The Globe and Mail interviewed me about His Whole Life and about which books have meant the most to me. The first question they asked was why I wrote my new novel (later I got to talk about big-band music, Pauline Kael’s fearless movie reviews, and a sexy porcupine):
It flowed, or hacked its way, out of two long-standing regrets: that years ago I gave away my dog and that I never managed to convince my children that Canada was an exciting place to live your life. I let those regrets come forward and crowd my mind and the strands of a story emerged involving a mother whose young son loves Canada and wants a dog. They spend winters in New York City and parts of every summer on an Ontario lake. In the background is the 1995 referendum in Quebec. I wanted the boy’s family to be falling apart and staying together as the country falls apart and stays together. At 10, Jim already has sources of guilt and shame that give his life a rough and uneven texture. That’s the sort of texture a novel needs. And the question that interests me is how do we live with ourselves, given our failings and mistakes.
Read the rest of the interview here.