Guest Post: Coral Atkinson Discusses The Beginnings Of Her New Novel, “Passing Through”
Introduction:
It is some years now since Coral Atkinson and I served together on the Canterbury Branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors, but we have remained in touch. Coral is an historical novelist who has published two previous adult works (The Love Apple and The Paua Tower) and a junior novel, Copper Top.
Her latest novel, the recently published Passing Through, traces the lives of four people as they come to terms with the wreckage left behind by the First World War — a story that takes place in a world veiled by shifting secrets and lies, where it is difficult to tell the truth from a parlour trick.
As a lover of historical fiction, I am delighted to host Coral on “…on Anything, Really” today, to share more about the background to writing Passing Through.
Welcome, Coral.
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Guest Post: Coral Atkinson on Passing Through
I believe a novel is rather like Fair Isle knitting in that one loops together different coloured wool to make a pattern. The wools you find you have in your mental wool-bag are often surprising, forgotten remnants from other times and places and often from long ago.
When I was a child in Ireland my sister and I used to visit relatives whose son and brother, Bobby, had been killed in the First World War. I was too young to understand much of the significance of this, but I do remember the room in which a large tinted coloured photograph of the dead soldier hung. It had the young officer’s military sword under it and one of those bronze medals given by the British government to the families of men who died.
But the thing I remember most — and something I noticed as a child and again when I returned many years later and saw the portrait and the room as an adult — was the way the dead soldier’s portrait seemed to dominate the room, not just as any large picture does in a small space, but in an odd ghostly way that my sister and I as children had found frightening.
It was as if Bobby’s death and personal tragedy had not ended on some French battlefield but went on leaking into the whole atmosphere causing the air to seem laden with a terrible sadness and the room to have a strange, dull, brownish light. Bobby seemed forever in that room in the bosom of his family. Maybe as Rupert Brooke, poster boy of World War 1, said: “The dead die not, but remain close to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.” Maybe indeed.
The other significant experience took place when I visited Glenorchy at the far end of Lake Wakatipu. Those of you who know Glenorchy, will remember that like most other New Zealand small settlements it has a war memorial and the usual heartbreaking list of names of men who never came back. Not only was I struck in Glenorchy by the extreme remoteness of the settlement as it would have been early in the 20th century — it is hardly Times Square now — but also by the utter incomprehensible, wicked madness of sending off these young men to fight and die in places they had probably never previously heard of, in an irrelevant power struggle they may only have dimly understood. But it was also the sense of the huge, and never again to be filled, gap the death of a relatively large number of boys from this isolated place must have had, not just on their families, but on the whole small local community.
We hear a lot about World War 1 and in this centenary year more than ever, but what interests me is not just the war but what happened afterwards. In the popular mind no sooner was the armistice, which ended World War 1, signed and the ‘flu epidemic safely over, than women took up their skirts and began dancing the Charleston and the men — all look alike Jay Gatsby’s — got into their Bugattis and roared off with some shingle-haired lovely. Aftermaths in reality are not like that. Major disasters and tragedies have long tentacles — distress goes on and on — as we can currently see from the protracted pain and difficulties following the Christchurch earthquakes. I am told that in India there is a belief that a major tragedy can go on influencing a family for five generations. I think that could well be true.
Jane Austen rightly said “…if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; we find comfort somewhere.” And following World War 1 the impact of death on the country must have been enormous. There were over 18,500 New Zealanders who died from a population of just over a million, along with many who survived severely physically and emotionally wounded. On top of this was the subsequent flu epidemic that killed another eight to nine thousand in just over two months. So where did people turn for comfort? One source was a belief in the paranormal. Spiritualism, with its central tenant of being able to communicate with the dead, understandably became very popular throughout the Western world at this time.
All sections of society were attracted to this; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who lost his beloved son Raymond in World War 1 and actually visited New Zealand in the cause of spiritualism, being a prominent example. But along with the heart broken, the sincere, the honest and the earnest, there were shysters who got in on the business setting up as fake mediums, running rigged séances and producing the manifestation of fraudulent spirit matter usually called ectoplasm.
Given such a background I thought: what would it be like if I wrote a novel set in such time, where a genuine psychic, a woman who had real paranormal gifts, was paired with a fraudster? And this is what I did.
These are some of the coloured wools or ideas that I have knitted together in this novel. This is where Passing Through began.
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About Coral Atkinson:
Coral Atkinson was born in Dublin, Ireland and came to New Zealand with her family as a girl. She currently tutors part-time on the Whitireia Community Polytechnic publishing course and is a supervisor for the Hagley Writers’ Institute.
Coral has had fiction published in New Zealand, Ireland and England and won and been short-listed for a number of short story competitions. In 2005 her first historical novel, The Love Apple, appeared and was followed in 2006 by The Paua Tower; both published by Random House NZ. She co-authored the self-help book, Recycled People: Forming New Relationships in Mid-Life, Shoal Bay Press, 2000. Her picture book on New Zealand history, Magic Eyes; I Spy New Zealand History, was published by Reed in 2006. Her junior historical novel, Copper Top, published by DancingTuatara appeared in 2009. Her most recent adult historical novel, Passing Through, was recently released.
Coral has also published various articles, essays and educational texts. She lives in Governors Bay on Banks Peninsula.
This book looks very interesting! As someone who has had the benefit of Coral’s tutoring on the Whitireia publishing course, I’m sure it is well written, too.
Coral, how may I buy a copy? I’m in Christchurch.
Hi,
Great to get your message and am delighted you are interested in buying/reading Passing Through. Most good book stores around NZ stock copies.I know in Christchurch Scorpio, Whitcoulls Riccarton, Merivale Paper Plus and Piccadilly Books in Merrin all have stocked it.
Hope you enjoy the book. I’d love to hear your comments.
Very best,
Coral