When Toronto-based author Bar Fridman-Tell stumbled across The Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh stories compiled centuries ago, it felt like coming home.
Bar Fridman-Tell’s new novel, written during a period when she agreed to travel with her husband so he could study in the U.S., explores themes of personhood and agency.Julie Riemersma/Supplied
As a child, Fridman-Tell, who has a master’s in English literature, would annually read The Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander, which was based on The Mabinogion and includes many of the same characters.
The depiction of one figure in The Mabinogion never quite sat well with her, however. Blodeuwedd was a woman made from flowers, created to be the bride of a warrior under a curse that prevented him from having a human wife.
It bothered Fridman-Tell that Blodeuwedd was framed as the villain, punished for choosing a life that was different from the one predetermined by her creators.
In her debut novel, Honeysuckle, Fridman-Tell reimagines the story of Blodeuwedd as she explores themes of personhood, agency and what it means to have a voice.
She spoke with The Globe and Mail about how a move to New England – as well as some charismatic birds – helped bring the story to life.
What was the process of writing this book and getting it out into the world?
I was very lucky because I wrote it while my husband was doing his postdoc, which meant that for three years we agreed that I’ll put my life on hold and follow him around wherever he wants to go. It also meant that I didn’t have to work – that I could just wake up every morning and sit down and read and write. We were living in New Jersey and the forest was just outside my door. Every day, I will get up and write and then go for a walk in the forest and look at the deer, at the rabbit and like, and go back and write again. It felt a bit like I was living inside a Honeysuckle mood board.
I had a thriving window bird feeder, the kind that sticks to the window, at my desk. Most of the birds in the book, their personalities are directly from the birds that used to come every day.
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Nature and seasons play an important role in the novel. Why did you weave those themes into the book?
Part of it was moving to New England. We spent a couple of years in Boston and Princeton and the seasons were so vibrant in a way that took me by surprise. I was in Princeton for the first time, not living in a big city, but it was just so present – the way the seasons, they feel like magic when you actually notice them. How is it possible that there are fireflies in the summer and snow in winter?
I think part of this awe came into the novel. Part of skewing toward nature was that a lot of what interested me was thinking about the boundary between something we see as deserving agency, deserving the right to consent, and something that isn’t. I think plants were an interesting way to challenge this boundary.
In some ways themes of consent and personhood are perennial, but do you think these are important conversations to be having now?
It became personal for me because my husband and I have been together forever and everything was always 50/50, and that was the first time where I suddenly was – for all intents and purposes – his dependent. That was jarring. I found myself returning to this myth, and really thinking about what it means.
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I don’t think there’s any relationship that is equal in the power balance over time – it can be for a bit – but it always shifts. The question of how radically it shifts is different from relationship to relationship, but I think it’s universal that it never sits in a perfect equilibrium. I think it’s really, really important to look at this and ask what it means, and ask how we feel about it, and ask how it applies to our relationships and to our ability to consent.
I didn’t mean to write a book that is feminist or that is about “Do women get to consent?” But I think that in our world, sadly, this is a huge part of the questions that we find ourselves facing every day.
This interview has been edited and condensed.