Q&A
Atlantic Books Today AUTHORS IN CONVERSATION
with
LINDEN MacINTYRE
Linden MacIntyre’s first eight books have won everything from the Richardson Award (non-fiction) to the Giller. He has written memoir, true crime, history and literary fiction. His latest, The Winter Wives, is a taut psychological thriller addressing a dazzling array of themes—mental health, dementia, law & order, trauma, memory and self-delusion— that could only be woven together by a skilled writer with an extensive background in investigative journalism. MacIntyre was generous enough to share some insights into the complex fabric of human behaviour.
Linden MacIntyre: The thing that they have learned most graphically is that we never know another person as well as we think. They all started out in adolescence quite convinced they were bonding with one another. It’s a common presumption young people have. “This is a soul mate. Someone I’ll live with in my heart, brain or geography for my entire life.” We find as time goes by, no matter how much we think we know, we keep finding out additional things about the other person. What we learn is not always happy or welcome. It is always a certain challenge to the relationship. That happens dramatically with these people because the growth is altered by crime, law enforcement, the pressures of an unusual and peculiar world of business.
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ABT: Speaking of the law and crime, the character Alan says at one point, “The law and crime go hand in hand.” How does that notion create tension between the other three characters, Byron, a lawyer, and Peggy and her sister Annie, who are accountants? LM: It’s a professional conceit of both lawyers and accountants that the moral underpinnings of the job in front of them are irrelevant at the time they’re doing the job. A lawyer takes a client, no matter how serious the accusation, and they give them the theoretical presumption of innocence. Byron had an idealistic notion of the law, which got him into difficulty when confronted with another lawyer who’s accused of something terrible, and Byron has his own baggage related to those kinds of crimes. In a naïve way he realizes he’s not part of that value system; he cannot take the subjectivity out of his reaction to a particular crime.
Photo by Tom Zsolt
Atlantic Books Today: The four main characters in The Winter Wives are all around 60. Can you talk a bit about what life has taught them?
