Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Interview with Karen Smythe on "A Town with No Noise" (Palimpsest Press, 2025)

Host: Holly Gattery
Guest: Karen Smythe
Date: September 21, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode of New Books Network features an in-depth conversation with acclaimed Canadian author Karen Smythe about her latest novel, A Town with No Noise (Palimpsest Press, 2025). Smythe and host Holly Gattery discuss the inspirations behind the book, its structural experimentation, and its incisive interrogation of history, identity, privilege, and how communities reckon with their pasts. The conversation explores Smythe’s narrative decisions, the book’s themes of secrecy and subjectivity, and her use of footnotes and vignettes to layer perspectives.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Origins and Thematic Seeds of the Novel

• Genesis of the Story
  • Smythe initially intended to write “a book...about all the different characters in this fictional town, Upton Bay,” inspired by real Ontario tourist destinations like Niagara-on-the-Lake. As her writing progressed, the story deepened, centering on Jay’s grandfather, Otto, a German immigrant with a mysterious WWII past.
    • “One character kind of took over in terms of theme and where the story started to go. And that was... Otto.” (04:43, Karen Smythe)
  • The narrative expanded into exploring the protagonist Sam’s Norwegian heritage and a parallel family secret, resulting in a dual, multi-generational narrative set in both Canada and wartime Norway.
    • “It kind of took off from being about this one fictional small town in Ontario to being about two fictional towns separated by geography and decades...” (07:47, Karen Smythe)

Privilege, Community, and Critique

• Challenging the Surface of Wealthy Communities
  • Holly and Karen dig into the novel’s critique of gentrified, white, wealthy rural towns and how their prosperity often conceals histories of exploitation.
    • “Most wealth is built on the backs of oppression, different kinds of oppression, but oppression.” (08:00, Holly Gattery)
  • Sam, as an outsider and investigative writer, interrogates the tourist façade by focusing on the labor underpinning the town’s success, and the personal and social secrets of its elite.
    • "[Sam’s] mind starts focusing on who is doing all this work to produce this...beautiful, attractive, fun town...some people are taken advantage of, to put it nicely, abused, to put it less nicely.” (09:39, Karen Smythe)
  • The tension between Sam’s outsider perspective and her gradual understanding reveals the complexity and hidden histories beneath privilege.
    • “She starts to understand that most human lives have complicated stories and backgrounds...what she sees on the surface of even privileged lives isn’t necessarily the truth or the whole truth.” (12:14, Karen Smythe)

Family Secrets, Judgment, and Grace

• Narrative Tension & Growth
  • Holly describes the “unbearable amount of tension” within Otto’s house, emblematic of intergenerational and cultural friction.
    • “Whenever Sam was in that house, I was like, ah, get me out of here. There is so much tension here. But it was so perfect for the book because that’s exactly what should have been.” (13:29, Holly Gattery)
  • The writing process mimicked Sam’s own gradual discovery, pacing revelations to mirror Sam’s—and the reader’s—emotional journey.
    • “In a way, I guess the tension that that produces in the writer...translates into the narrative itself.” (16:19, Karen Smythe)
  • Sam’s character arc involves moving from harsh judgment to a more complex understanding of grace, both towards others and herself.

Multiplicity of Perspectives: Vignettes and Narrative Structure

• Giving Voice to the Community
  • With a large cast of mostly elderly, complex characters, Smythe used embedded third-person vignettes to flesh out backstories that Sam, as a first-person narrator, couldn’t access.
    • “One of the things that I had to figure out was how to tell all these stories in a way that made sense...So I ended up embedding within the novel, mini stories...about the characters...” (20:31, Karen Smythe)
  • Multiple perspectives challenge the reader’s and Sam’s assumptions, emphasizing the subjectivity of history and memory.
    • “Part of the point of the novel...is that in order to tell a story truthfully...you need multiple voices. You need to listen to a...wide variety of voices in order to get there.” (22:24, Karen Smythe)

Experimentation with Footnotes and Metafiction

• Footnotes as Counterpoint and Commentary
  • Smythe integrates footnotes as “a kind of third person narrator,” supplying extra information not accessible to Sam.
    • “I wanted to contrast Sam’s point of view, the first person point of view, with another point of view that is embedded in the footnotes.” (25:44, Karen Smythe)
  • The footnotes intentionally create a sense of doubt about Sam’s reliability and underscore the fallibility of all historical narratives.
    • “You make assumptions and those assumptions might be wrong, completely wrong. So it’s kind of a third person narrator that speaks in footnotes...And I just liked that. I liked that little bit of extra information.” (26:32, Karen Smythe)
  • In the Norway sections, Sam herself uses footnotes—it becomes a device for “providing factual information,” stressing research and layered truths.
• Reader Reaction
  • Holly admits an aversion to footnotes due to academic fatigue but found a reading strategy that highlighted their narrative utility.
    • “What I told myself is ignore the footnotes and then every section go back and read them all. Which is really neat because I wasn’t getting any of that input like when I first read them. And then when I read back I was like, oh, okay.” (30:06, Holly Gattery)

Overarching Themes and Reflections

• History, Memory, and Listening
  • The novel interrogates how community, history, and identity are constructed and questioned.
    • “It’s really important to pay attention to how history is written and how memory is transmitted down the generations...” (29:25, Karen Smythe)
  • Both author and host emphasize the value of approaching books—and people—with openness and humility.
    • “I actually think the world would be a better place...if more people read and enter conversations...less sure of ourselves and more willing to just listen to what other people are trying to say first.” (24:09, Holly Gattery)

What’s Next for Karen Smythe

• Upcoming Work
  • Smythe is working on another novel with a first-person female narrator who, after a divorce, “exiled” herself to the Hebrides. Like A Town with No Noise, it explores secrets, self-discovery, and shifting perspectives, but with a more straightforward narrative.
    • “It’s about a woman who has recently divorced and has kind of exiled herself to the...Hebrides...It has secrets that she isn’t aware of that change the way she sees herself and her past.” (32:02, Karen Smythe)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Perspective:
  “Part of the point of the novel...is that in order to tell a story truthfully or to know something about the past in a more truthful or full way...you need to listen to a wide variety of voices in order to get there.”
  – Karen Smythe (22:24)

• On Judgement and Growth:
  “Because it’s really easy not to give grace to other people when you think you are perfect and flawless and blameless. And as you said, everyone carries histories.”
  – Holly Gattery (13:11)

• On Footnotes & Structure:
  “So it sets up a kind of doubting, I guess, in the reader’s mind in terms of Sam’s reliability...because you make assumptions and those assumptions might be wrong, completely wrong.”
  – Karen Smythe (26:10)

• On Meeting Books Where They Are:
  “Trying not to go into a book with too much of your own expectations...to maybe think about why we’re doing that and what that says about us or our world...”
  – Holly Gattery (24:09)

Timestamps of Key Segments

• Book Introduction & Plot Setup: 01:57–04:43
• Origins & Development of the Novel: 04:43–08:00
• Discussion of Town’s Privilege & Sam’s Perspective: 08:00–13:11
• Writing Tension in Otto’s House: 13:11–16:35
• Characterization of the Elderly & Use of Vignettes: 20:31–23:04
• Multiplicity of Perspectives & Truth: 23:04–24:09
• Narrative Experimentation with Footnotes: 25:44–31:49
• Karen’s Next Project: 32:02–33:27

Episode Takeaways

A Town with No Noise invites readers to question easy narratives, reflect on the hidden truths behind privilege, and to recognize the importance of multiple voices in understanding history and self. Through her conversation with Holly Gattery, Karen Smythe reveals both the creative ambition and ethical engagement at the heart of her writing. The episode itself models the open, dialogic, and self-examining approach it advocates.