Mary Beth Keane on Love and Forgiveness in Whale Harbor
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:04]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show
[0:07]and learned endless amounts about storytelling,
[0:10]reinvention, and life itself.
[0:11]Because when you talk about books,
[0:13]you're really talking about life.
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[0:18]the best-selling, and the not yet discovered.
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[0:24]Enjoy!
[0:27]I had such a nice time reconnecting with Mary Beth Keen
[0:30]about her new book, Whale Harbor,
[0:32]which is going to be huge just saying.
[0:35]Mary Beth Keen is the author of five novels,
[0:38]including The New York Times bestseller,
[0:40]ask again, yes, which is what I interviewed her about last time
[0:44]so you can go back and listen.
[0:45]If you would like, she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim
[0:48]fellowship for fiction writing
[0:50]and has received citations from the National Book Foundation,
[0:53]Panamerica, and the Hemingway Society.
[0:55]Born in the Bronx to parents from the West of Ireland,
[0:58]she lives in New York with her husband and two sons.
[1:01]Welcome, Mary Beth.
[1:02]Thank you so much for coming back on Totally Book
[1:04]to talk about your new, amazing novel,
[1:07]Whale Harbor, congratulations.
[1:09]Thank you, Zebie, thank you for having me.
[1:10]It's my pleasure.
[1:12]Oh my gosh, you have taken me all over the world
[1:15]with this one, Ireland, to Montana,
[1:18]back here to New York, all over.
[1:20]I know I posted about this,
[1:22]but I just, I felt like I went on such an escape,
[1:25]like out of my mind into the world of these 11 brothers
[1:28]and oh my gosh, what a transformative reading experience.
[1:32]I'm glad.
[1:33]Tell everybody a little bit about the book
[1:36]and what's it about?
[1:37]Yeah, so Whale Harbor is about a family of 11 brothers
[1:42]from a very rural Irish-speaking village
[1:44]in the West of Ireland.
[1:45]The story begins in 1963
[1:48]when the mother of all of these boys dies unexpectedly.
[1:53]The father who is problematic in a lot of ways
[1:56]can't cope with this.
[1:57]And so in order to kind of get these kids raised
[2:00]to figure out this problem of so many kids,
[2:03]some emigrate a little earlier than expected
[2:05]to a kind of boarding school.
[2:08]One is given to a relative and they end up scattering.
[2:12]So the story is told from the point of view
[2:14]of the second eldest and it follows them
[2:17]from Ireland to Montana to New York, as you mentioned.
[2:20]And it's about love and forgiveness
[2:23]about them sort of spreading apart coming back together.
[2:26]And I think it's about forgiveness of oneself,
[2:30]maybe above all.
[2:31]So that's it and a nutshell.
[2:34]Interesting.
[2:35]I hope it's not giving way too much to say
[2:36]that a lot of the narrative focuses around
[2:39]the estrangement of one of the brothers
[2:41]and what happens on his journey and the unknowns of that
[2:44]and what that does to the rest of the family,
[2:47]particularly to the main character
[2:49]who is just trying so hard to not take responsibility
[2:54]and when you say forgiveness,
[2:55]I feel like there are a lot of themes of like,
[2:57]can we really be responsible for someone else's life?
[3:00]At what point do we cease to be responsible
[3:03]and all of that?
[3:04]Does your mind go there?
[3:06]Yeah, exactly.
[3:07]I mean, I do struggle a little bit with describing the book.
[3:11]I don't want to give away the plot obviously,
[3:13]but I think it's okay to say that one of these brothers,
[3:16]the kind of, I think of it as losing track of him.
[3:18]He, he disappears.
[3:21]The book is sort of propelled by one of the older brothers,
[3:24]the second eldest, Magdara, his guilt about that
[3:26]and then the guilt carries that he didn't watch over him
[3:30]more closely or he didn't shepherd him in a way
[3:33]that he should have as older brother.
[3:35]And that in a lot of ways is what the books about,
[3:37]the responsibility we have to each other
[3:40]just because we were maybe born to the same people
[3:43]in the same house and raised with the same, you know,
[3:47]I guess values and all of that stuff.
[3:51]And maybe went through the same traumas
[3:53]just some people it matters a lot to some people it matters
[3:56]not at all, but to my main character,
[3:59]it really does matter.
[4:00]And so he kind of tries to fight his way back,
[4:03]try to, he works to contain that family unit,
[4:06]I think for the rest of his life as well as he can.
[4:08]The mental load, so to speak, of a mother back then,
[4:12]it makes like any article or anything for today's world
[4:16]be like, okay, stop.
[4:18]And what she went through and just how into the fabric
[4:23]of life another baby would come and like this is
[4:27]and how the kids knew because of the pacing
[4:30]and like when she slowed down walking the wood planks,
[4:33]that's when the baby was getting closer
[4:35]and how they all had to pitch in and just how tired she was,
[4:39]which, you know, obviously ended up having multiple reasons
[4:42]why, but just just how much she did
[4:46]and that moms are really capable of.
[4:49]Yeah, well, it's funny when I was writing this.
[4:52]So this is very closely based on a family story,
[4:54]the two central events in the book happened in real life,
[4:58]the death of my father.
[5:00]father's mother, when my youngest uncle was only five weeks old, and then the running away
[5:05]of one of their brothers when he was around. Some of my uncle say 12, some say 13. I, you
[5:11]know, I wasn't interested in finding out exactly because I was writing a novel. I'd always
[5:15]understood it to be around 13. But when I was researching like properly, I'd been to Ireland
[5:21]many, many times. I went up to the cemetery where my grandmother is buried. And at that
[5:27]moment, I was 47. And I'm Mary Keene. And on her gravestone, it just says Mary Keene aged 47.
[5:35]Well, and so I think some of these echoes, a lot of this book was written out of grief. My dad died
[5:41]in 2022. And at the end of his life, he had something called a Parkinsonian dementia. And he was
[5:48]starting to only speak Irish again for large portions of the day. That was his first language.
[5:54]And when my uncle's would come over and we'd say, what, what does he say? He seemed to be agitated
[5:58]about something. He was really fixated on why he didn't bring his younger brother with him when he
[6:04]emigrated. Maybe things would have been okay. Maybe they could have made it. And he didn't. And a year
[6:09]or two years later, that uncle disappeared. And so he carried that with him, you know, his whole
[6:16]life. And so, you know, the echoes that we carry through generations, even though my upbringing was
[6:21]quite different than his, it was important. It felt like a necessary book for me to write. So
[6:28]it felt so personal. And now that like, people are responding to it feels really, really nice.
[6:33]You know, I'm really, really sorry about the loss of your father and how he was sick for a long time.
[6:40]I hope it's, well, even though it's, it's, I hope he's up there somewhere and he knows about
[6:45]this book and he's okay with it. Well, just how great to recreate what his childhood was like.
[6:53]I mean, how many daughters actually go to the trouble of really trying to get to know a family
[7:00]of origin in this detailed way so much so that they spend years of their life and then go out
[7:05]on tour talking about it. I mean, what, what, what attribute to him? Yeah, I hope so. I think of it that
[7:10]way. I mean, I think he had an extraordinary life in its view. I said he was just a, you know,
[7:15]as he put it like a common laborer was what he always said. He was a construction worker.
[7:19]But I think, you know, all lives are pretty extraordinary from where he began to where he ended.
[7:26]It's not a leap that I'm going to make, you know, in my life to have two years of education and
[7:33]then come to America and send your kids to, you know, these fancy colleges and, you know,
[7:39]I'm writing books and my sisters are doing very well. And, you know, it's, I think it's a credit
[7:45]to him and the work that he put in. And I think the wisdom that he had that he taught us,
[7:51]you know, not all intelligence is marked by a degree. There are an, I'm in this privileged
[7:59]position of knowing a lot of people with fancy degrees now. And I know that they don't always
[8:02]line up, you know, an accomplished piece of paper. And so yeah, a lot of that is what the book
[8:09]was about too, that to shine a light on a life that is in many, many ways, very ordinary. They
[8:15]just worked and they had families and they had their mundane worries and but life can still be
[8:22]big and gratifying and all of these things. So that's all in there. I hope,
[8:28]I mean, a life on paper that is not how we measure a life that is not how people truly measure.
[8:35]Some people don't know. Some people it's kind of due, but it's, you know, it's funny.
[8:40]I don't. Sounds like you don't. I don't. I mean, that's why it's so interesting to hear
[8:46]the backstory of everybody. Right? Everyone is caring so much. And sometimes all you have to do
[8:52]is ask, like, what is on your plate? Like, what is going on? And you find these amazing stories of
[8:58]perseverance and, I mean, look at all the stuff that all the characters went through in this book.
[9:03]I'm thinking to myself, like, gosh, they just like basically arrived on the shores here and had
[9:09]to figure out what to do and, you know, all these odd jobs and like the stables on 89th Street,
[9:14]which like I've actually been to and, you know, like blacksmithing and how did they learn these
[9:19]things? And I mean, there's an interesting question at the beginning of your book too where
[9:24]an anthropologist essentially comes to the neighborhood and a whale is washed up on the beach and
[9:28]he asks, Mac, the second son, like, how did you learn all these things? Did your, did your dad teach
[9:35]you? And he's like, what are you talking about? Like, I just know all these things. Like,
[9:39]I know how to put a horseshoe on a horse and maybe somebody showed it to me. Maybe not. But it's just
[9:45]like how all of these life skills certainly back then just got passed down without even a second thought
[9:53]versus now, like, take your daughter to work day, you know. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Like, how to rebuild
[9:58]a whale, you know, I would.
[10:00]how to do that. But they did, you know, it's just a different type of education, I guess,
[10:06]a valuable one. So yeah. And I feel like the book is very anti-wallowing. Do you know, like,
[10:12]the things happened and they dealt with it and they moved on late in Wallo. They just like
[10:18]plunged ahead. Yeah, they had no time. I think it was part of it. They did not Wallo. I've been
[10:24]known to not Wallo enough sometimes. And I be there in my image a little bit at times.
[10:31]But they don't. I mean, it's a very practical life. But I think that that also is in there
[10:37]that people who are not necessarily as articulate, you know, when I started at Barnard,
[10:44]I was like an alien, you know, like I came from a very different background. I came,
[10:49]but I wanted to be a writer. And it was a place where writers were made, according to me,
[10:53]at 18 and asked us to, I had to go there. So when I was in workshop, a lot of the young women,
[11:00]their characters were so articulate. And I was so impressed. But it wasn't until I read
[11:06]different writers that were like more similar to me, which is why like seeing yourself represented
[11:11]in fiction is so important that I realized like everyone has these feelings. Everyone has these
[11:16]experiences. It's just a matter of being able to put words on them or not. And so I think that's
[11:22]when I guess I found my subjects, if you will. And these characters, these particular characters
[11:27]have been in my life in some way for a very long time, because like I said, the two central events
[11:33]were true. I'd been sort of creating a fiction around them my whole life, you know, filling in
[11:38]the blanks with my own imagination. So when people say, how did you know this? I don't, you know,
[11:44]I just knowing what I know about Ireland in that period, which is all my family ever talked about
[11:50]get togethers. And then filling in, you know, the people I know I just like sort of created the
[11:54]world before I put pen to paper for the first time. It's such an interesting thought experiment too.
[12:01]Could you take what like every family has those events and those stories, right? That
[12:07]come back over and over. Like the thing that my grandmother used to tell me again and again,
[12:10]like what if I were to take that but put myself in the shoes of her at age 18 when such and such
[12:16]happened? Like what would that look like? And what would, what would I learn from it? What would I
[12:20]learn more about her life as a result? So it's an interesting thought writing exercise.
[12:25]It's an interesting thing to do. Yeah. Must have been very fulfilling for you to like
[12:29]immerse yourself so deeply. Yeah. I was nervous too, because I have a big family and everyone
[12:35]feels ownership over family stories. And so I feel like to acknowledge in different parts of the book
[12:40]that this is just one person's take on what happens. The other brothers in the book,
[12:46]end in real life, have different impressions of different things that happened. This is true of
[12:50]all things. Three people could be in a room when something happens and they all remember it
[12:54]quite differently and sort of later might be really astonished at how the other person saw it.
[13:00]So that writ large over for a lot of years, that's also interesting to me. So with cousins or with,
[13:07]I imagine the next generation of people in this book would discuss it, you know, sort of like
[13:12]a scoop on our dads and moms and what they were, you know, one might have info that the other
[13:17]one doesn't have or feel protective of the story they were given. You know, for these boys,
[13:24]they experienced all of this differently depending on how old they were. My dad, my brother and I
[13:31]were almost in a car accident once and we all have a different take on who was driving and we're
[13:36]all completely sure of it. Like, I am 100% sure I was driving and my brother is 100% sure he was
[13:43]driving and it's crazy. You just got your way to find out. There's no way to find out. There's
[13:49]no way to find out anyway. But yes, memory and family is craziness. You mentioned that
[13:54]you're about like eyewitnesses when they're called to the stand. It's like, well, you really don't know.
[13:59]I don't know. No, it's true. I would be a really bad eyewitness. If anybody is listening and I am on
[14:04]a trial right now as an eyewitness, just like get me out of there. Discount my testimony, please.
[14:11]Oh, my goodness. You said sometimes maybe you don't follow enough. What do you mean by that?
[14:16]Well, I think I can appear a little more stoic than I am. I should say full disclosure,
[14:23]I'm in media training at the moment and I'm hearing a lot about how I should smile more.
[14:28]Yeah. So this is all information I would have used at 22 maybe when I was out, you know, dating.
[14:35]But I think, you know, the exterior doesn't necessarily reflect the interior.
[14:43]So like when my dad died, someone who I was close to sort of seemed like sort of commented on
[14:52]like how okay I was, you know, and here's this book boiling inside me. Everybody is so different
[14:58]and how they cope with different things.
[15:00]And so I think of the characters as maybe a little bit like me.
[15:04]They're not going to say things that are obvious.
[15:07]Like this is very sad or I miss this.
[15:10]But it'll come out in different surprising and very specific ways, I think.
[15:16]I won't mention what happens in the book one way or the other.
[15:20]But in real life, did your family end up reconnecting with the brother who had ran away?
[15:26]And in real life, yes, I was in high school and he reached out to them.
[15:33]He was in an accident and he was not in the US.
[15:38]He was in England in real life.
[15:40]I don't want to give anything away, but they did see him.
[15:43]And I actually met him when I was on tour.
[15:46]I was in England for a book I wrote called Ask Again, Yes.
[15:49]And I was there for a couple days.
[15:51]And then one of my uncles who's now based in America was over there visiting him.
[15:55]So I thought, why not?
[15:56]This is my chance.
[15:57]And it was wild.
[15:58]He looked just like my dad except he was very chatty.
[16:00]My dad was very quiet.
[16:01]But they did reconnect.
[16:02]And it was like a big event.
[16:04]He'd call it Christmas.
[16:05]And they'd talk on the phone.
[16:06]They always spoke Irish.
[16:08]But it still bothered my dad that maybe his brother's life would have been easier.
[16:12]Maybe it would have been different.
[16:13]Had he brought him here at 12 or 13.
[16:16]But how do you do that?
[16:17]I don't know when you are only 19 and you don't have a job.
[16:21]So it's seen pointless to me.
[16:24]But I had a pretty good dad.
[16:26]As far as a lot of writers are writing about their, all the ways their parents messed them up.
[16:31]I had pretty good ones.
[16:33]So it bothered me that he was troubled by this when he was at a time in his life.
[16:37]He should be finding peace.
[16:40]I'm curious also.
[16:42]The classmates of yours at Barnard, who you felt like were these amazing writers.
[16:46]What happened to them?
[16:47]One, you know, I think Courtney Seimel was a classmate of course.
[16:53]Such a talented writer.
[16:55]And she has a gift I don't, which is writing for young people, which I just, I can't, I think it's such a specific and maybe under appreciated skill.
[17:04]Some of the others have gone on to write nonfiction.
[17:07]But some I haven't heard from.
[17:09]There's one I Google at times because I thought he was such a huge talent.
[17:13]And then, you know, I don't know what happened.
[17:16]But life gets in the way or maybe she's just lost interest.
[17:18]I'm not sure.
[17:19]But Barnard's still churning out quite a few writers.
[17:22]Some of them are former students of mine now, which makes me feel old, but I just prepared for a while.
[17:27]But I'm still in a great place to go if you want to be a writer.
[17:32]How did you take your experience at Barnard and the way you felt like an alien?
[17:37]And how did you then teach the next generation not to feel that way?
[17:41]Oh, gosh.
[17:42]I really had imposter syndrome when I was teaching there for a while.
[17:47]I mean, I think if I'm overconfident in one area, it's that I think I'm a good reader of fiction.
[17:53]And so if someone hands me 12 pages say a student workshop of something really raw,
[17:58]I think I'm pretty good at finding the heart of the matter and helping them.
[18:06]Sort of focus in on what it is exactly they're writing about, you know, bring out this is what's interesting.
[18:12]This is what's maybe not.
[18:14]And we try to just focus on the work, but they're still wicked smart.
[18:19]It's like sometimes I didn't even want to, the things they're watching on television are on my cheese.
[18:25]And I guess I was pretty snobby too at that age.
[18:28]I think I've gotten less so, you know, as time goes on.
[18:31]Like, I'll watch a really garbage television show and I find it very relaxing.
[18:36]You know, they would never, they would never, you know, and they're reading stuff that's really, really difficult.
[18:44]And I think that's great.
[18:46]That's fine.
[18:47]But there's also room for joy and for, you know, silliness and all of this stuff too.
[18:52]And I think it's just an age that that they're at.
[18:54]But there's a lot of talent uptown at Barnard, I would say.
[18:58]I mean, I talk about this a lot too because sometimes the greatest talents are not the people that we're reading every day.
[19:06]They're not in the bookstores.
[19:07]And maybe it said they had one rejection and decided they couldn't deal with it.
[19:12]Maybe they just gave up to have it.
[19:15]You know, as you said, like it's in the way.
[19:17]But that's what differentiates the people who end up getting their books out.
[19:21]It's that not giving up.
[19:23]It's that you can't let something else. Like you just have to keep going back to this beast of.
[19:30]Feast of Burner.
[19:31]I know you were stubborn stubborn person, you know, who wouldn't.
[19:34]I also felt like I already surpassed whatever thought I would do.
[19:40]So the pressure is off to some extent.
[19:42]Everything else is just gravy.
[19:44]I kind of always thought, you know, if this doesn't work out, maybe I'll go to nursing school or I'll do something else and I'll have tried.
[19:51]So this is a wild ride.
[19:53]It's been, you know, a surprise in a lot of ways.
[19:56]When did you feel you had like checked off everything you'd.
[20:00]dreamt of. I mean, ask again, yes, came as such a surprise. I felt like at, you know,
[20:06]you have kids and they were so small and my parents were aging and my husband worked long
[20:14]hours and he traveled. I just felt tired all the time. And I think I wrote that both mostly
[20:19]for me, kind of like this one and didn't think about, you know, but then the time comes when
[20:25]you have to make a living. So I sent it to my agents and hoped for the best, but kind of,
[20:30]so that the success of that book just caught me by completely surprised. But also taught me
[20:35]something, which is like, don't write for the market. Don't write for, at least for me, the books
[20:41]that come from my heart seemed to go over. Well, you know, I have to like rip my heart out and put
[20:46]it on the page, but it's worth it. I think it's worth it in the end. Well, of course those books
[20:52]are going to resonate because as a reader, if you're evaluating a book that someone ripped their
[20:56]heart out to write versus a book that someone's like, I think maybe people will like this. Like,
[21:01]what do you think you're going to be drawn to? You want that. You can tell as a reader.
[21:05]Yeah, someone asked me for coffee once. I won't name, I won't say a name, but she wanted to pick my
[21:10]brain and she kept saying, you know, that she was a little troubled. She couldn't get a deal because
[21:16]she felt her novel was very competent and she kept using the word competent.
[21:21]I was like, that is not like, you need to feel almost like ready for hospitalization. That's when
[21:27]she's gone, you know. Mary Beth, thank you so much. This has been such an interesting conversation.
[21:33]I really appreciate it. And thank you for coming on. I really, I loved it. Thank you very much.
[21:39]Thanks for having me. Okay. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you for listening to totally booked with
[21:44]Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[21:49]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much.
[21:56]Oh, and bye the books.