A conversation with

Q&A

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.

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? 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. 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.

“Getting old is the preferred outcome. For most of us.”

The women are a bit more hardnosed as accountants. They basically say “give me the numbers; I will see that it adds up properly; I will see that the money goes to the correct places. But don’t trouble me with information or baggage; money is just money and I don’t give a hoot where it comes from.”

Until one day a knock on the door. ABT: Love also complicates things. Byron says, “What is love but an extreme curiosity, an insatiable craving, to truly know a stranger?” LM: It’s a reaction to the constant peril of loneliness, which seems to take on almost fatal proportions in our anticipation of where life ends up.

I’ve been dealing lately with very, very old people, a woman the other day, 99 years old. We were talking about these sorts of things, how lonely the world becomes when you reach that age.

We try to anticipate that and get some form of insurance against loneliness by knowing somebody really well, and being able to trust them absolutely. That trust is built upon knowledge—faith that knowledge of another person gives us, that the other person will be reliable.

In Byron’s case, he ends up in high school with no social background. Peggy is very interested in him. There’s something intriguing about him.

She doesn’t know, and he doesn’t know, where this curiosity is coming from. It grows into an infatuation that is never quite consummated the way it might if Byron had a bit more experience.

He never gets a true opportunity to act on his curiosity until, in a case of extreme distress, he acts upon it very badly because of a total misunderstanding of what they had as the basis of their relationship: a trust based on the confidence that we are both safe here. And he violates that in a terrible way and destroys the trust, probably forever.

It’s not something I’ve thought a lot about, this business of love and curiosity. It’s just something that came to me as I worked my way through this relationship between Byron and Peggy.

I realized this intense appetite he has for knowledge about her, based on his need for some form of personal stability in his life that he’s never enjoyed before. He didn’t have it with his dad. He had it with his mom in a kind of custodial way but never a lot of emotional connection.

He’s got a big emptiness in the middle of his consciousness and he’s always dreamt that Peggy would fill it, but he never quite knew how to go there. ABT: Byron also says, “Anything to mitigate the wear and tear of growing old.” This seems to drive him, staving off old age and decline, complicated by his fear of dementia. LM: For a very fine part of life we’re aware of what we’re gaining, of growth.

Then you make a turn where you become conscious of, “I’m not growing anymore. As a matter of fact, I’m starting to lose stuff. I’m not as nimble as I was, I’m not as good looking.”

This 99-year-old lady the other day kept telling me, “please don’t get old.” And I kept wanting to say, “What’s the alternative?” Getting old is the preferred outcome. For most of us.

The role of Alzheimer’s and dementia in this story is a kind of a metaphorical one because it is a description of what happens to us in any event. Something like dementia is an acceleration of this kind of normal loss of our body and mind, an acceleration of the dying process, a slow-motion decline into a place where we are helpless. ABT: Memory is another big theme here. Annie tells Byron: “Memory is a parallel reality. Basically, an extended falsehood, a lifelong lie. At best, a kind of literature.” LM: Memory is subjective and creative, an assembly of experience in a format that enables us to feel reasonably good about ourselves.

As a journalist I worked with a producer on a story. I recall we were being jerked around by a subject. We had a piece of tape the producer acquired surreptitiously, but the other party knew he had it and there was an understanding that it wouldn’t be used. Okay now we’re being jerked around; that tape will clear the whole matter up.

I remember saying, “Go get the tape we’re gonna put it in the piece.” Subsequently, I’ve read accounts and heard the producer say, “I made the decision.”

The tape was used, it altered the story hugely, but who cares if I said it or he did?

Memory is like your photo album. It’s not going to be published. ■

THE WINTER WIVES

Linden MacIntyre Random House Canada