Sarah Hall, BURNTCOAT: A Novel
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[0:41]Sarah Hall is the author of Burt Coat, a novel.
[0:44]Sarah was born in 1974 in Cumbria, England,
[0:47]and received a Master's in Letters and Creative Writing from Scotland's St. Andrew's University
[0:51]and has published four novels.
[0:53]Hauswater, one of the Commonwealth Writers Prize,
[0:56]was as the overall winner and best first novel,
[0:58]and a Society of Authors, Betty Trask Award.
[1:01]The Electric Michelangelo was shortlisted for the band Booker Prize,
[1:04]the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Eurasia Regent,
[1:07]and the Pre-Femida Echonje,
[1:08]and was listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
[1:12]Daughters of the North won the 2006-07 John Llelland Reese Prize,
[1:16]and the James Tripty Jr. Award,
[1:18]and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction.
[1:22]How to paint a dead man was longlisted for the band Booker Prize,
[1:25]and won the Portico Prize for Fiction.
[1:27]In 2013, Sarah was named one of Grantor's best young British novelists,
[1:32]a prize awarded every 10 years,
[1:33]and she won the BBC National Short Story Award,
[1:36]and the E.M. Force Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
[1:41]Welcome, Sarah.
[1:42]Thank you so much for coming on Momstone.
[1:43]I have time to read books to discuss Burt Coat.
[1:46]Thank you for having me.
[1:48]Would you mind telling listeners a little bit about what your book is?
[1:52]About?
[1:53]Yeah, so it was a response to the pandemic,
[1:56]but it is not a pandemic book.
[1:58]I wouldn't categorize it that way,
[1:59]but the main character is a sculptor.
[2:01]Her name is Edith.
[2:02]She has reached the end of her life,
[2:04]and she's looking back over it,
[2:06]and recalling the incidents in the relationships that were very important,
[2:11]and that formed her, both as a person,
[2:13]and as an artist, and one of the main incidents is a pandemic.
[2:17]So we do have a bit of that in it.
[2:18]I feel like I need to put a disclaimer up.
[2:21]It goes not yet willing to undertake some lockdown fiction,
[2:24]but it's really about how you become resilient
[2:28]through very difficult and trying circumstances through trauma,
[2:33]the things that make you stronger,
[2:35]the kind of wisdom that you might achieve along the way if they're even possible.
[2:39]And for me as a writer,
[2:40]it was just a way I think of responding to and reconciling myself
[2:45]with this very strange thing that we were all going through,
[2:49]something like it has happened in my lifetime, really.
[2:51]And I just wanted to tackle it,
[2:53]and I assumed the readers were wanting to tackle it somehow.
[2:56]So yeah, it's a strange book.
[2:58]I'm going to say strange.
[3:01]I found it very powerful,
[3:03]and I haven't stopped thinking about the one scene
[3:06]where Edith's mom, what is her name again?
[3:08]I'm sorry.
[3:09]This is my biggest thing.
[3:10]I owe me, yeah.
[3:11]I owe me, of course, of course,
[3:12]because she has to teach her how to say it.
[3:14]So when Naomi ends up having her,
[3:17]what's the medical room?
[3:18]Aneurysm or what was that?
[3:19]Yeah.
[3:20]The aneurysm.
[3:21]That's right.
[3:22]How she just got more and more tired over the course that day
[3:24]and how she sat down saying she has this terrible headache
[3:26]because, of course, I'm like a total hypochondriac.
[3:28]And I'm like, how would I know if I had that?
[3:31]Yeah.
[3:32]And how she's sitting there and holding her head,
[3:34]and then it just so quickly devolves into what it becomes
[3:40]and the surgery they have to do to save her,
[3:42]and the implications of what it means to be the child of someone
[3:45]who's identity is somehow really not lost.
[3:50]If somebody tells her in the book, but so changed
[3:53]and how her loyalty persisted nonetheless, right?
[3:57]She still wants to tie her, you know,
[4:00]hit her ride to that, whatever that expression is.
[4:03]She doesn't want to leave her mother,
[4:05]even if she's not the mother that she had grown up with.
[4:07]Exactly.
[4:08]It's a very strange kind of primal thing, isn't it?
[4:10]And I suppose being a mother myself,
[4:12]that's one of the main anxieties, isn't it?
[4:14]If you go down with something, you'll be completely incapacitated.
[4:17]How will I look after my child or children?
[4:20]How will we kind of survive those circumstances
[4:23]if they happen to me, if they happen to us?
[4:25]And I am a single parent.
[4:27]So, you know, those anxieties are quite large in life for me.
[4:31]And I think I wanted to really test them
[4:33]to kind of an extreme boundary in the normal.
[4:36]So things, yeah, that they're really pushed
[4:39]to kind of further ramifications of what it might mean
[4:42]to be in a partnership as a mother and a daughter here,
[4:45]but as a child and a parent.
[4:47]And the idea that the relationship is two-way traffic, you know,
[4:50]I like this idea about parenting anyway,
[4:52]that it's not all top down.
[4:54]Yes, of course, we're here to look after our children
[4:56]and to teach them and ensure that safety
[4:58]and that upbringing is okay,
[5:00]but also we learn a lot from them
[5:02]and in some ways they help us too.
[5:04]So that, of course, is the nature of Edith and Naomi's
[5:07]relationship fundamentally.
[5:08]The codependent, I wouldn't say in a bad way at all.
[5:11]I would say in just a survivalist way, basically.
[5:15]So true, especially when you showed them sort of similar
[5:20]life stages, like when they were reading at the same level
[5:23]and they were kind of going through it together
[5:25]because of Naomi's impaired cognition
[5:28]after her surgery.
[5:30]And one of the lines that released stuck with me most
[5:33]was how Edith wanted to stay by her side
[5:36]because she still smelled the same.
[5:38]Yeah, exactly.
[5:40]Like, oh my gosh, I like brought tears to my eyes
[5:42]because, you know, we could go through so much
[5:44]and yet fundamentally you're the same person, right?
[5:47]You still feel and touch and smell the same
[5:50]and what does it mean to really be there
[5:52]for your kids and not be there?
[5:54]I don't know.
[5:55]Right, exactly.
[5:56]And identity is a very strange thing, isn't it?
[5:58]Because it's mutable.
[5:59]So it will change across the course of the lifetime
[6:01]and there are certain things which might accelerate
[6:04]a very difficult and traumatic change like illness
[6:07]or like an accident.
[6:08]And it's at those moments when,
[6:10]I suppose, love was really tested.
[6:12]And of course, you know, the love that children
[6:14]have for family members is it's sort of hardwired really
[6:17]in some ways.
[6:19]There's not much that you could do to alter it.
[6:21]So I like that idea too that, you know,
[6:24]even though Naomi might not recognize herself
[6:26]as a mother anymore for a certain period of time
[6:28]and she might not have all the responses
[6:30]and the emotional register that she previously had,
[6:33]there is still something down there in her too
[6:35]that is activated at certain moments
[6:37]when she needs to defend her daughter
[6:39]or keep the two of them together.
[6:41]And I suppose, I like that idea
[6:43]that there is something very unshakable
[6:46]and indestructible about the two of them.
[6:48]And of course, Edith, in her artistic career,
[6:51]she's exploring this idea of destruction and resilience
[6:54]anyway because of the nature of the technique she uses,
[6:56]which is this burnt wood burning the surface
[6:58]of wood to make it waterproof more resilient.
[7:00]And there is something about her whole life
[7:02]that where she's trying to find the kind of key
[7:05]the her operating keys I suppose.
[7:08]And that's one of them, the idea that, you know,
[7:10]you are damaged in some ways,
[7:12]but that's not necessarily a layer
[7:14]that leaves you a victim or less strong.
[7:16]It's something that might actually finally, you know,
[7:19]build you up a level, make your, make your harder
[7:22]in a good way.
[7:24]And then I was sort of annoyed,
[7:27]maybe noise the wrong word, but I was really upset
[7:30]with the dad for abandoning the whole situation
[7:33]and for getting almost irritated him.
[7:37]So I mean, I can't put, I shouldn't say,
[7:39]I understand how he feels.
[7:40]I haven't been in the situation,
[7:41]but you put us in the situation very effectively.
[7:44]So you could see why it was so hard for him, right,
[7:47]with his wife becoming completely different person,
[7:49]essentially he has two dependents all of a sudden.
[7:52]And, you know, you really capture that
[7:54]in the one moment where he was,
[7:56]he's like, you are not, you know, what are you doing?
[7:58]Like, you're not who I married.
[7:59]This is, you're not the same woman.
[8:01]And yet, he shouldn't have left.
[8:04]No, I agree.
[8:06]And that's that terrible thing that, you know,
[8:09]I've witnessed it quite a few times now,
[8:11]the fact that women seem able to accommodate
[8:13]these changes in a partner and care for them
[8:16]and perhaps society's brought us up a little bit more
[8:20]that way where I don't know that we're naturally gifted
[8:23]with more empathy, but I certainly think
[8:25]everything is stacked towards women caring for men,
[8:28]especially if they go through difficult circumstances.
[8:30]So I've always been fascinated with the equation
[8:32]when it's the other way around.
[8:33]I did write a short story called Mrs. Fox,
[8:35]where a man's wife turns into a fox
[8:37]and he loves her nevertheless.
[8:39]It's not almost subversive writing that story.
[8:42]You know, the fact that he sticks with her as her carer
[8:44]and everything else.
[8:45]But in this novel,
[8:47]certainly Edith is put into the position
[8:49]where she has to be a carer and it's very uncomfortable
[8:51]for her.
[8:52]And there is this kind of presiding notion of abandonment
[8:56]and the absent father.
[8:58]And weirdly, you know, the second person
[9:00]lots of it is written in the second person.
[9:02]So this address to you,
[9:04]which begins as Edith addressing her, her love a hallet
[9:07]and remembering the times they were together.
[9:09]But the you address switches to something else
[9:11]in the end.
[9:12]It's her relationship with mortality and death
[9:15]and having to reconcile herself with the fact
[9:17]that that's always been in her life
[9:19]because not only did her mother survive this terrible
[9:21]aneurysm,
[9:22]she was left with another weakened blood vessel
[9:24]which at any point might go.
[9:25]So to live with the shadow of death
[9:27]it's a very big thing for Edith.
[9:29]And it's something that she negotiates her whole life
[9:32]and of course we all do to various degrees
[9:35]and it comes forward sometimes
[9:37]and it retreats at other times.
[9:38]But really she's parented by her mother and death.
[9:41]That's the premise of the novel.
[9:43]Wow.
[9:45]But it's also really cheering for sex.
[9:49]So you don't have sex.
[9:51]Not such a grim read.
[9:54]So what is it like when you're writing this
[9:56]and you said you have a daughter, your single mom,
[9:59]you're working.
[10:00]on this during the pandemic. How do you help you to write this? Did it make you, like,
[10:06]did you turn off your computer? I'm assuming you're on a computer, but like, could you get up
[10:10]from your chair and feel, would you feel lighter and better? Or would it bring you down? What was
[10:15]the experience like? It felt good to be writing something. For a number of different reasons, I
[10:20]think I was feeling very productive at a time when we were all being halted. And that was a real
[10:25]push, you know, I was getting up at five a.m. to do it because I had to homeschool my daughter
[10:28]afterwards. So there was something quite belligerent in me that activated. But also, I keep talking
[10:34]about my upbringing, which was in the rural north. At a time when kind of catastrophes would happen,
[10:41]we'd be snowed in quite often, things like that. And there was that feeling sometimes that,
[10:45]oh, big things happening. What are we going to do? Everybody get to work, pick up a shovel, you know?
[10:49]And I thought that that switched on in me again the first day of the lockdown here in the UK in
[10:54]March 2020. Just that trigger of, right, you're going to do something. There's not much you can do,
[11:00]like you're not an emergent to work or you can't go out there. And so that's what I did. But I was at
[11:04]and it's funny that you say working on a computer because I was actually writing in these little
[11:07]exercise books. See, I never said. But no, but ordinarily, I would have been working on a computer,
[11:13]but I kind of squirtle myself away into the smallest room in the house. People have like
[11:18]and given birth at home to this. You don't find the smallest safe space. And there you are going
[11:23]through this tremendously, you know, what's the word, effortful thing. So that's how it happened
[11:29]initially. And I don't know what it was. It was, I don't know. It was almost like a child-like
[11:34]response. Why was I writing in an exercise book? I take things up straight away. So at
[11:38]that top, that's how I work. Anyway, so I found myself in a strange position. And perhaps it was
[11:43]about comforting myself as well, trying to find a way through trying to find like a companionship
[11:48]with the reader or who I imagined a reader might be, which is quite hard to imagine in the early
[11:53]stages of writing. But there's always the sense of, okay, no, this is, this is us. Here we are,
[11:58]you know, even if there's a set of characters and there's me writing, it's, it's here we are. What
[12:02]are we asking at this point? You know, we might not get any answers, but what are we asking? Are
[12:07]we going to be okay? What's this pandemic going to mean for us? What's this illness going to mean
[12:12]if it's contracted? You know, because at that point, there were no vaccines. We didn't know the
[12:17]financial implications really. Things were not set up to accommodate what was going on.
[12:23]So there was a lot of uncertainty and fear. And I think, strangely, those maybe circumstances
[12:28]under which I can work, but also they certainly were really deep rooted anxieties and questions
[12:36]that were making me want to write and ask them in book. And the book I think is asking those
[12:42]questions is, you know, what use am I? What uses art in this, in this difficult time? How do we
[12:48]see around the edges of this? So the pandemic in the novel is not the pandemic that we were going
[12:52]through. Mine was imagined very differently and perhaps amplifies some of the aspect in order
[12:59]to really inquire, you know, how we respond to those things. But I don't know. I mean, maybe it was
[13:04]just a coping mechanism. Very simple. Well, it's pretty awesome to have it be a whole novel. I mean,
[13:10]a lot of people just, you know, baked banana bread and like, here you go, you know,
[13:15]you have a very moving. I know you said it was when you say weird or something, but you know,
[13:20]although parts of it were dark, it's it's it's hopeful in a way really, right? It's inspiring. The
[13:26]bonds of love on and relationships and you know, we can do anything, which is true. Right. The time
[13:32]passed. Here we all are. Whatever comes next. But no, that's right. That's right. And I, I, you know,
[13:38]I enjoy writing. I wouldn't really categorize them as strong women. I would just see lots
[13:43]of my female characters as capable and working and doing the things that women do. But I like
[13:49]the Edith was a successful artist and she was working in an area where there was a kind of
[13:55]national obligation. So she's a sculptor in the novel. She's been charged with creating this memorial
[14:01]to the dead in the pandemic, which is a really big deal. And, you know, we're in times when we're
[14:05]really thinking about memorials and how we reflect these big events and and what art can do to
[14:12]help commemorate if not console. So yeah, she's she's she's pretty tough character. But on the one
[14:19]hand, she's very vulnerable as well. So I think in some ways she was just, it's just an every woman
[14:25]if such a thing exists. And how did you begin writing? Like, how did you know this is something that
[14:30]you love to do? I think it's always just been a way for me to express myself in the best way
[14:37]that I can. So I've become more verbally abled over the years. But that's that's not where I feel
[14:44]like my strengths lie. You know, I think when I have a pen in my hand or I'm clicking away then
[14:49]something happens. And I suppose it's like I've always likened it to music. I feel more like
[14:54]a composer in some way or a maker because the language is very important. The sound of the words
[15:00]is very important. It's it's possibly having started out as a poet. There's a sense of essence
[15:05]that I'm trying to get out with which words are being used as well as, you know, the operating
[15:10]keys of fiction where you're thinking about movement of the story and characters and everything else
[15:14]world building. There is just something about laying down words that feels bigger somehow and
[15:25]like a like an expression I could find nowhere else. So it was always quite natural in some ways
[15:30]and then I think it was just degrees of it being formalized. A bit of recognition just enjoying
[15:36]doing it, honing my craft, spending that time, studying works and also working with an editor.
[15:44]And eventually you get where you get to as a writer, hopefully I'm still changing and improving.
[15:48]I would like to think and this book did come out of nowhere but I suspect there are things in it
[15:54]that have been waiting for quite a long time in me. So it was a response to a particular set of
[15:59]circumstances but also there are proclivities in this book which I've had for a long time and
[16:07]this might in some way be a kind of crowning of those aspects that I've always been working towards,
[16:15]you know, thinking about a disruption of identity, thinking about landscape, thinking about,
[16:21]you know, political power, all those things, feminism, they all kind of come together in this book
[16:26]art, sexuality, sensuality, the one thing I've always been interested in is a kind of sensuality
[16:32]on the page and a sensuality in the world. Yeah so I don't know, it's a short novel, it's
[16:38]of its time but there's something about it I think, it's just been waiting in the wings for 20 years.
[16:44]Especially that first line, it arrived and it was arrived on the day almost but, you know,
[16:49]the idea of those who tell stories survive as a first sentence it's sort of set up the whole novel
[16:55]and I think that's something that has been being constructed in me for quite some time.
[17:00]Just saying, there is something to that sort of forever legacy of leaving behind your
[17:06]your words on the page in a way that nothing else, no photograph, no nothing, no memory,
[17:12]can encapsulate. Right and the act of storytelling and how important it is for humans I think,
[17:19]why do we do it, you know, why is it important, what does that give us?
[17:23]I think about the stuff a lot too.
[17:27]It's been too much time thinking about storytelling, so when your, what types of books do you like
[17:31]to read and do you like to read while you're writing or do you kind of put it on hold?
[17:37]I put it on hold to a degree so just this novel for example and perhaps it was the state of
[17:43]invention, the state of the globe. I was reading a lot of poetry and that might have been
[17:48]because I, the work itself was, was coming in quite an intense way so handling prose kind of
[17:54]put me off reading prose just while it was being written. That's not always the case, I can still
[17:59]read fiction but I was writing, I was a tutorial, I was reading a lot of poetry partly because
[18:05]a friend of mine was really struggling and locked down so I was trying to centre a poem a day just
[18:10]as a kind of little, you know, talismanic thing for the day and it was great because it meant
[18:14]that I could go back through all these collections that I love, my favourite poets and just pull out,
[18:19]you know the best out of kind of thing. It was really nice and that in some ways I think helped me too
[18:24]and then when the drafting of this novel was done, I turned back to fiction that in some ways
[18:32]doesn't console me but again gives me company so books that feel to me to be extraordinary and
[18:39]extraordinary well written and dealing with extraordinary events so things like The Bitters Lock
[18:45]by Elizabeth Knox, you know, a white maker being visited by an angel once a year. I mean it's
[18:50]outlandish, it shouldn't really work but it does, it's extraordinary and it's brilliantly written.
[18:56]So I reread that and I reread some James Salter and I was reading poetry just all the things
[19:01]that I need to be very solid brilliant pieces of art that I could kind of lean on and think,
[19:07]okay, well people did that and that's great, you know, if it all goes to shit and hell now,
[19:14]at least we had these brilliant things here and I'll enjoy them so that was how I tackled it.
[19:20]So just as a mom when you go down that rabbit hole of worry because you know I do this quite often
[19:27]myself when you worry about what would happen, like what would happen to my kids somebody happens to
[19:32]me? What how do you handle that? Like what do you tell yourself? How do you get through those moments?
[19:38]Oh yeah, I mean it's tough isn't it? I used to try and think because again it was brought up in a
[19:45]very rural environment I would have a think what would be happening if we were living in the wild
[19:50]through animals, you know, by the age of six could she like get into tins if she needed to
[19:56]because she opened a can and survived. That was a slight line process.
[20:00]State in the corner and stuff prostrate even in the corner somewhere.
[20:04]So I used to try and think, OK, at what point
[20:06]a little human being is able to kind of pick berries
[20:08]and drink stream water and be able to kind of
[20:10]that doesn't help.
[20:11]I mean, that doesn't really help, you know.
[20:13]I'm not sure.
[20:13]I think it's just living with the knowledge
[20:16]that you love of being so much that
[20:19]were something awful to happen.
[20:22]It would be the end of you too.
[20:24]That's what I think.
[20:24]I mean, hopefully there are enough people around
[20:27]in a community of love that humans get looked after.
[20:31]I've just recently relocated to a very, very warm,
[20:35]beautiful, lovely town in the North of England.
[20:37]And my daughter and I've been very well looked after
[20:39]since we moved.
[20:40]And so that's nice to think, yeah, you know what?
[20:43]So many decent people, so much love.
[20:45]There will be reaching in and there will be taking care of.
[20:49]But it's almost, to me, it's almost inconceivable.
[20:52]I can't get my head around the idea of not looking after this
[20:57]little person that I'm charged with looking after.
[20:59]It's, I don't know if there's any rational way out of that.
[21:02]And I think in some ways that's okay,
[21:04]because those instincts are good, you know,
[21:07]they'll really get you up off the floor.
[21:10]If you've both gotten or a virus, you know,
[21:13]you're going to have to get up and deal with it,
[21:15]because, you know, you just do.
[21:17]And so you, I think I read it as positive as well.
[21:22]You know, I try and turn the kind of anxiety
[21:24]into something positive and think, yeah,
[21:26]that's what makes women really tough,
[21:28]especially, just get up and do it and help each other.
[21:31]How about that?
[21:32]Okay, so just two last questions.
[21:34]Are you working on anything else now
[21:35]and what advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[21:40]Ooh, yeah, I'm always generally thinking over something
[21:44]and I have started a little book,
[21:47]not sure what it's going to be.
[21:48]I was working on a novel before Berko came along.
[21:51]I mean, Berko readers shoved the book out of the way.
[21:54]No, no, no, my turn, you know.
[21:56]So I might go back to that
[21:57]and I have been thinking about it,
[21:58]but I've also started something new.
[22:00]And I've always got short stories kind of hovering around,
[22:03]you know, ideas for them and making them.
[22:06]What would I, you know,
[22:08]would I advise to aspiring writers?
[22:11]Well, part of we wants to say read a lot
[22:13]and read a lot of good stuff,
[22:14]but then I also think in the end,
[22:17]I don't know how necessary that is.
[22:18]I've seen writers come through
[22:19]who were brilliant and not well read.
[22:22]I would consider that to be a perfectly legitimate road as well.
[22:26]I think sometimes people just have something in them
[22:28]and they can do it and they can communicate that way.
[22:31]So while it's helpful for learning about craft and technique,
[22:35]you know, especially with short stories,
[22:37]to read around and I wouldn't say don't read.
[22:39]I would also say just have faith in the kind of voices of you
[22:45]and that you're being a conduit foreign of.
[22:48]And I don't know, throw the rule book out.
[22:50]I've never really helped the notion that, you know,
[22:54]by page 10 something has to happen.
[22:56]And you know, under the writers that work very successfully
[22:58]that way, but I don't see things that way at all.
[23:02]I think being idiosyncratic is good, better in some ways
[23:06]than trying to follow anything else and be authentic.
[23:10]I guess and being authentic doesn't mean just writing about you.
[23:13]I really do believe that the imagination is it's not an organ,
[23:16]but I often talk about it like an organ in the human body
[23:19]and it's the most powerful one.
[23:21]You know, you might have a good heart for running whereathons.
[23:24]But your imagination is something else completely
[23:26]and you more use it the more I think it works
[23:31]and get stronger.
[23:31]So just think about that way.
[23:33]Think, you know, you've got your heart,
[23:35]you've got your body, you've got your lungs,
[23:36]you've got your imagination.
[23:38]That's all you need.
[23:39]How about that?
[23:41]Thank you.
[23:43]Sarah, this has been so nice.
[23:44]I hope your daughter feels better.
[23:46]And thank you very much.
[23:47]Taking the time today.
[23:48]And yeah, you're very special.
[23:50]I feel like you're having like another time.
[23:53]You know, like, well, England is.
[23:56]We're going back to the 1950s
[23:57]with this, you know, this government.
[23:58]So, anyway, anyway.
[24:03]All right, well, I'm so pleased our paths across
[24:05]and wishing you all the best.
[24:07]Thank you very much for having me on.
[24:09]It's been a pleasure.
[24:10]Thank you.
[24:11]Thank you.
[24:11]Bye bye.
[24:12]Thank you.
[24:14]Thanks for listening to this episode of Mom.
[24:16]Just don't have time to read books.
[24:17]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[24:19]at zebiowans and at moms don't have time to read books.
[24:22]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowans.com
[24:25]and sign up for my virtual book club
[24:27]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[24:29]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[24:31]Heck, texture sound for the sound editing.
[24:33]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[24:35]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.