Emily St. John MandelTonia Cowan/The Globe and Mail
Emily St. John Mandel's fourth novel, the time-shifting, post-apocalyptic Station Eleven, was a finalist for the National Book Award and among the Globe's favourite 100 books of the year – reviewer Claire Cameron wrote the novel "carries a magnificent depth." Originally from British Columbia, she currently lives in New York.
Why did you write your new book?
I wanted to write something different from my previous books, which were generally classified as literary noir. I'm happy with the way they turned out, but I didn't want to be pigeon-holed as a crime writer. Not because I have anything against crime fiction or crime writing, just because I don't want to be pigeon-holed as anything. I'm a thriller writer in France, which I find a little disorienting, and I feared that might eventually happen in English if I kept writing those books.
Beyond that, I wanted to write a love letter to this incredible world in which we find ourselves, this place where water comes out of taps, lighting up a room requires nothing more complicated than flicking a switch on the wall, and talking to someone on the far side of the world is as simple as entering a sequence of numbers into a device that fits into the palm of your hand. It occurred to me that one way to consider the modern world is to write about its absence, which is why the book is set partly in a post-apocalyptic future.
And I was also interested in writing about what it means to devote a life to art, which is why that post-apocalyptic future has a travelling Shakespearean theatre company/orchestra in it. The book will inevitably be marketed as a post-apocalyptic thriller in some markets, but I think of it as a love letter in the form of a requiem.
Whose sentences are your favourite, and why?
Marilynne Robinson's. Sentence by sentence, her work has such a quiet profundity and elegance about it. I've never read a better novel than Gilead.
What's the best advice you've ever received?
I believe it's extremely important to always be as kind as possible, but I honestly can't remember who passed that idea on to me.
Which historical period do you wish you'd lived through, and why?
I wouldn't want to live anywhere but now. I used to think it would have been fascinating to be alive in the 1920s, when the world was changing so rapidly, but I went to a talk once where someone asked a historian which time period he most wanted to live in, and he said, "Now. Modern dentistry. Enough said." When he put it that way, I found that I agreed completely. If not for modern dentistry, I wouldn't have many teeth.
But if I could visit some other time very briefly, I've often thought it would have been incredible to have been in Berlin to see the wall come down in 1989. I mean, technically I did live through that historical period, but I was a) in British Columbia and b) ten years old.
Would you rather be successful during your lifetime and then forgotten, or legendary after death?
Ideally, both. But if it's one or the other, I'd prefer to be successful during my lifetime. I like being able to keep the lights on and buy groceries.
What agreed-upon classic do you despise?
I feel that life's too short to read books that I despise, but I've certainly started and failed to finish a few classics. "Despise" is a bit strong in this case, but for example, I've never been able to get beyond the first few pages of anything by Jane Austen. I've been given to understand that this is symptomatic of an enormous character defect on my part, but there it is.
Which fictional character do you wish you'd created?
Seymour Glass.
Which fictional character do you wish you were?
I wouldn't want to be fictional. I read a lot of novels. Being fictional seems dangerous.
What question do you wish people would ask about your work (that they don't ask)?
To be honest, I never know what to say to this question. In almost every interview, we get to the end and the interviewer says, "Is there anything that you wish I'd asked that I didn't ask?" and then there's an awkward pause while I try to remember everything they asked me and attempt to come up with something intelligent that we haven't already covered. "No," I always eventually say, because it's apparently easier to write four novels than it is to come up with questions to ask myself about any of them, "I think you've covered everything."