I think it will be a fascinating conversation, lead to fascinating conversations. And because I believe books are mirrors, I believe you'll see people in a new light when you hear responses to this book. It will give you very interesting clues into who they are and their belief systems. I mean, I was surprised by some of my own beliefs and biases and some beliefs that were fully. That were more reinforced after reading the book. Like I said, it was a really interesting read. Next, I would just. Last question before my usual last question. So technically, my penultimate question, I'd really like to talk about your writing style, which I found to be what I can only describe as helium light. Like, I felt like I was tripping along, following a balloon somewhere. And it was. It was really lovely. I mean, you're talking about some really, in some cases, graphic things, you know, vis a vis my earlier comment about Sirinh pooping herself and even things like sex. And I mean, you don't shy away from getting, you know, your metaphorical hands dirty and getting us in there with, you know, the, you know, even how sometimes she's like, God, she just stinks because she hasn't showered. Like, stuff like that. But it was also like, you're. It's very lyrical and light, your language. And I found that to be a really wonderful contrast and a fun contrast to follow on a craft level. Like on the level of me stepping outside the story for a second saying this, I'm going to lift the hood on this thing and really pay attention to craft and language. And I realize that, again, this is probably one of those things that you're gonna say, listen, this is just the way my brain works, Holly. But maybe you could talk about the editing process if there was times your editor may have been like, yeah, we need a little bit more of this, or of that. Because the end result is quite lovely and polished.
- [47:50]
Joanne McCaig
Oh, well, thank you. Well, I worked with a wonderful editor, a guy who lives in Victoria. His name's Michael Kenyon, and he's. He's a joy to work with. And he's one of those editors who totally gets it. You know, he just gets it. So he's been great. I do try to. I try to make my writing conversational, you know, like, I don't try to. I don't. I don't like ponderous writing. I don't like pontification. You know, I don't like opinionated writing. I don't like bombastic writing. You know, I want. I want the tone of my work to be. I'm not giving a lecture. And I was like. I was a university lecturer for many years, so I do know the difference between a lecture and a style that's inviting and conversational. And, you know, come on over here. I got. Something funny happened, something interesting happened. Let me tell you about it.
- [48:50]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, I love that. And I think that's also what I mean by lyrical, is it's. I'm not suggesting that somebody's going to read this. And it's poetic. When I say. I mean, there's poetic elements, absolutely. But when I say lyrical, I'm talking about the way that when you're singing lyrics, they just trip off your tongue. That. That lightness, that. That's the feeling I'm trying to evoke. This. It. It was a very quick read for me as well. I finished it in two nights. And, yeah, I just tore through this book because, like I said, I was really waiting. I think there was some part of me that was waiting to be outraged by something, by like, this wealth, because, like you said, billionaire being such a dirty word. I was. I was ready to be. I just. I, like, I was ready to be outraged. I was ready to be like, why does this matter? And what. What. What I thought was, well, I. I don't have to be sympathetic of her wealth, still be sympathetic of this woman and the fact that she's struggling. I, you know, it's. And it was really just a wonderful moment for me of reflecting on grace and not nurturing divides, which is something that in this world, in this moment seems to be. The divides are nurtured quite ruthlessly, I would say. And, yeah, and your book encouraged me to. Not that I suddenly have to go out and have great empathy for billionaires. Not that. But that just to attempt to lead with humanity first, with someone's humanness, first humanness. First and not with whatever current label is defining them. And I really, really enjoyed that. So thank you for the many wonderful conversations this book forced me to have with myself, whether I wanted to or not. My last question for you, Joanne, is about what you're working on now, if anything. Would you tell us a bit about it?
- [50:49]
Joanne McCaig
Oh, sure. Well, I worked for so long on beneficiary, you know, it was such a long process that to be honest, I don't have any new fiction in the pipeline at all. But I am working on a collection of. Of nonfiction pieces. I'd like to try to put together a book of personal essays. I've had a couple published. I had one published in an anthology by Demeter Press. It was called Barren. And it's an essay about my own experience with infertility that was the result of the use of a birth control device called the Dalkon Shield, which caused terrible damage in the women who used it. And the women got together and did a class action suit against the pharmaceutical company that promoted this. And my own infertility story has a very happy ending. I'm the mother of three adult sons and two beautiful little granddaughters, so I did get a happy ending there. Yeah. So I'm trying to put together a book of essays and yeah, I do. I have one short story kind of tickling at the back of my mind. And all the other novels started with a short story, so who knows? Who knows? Watch this space.
- [52:15]
Holly Gattery
Exactly. Oh, that sounds fascinating. And I love Den Mitter Press. They published one of my favorite books about motherhood coming into being. And it's a collection anthology that talks about all the different ways in which people mother and a very expansive idea of mothering, which I enjoyed immensely. Thank you so much for joining me today, Joanne, on MBN to talk about your excellent book, Beneficiary. And again, everyone, you can get it wherever books are bought or borrowed. And it's published by University of Calgary Press. Joanne, I hope to have you back on to talk about whatever you have published next.
- [52:53]
Joanne McCaig
Thanks a lot, Holly.