We Contain Multitudes

Written by Sarah Henstra

Penguin Teen

978-0-735264212

384 pp.

Ages 14+

May 2019

We might as well take advantage of the fact that we don't owe each other anything, that no one else is ever going to read what we're writing, that it's just me and you and whatever we feel like saying. (pg. 19)

When Adam Kurlansky and Jonathan Hopkirk begin their correspondence, it's as an assignment for Ms. Khang's English classes. Kurl, as he is widely known from excelling at football and basketball, is repeating his senior year while Jo is a Grade 10 Walt Whitman aficionado. Though their first letters follow their teacher's directives to introduce themselves and discuss topics like their heroes, Jonathan really gets into the writing, sharing about his father Lyle and sister Shayna, his passion for poetry and folk and bluegrass music, and what is happening around school, including the bullying he endures at the hands of a group of students he calls the "butcherboys." His narratives are generally observational, always poetic and often psychologically astute, though it takes some time for Kurl to begin to share his secrets including of physical abuse and his take on his own life and the people in it, as well as what he sees happening to "Little Jo."

I mean weird kids do have this aura to them.  It's like a smell almost. They're stuck somewhere in their heads, in some kind of a bubble. People can't really help themselves: They see a bubble, they want to pop it. (pg. 12)

But as they continue to correspond, now beyond the assignment's scope, Jo and Kurl develop a relationship on paper and in person, and one that brings emotional and physical support and finally love.  We Contain Multitudes may be an examination of how we present a multitude of selves to ourselves, our families, our peers and strangers but We Contain Multitudes is a love story. It's about finding love through words and sharing those multitudes of ourselves and developing new selves with others.  Jonathan is a son of a single dad and a dead mother with a fuzzy history, a brother, a poetry lover, a musician, a victim, and an aesthete while Kurl is a brother, a punching bag, an athlete, a thinker, a cook, a hard worker, and a secret-keeper. But with others, they are more because we are all combinations and permutations of our selves, depending on others in or not in our lives and on the events that change us. Our identities are sweeping and dynamic, and we all contain multitudes. And isn't it wonderful when two become even more because of love?

I am completely, one hundred percent of the time filled up with you. (pg. 189)

Sarah Henstra may have won last year's Governor General Literature Award for her adult novel The Red Word (ECW, 2018) but I'm gratified that she has returned to her YA roots. (I reviewed her first book Mad Miss Mimic (Razorbill, 2015) and interviewed Sarah Henstra too.) The writing is exquisite, the voices of Jonathan and Adam deep and sorrowful and passionate, and the convergence of their stories creates something bigger than the parts.

As I finished this novel of letters, a book I didn't want to leave, hopeful of the many multitudes of Jonathan and Kurl still to come, I'm overwhelmed with the infinitude of these young men and of Sarah Henstra's story. They and it know to  "Be real and be true" (pg. 9) and are, and I want more.

Mad Miss Mimic: Book Launch (Toronto)

Author
Sarah Henstra 

and

will be launching her first book

Mad Miss Mimic

by Sarah Henstra

Razorbill

978-0-14-319236-7

272 pp.

Ages 13+

on

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

7-10:00 p.m.

at

High Park Curling Club

100 Indian Road

Toronto, ON

Wear a fancy hat (DIY embellishments encouraged!)
and participate in a contest  (judging at 8:30 p.m. sharp)
to win a free, signed copy of Mad Miss Mimic and other prizes

Special performance by Cantores Celestes Women's Choir

Book City will have copies on sale

Mad Miss Mimic: Q & A with author Sarah Henstra

Sarah Henstra

author 

of Razorbill's newest #YACanLit 

and historical romantic mystery

Mad Miss Mimic

Razorbill

978-0-14-319236-7

272 pp.

Ages 13+

For release May, 2015

reviewed yesterday

and trailer posted here

has graciously agreed to allow 

CanLit for LittleCanadians 

to explore her writing world 

and learn more details about her and Mad Miss Mimic.

 *   *   *   *   *   *   * 

HK:  Mad Miss Mimic delves into a great number of issues. When you set out to write Mad Miss Mimic, which was the issue (stuttering and mimicry, explosives, overuse of opium, morphine and laudanum, etc.) that spurred you on and why?

SH:  The first idea that started to grow in my imagination into something like a story was Leonora’s ability to mimic other people’s voices. A talent like this could mean trouble for an upper-upper class girl like Leo who is expected to speak with perfect decorum and sincerity at all times. She’d have to keep her mimicry tightly under wraps, right? But what if she couldn’t keep it under wraps? What if she couldn’t control when she falls into mimicry or whom she imitates? What if, despite her beauty and her good connections and her inheritance, Leo has to be hidden away from society for fear of gossip? What if she keeps accidentally scaring away the eligible bachelors who come to court her? Now that would be a story!



HK:  Did you always intend to make Mad Miss Mimic into a historical romantic mystery, or did the plot take you there without your knowledge?

SH:  I started to think about Mad Miss Mimic on a research trip to London. Mornings were spent at the British Library, reading about mourning customs during the Victorian period. In the afternoons I would ramble all around the city, searching out tiny shops in back alleys and sitting under trees in the public gardens. Because of my academic work my mind was already in the nineteenth century, I guess. I love London for the way history is crammed cheek by jowl with the modern commercial stuff. Right behind a Topshop there’ll be a cobblestone lane with huge wooden doors on iron runners and a trough to feed the carriage- horses—that sort of thing. So the historical setting came first, followed by the romantic mystery plot.



HK:  As a professor at Ryerson, your teaching of Gothic literature and women in literature has undoubtedly helped enhance your own writing.  Whose writing most influenced your own?

SH:  I’m a big believer in the role repression plays in romance: the steamiest scenes result from what the lovers are unable, or unwilling, to say to one another. Nineteenth century fiction perfected this formula: Jane and Rochester, Catherine and Heathcliff, Lizzie and Darcy. So I had lots of models to work from.

I was teaching Bram Stoker’s Dracula while writing Mad Miss Mimic, so that book in particular made an impact on mine. The newspaper articles written by Leo’s cousin Archie and scattered throughout the novel are a structural trick I lifted straight from Stoker. In fact, at one point Dracula led me astray when it came to historical accuracy in my manuscript. Stoker has his characters employ all the latest gadgets and medical theories and communication technologies to outmaneuver the vampire (who wants to colonize the ‘new world’ of London but is stuck in the past). Telegrams, phonographic recordings, cinema shows, blood transfusions, steamships— Stoker geeked out about all this newfangled stuff in his 1897 novel.

In one of Mad Miss Mimic’s last rounds of editing, my hawk-eyed copy editor/fact-checker flagged a scene in which Archie is speaking to Leo while trying to meet his deadline for reporting the train derailment. I’d described Archie typing furiously and then tearing the paper out of the typewriter with a flourish and handing it off to the printers. Except that my novel takes place in 1872, and the first QWERTY typewriter—which of course gets heavy play in Dracula—wasn’t manufactured until 1873. Oops!

HK:  I find so much to love about youngCanLit but I'm especially enamoured with writing that is rich and evocative and your writing is both.  I wrote down quote after quote, loving how your words mean so much more than their simple meanings, such as this one passage:

“Where I balanced now, though, was a world askew. Oh, it was still peopled by beer-sellers and fishwives and scavenging children, but all these poor souls went about their business in perfect ignorance.  They did not know what I knew.  How could they?  They had not leapt as I had. They couldn't possibly see how disordered the world had become, how its most basic elements had been shuffled and scattered and turned on end.” (pg. 158)

What experiences (e.g., education, workshops, reading, etc.) were most important in shaping your writing?

SH:  I’ve been reading for pleasure and keeping some kind of journal since I was very young. I first learned to write fiction by copying out passages from my favorite books and writing my own stories in the style of my favorite authors—in other words, through mimicry! Graduate school taught me to read texts more carefully, to notice how they were put together and what effects they created for readers. But what taught me how to write novels was writing a novel. It’s such a long, solitary task, and when you’re finally finished the first draft is when the real work begins! Nothing can really prepare you for that ahead of time.



HK:  This is your first novel.  Was Mad Miss Mimic the book that you always dreamed of writing or are there still more books in your future?

SH:  Mad Miss Mimic is the first novel I finished—there were others I got partway through, including a first installment of a YA fantasy trilogy. I have more ideas for books than I’ll ever be able to write in this lifetime. Luckily, I’ve discovered that writing is like yoga or multivitamins: doing it every day makes me a healthier, happier person. So stay tuned…!

 *   *   *   *   *   *   * 

Many thanks to author Sarah Henstra for answering these questions for CanLit for LittleCanadians and to Vikki VanSickle, publicist extraordinaire, for facilitating this author interview.

Mad Miss Mimic

by Sarah Henstra

Razorbill

978-0-14-319236-7

272 pp.

Ages 13+

For release May, 2015

Fitting in is a dilemma for young people the world over and throughout time, whether it be contemporary Canada or 1870s London.  But the constraints of Victorian England were highly embedded in the strict social hierarchy of the day.  Young women of standing, such as seventeen-year-old Miss Leonora Somerville, niece of the Countess of Hastings, were expected to make suitable marriages, partaking in endless social engagements, while the men were to engage themselves with business and politics.  But, as lovely as she is, Leonora’s stammering and learned ability to mimic others–she has heard them call her Mad Miss Mimic–have put her at a great social disadvantage, and one which her older sister Christabel, wife of Dr. Daniel Dewhurst and mother of two, is determined to hide–afterall, “Madness will take the shine off gold” (pg. 21)–in order to procure an engagement for Leonora and finally move her out of Hastings House.

Currently, Christabel’s efforts are focused on the wealthy merchant seaman Mr. Thornfax, a new business partner of Daniel’s and the son of the Lord Rosbury.  And all Leonora has to do it not speak.  But when Mr. Thornfax asks her questions directly, she has no choice but to answer, unconsciously mimicking her sister.

“Mimic had leapt in to rescue me from trouble. She’d allowed me to adopt my sister’s voice and manners wholesale, so that I could say whatever Christabel would say–or whatever I might imagine her to say–in precisely the way Christabel would have said it.” (pg. 30)

Fortunately, her cousin Archie Maverty, a reporter, who knows of her mimicry, rescues her, though more for her benefit than for Thornfax whom he regards as suspicious. But it is Daniel’s work at his surgery, where a young man named Tom Rampling assists him, that makes Leonora suspicious, especially after a young servant girl, Hattie, dies.

Because of her household interactions with Hattie, and her curiosity about Hattie’s involvement with Daniel and Mr. Thornfax, Leonora develops a rapport with the clever and creative Tom, to whom she is drawn because of his compassion for others and his acceptance of her mimicry.  However, Leonora is still being courted by Thornfax, London is still being held hostage by the dangerous Black Glove and his fatal explosions, and Leonora is troubled with doubts about Tom’s honesty, Christabel’s frequent agitation, and Daniel and Thornfax’s business.  That very simple but necessary betrothal begins to be the least of Leonora’s worries soon enough.

At its heart, Mad Miss Mimic is a Victorian mystery, all the more perplexing because of the information that the characters choose to share of themselves.  Yes, the Black Glove chooses to remain concealed, but everyone else–Tom, Thornfax, Christabel, Daniel– including our narrator herself also chose what secrets and fears and guilt they share and which they do not.  The reluctance of all to speak with their own voices–save perhaps their Aunt Emma, but I suspect age and privilege have helped beget that courage–creates the mystery of Mad Miss Mimic.  And, with Sarah Henstra’s brilliant characterizations and historical setting, the mystery and an unexpected and sweet romance at its core, Mad Miss Mimic reveals the need for voices to be given the freedom for expression if life is to be worth living.

 *   *   *   *   *   *   * 

Special post tomorrow: Q & A with author Sarah Henstra about her first novel, Mad Miss Mimic