Atlantic Books Today Q & A
Q&A
Carol Bruneau’s first nine books have all been critically acclaimed, and why not? Her sentences are meticulous, elegant constructions that pile on seemingly ordinary moments that repeatedly surprise with their profundity. Her seventh novel, Brighten the Corner Where You Are: A Novel Inspired by the Life of Maud Lewis, may be her best yet.
Atlantic Books Today: Right away I could hear her voice in my head. Was it her real voice, in terms of tone and affectation? I couldn’t say. But the voice on the page was so authentic I could actually hear it. Can you talk a bit about how you went about establishing the fictional voice of a real, and world famous, Nova Scotian? Carol Bruneau: It had to be in her voice. She was a very shy person. She never told anybody anything, so it was a bit of an arrogant proposition, but we do have the CBC interview of 1965. 8
She talks enough you get her inflections. Her responses to dumb questions are hilarious. I had fun with that. I tried to go back to the world she inhabited when she was young. Watching silent movies, Mary Pickford on YouTube, imagining this person who was all about colour watching these black and white movies. I wanted it to be authentic, not condescending, and I didn’t want her to come across as a hick. I wanted authenticity in the way rural
Photo by Bruce Erskine.
Its subject is extraordinary yet familiar: one of Nova Scotia’s most famous painters, Maud Lewis, whose bright little house stars in perpetuity at the provincial art gallery, and whose work has achieved a level of recognition beyond what she could have imagined in life—though she was famous even then. Despite any familiarity readers may have with the story, Bruneau’s commitment to fully developing an authentic character makes her novel far more than a faithful rehashing of known events. The author was generous enough to sit down to discuss fictionalizing a Nova Scotia icon whose real life covered a very small space, and lessons Maud might offer a 21st-century world.
