Hellloooo!

Last week I thoroughly enjoyed The Way The Light Bends by Lorraine Wilson a powerful and haunting piece of contemporary fantasy that explores sibling relationships, grief and the idea of crossing borders into strange worlds. I was very pleased thanks to Luna Press Publishing to be able to ask Lorraine some questions about this excellent book that you NEED!

How would you nooktempt The Way The Light Bends?

By showing people the cover! Who could resist? By promising to make people cry, perhaps? Or alternatively by saying, ‘If you like stories of siblings, dark Scottish folklore, and the lure of liminal spaces, then give this book a go.’

How did this family dynamic become the focus of the story?
When I first started planning this story I had been doing a lot of thinking about grief, obviously, and how no two pathways through bereavement are the same and yet it irrevocably changes all of us. But I was also thinking about the myths that families build around themselves, how our sense of identity is so strongly shaped by the role we are given within our family, and how sometimes that role can become a bit of a trap. So I guess the development of the dynamic between the sisters was a very organic result of all those vague introspections. I’m very different to my own sister but that’s never stopped us being close, so I think my starting point was ‘What if we weren’t close, how would we find a way to connect if we’d never understood one another, and if we were both too wounded to see clearly?’

Was there a challenge in plotting these two timelines?
Lol, the biggest challenge was keeping track of days of the week! I deeply resent days of the week needing to actually obey the rules. Why can’t I have three Thursdays in succession and no Sundays ever?

But yes, it was a pain having to keep track of all the various ‘How long since…’ time intervals. I did initially start every scene with a reminder – X days since Rob died, X since Tamsin disappeared – to try to keep it straight in my head. And then I realised Freya’s pregnancy timeline was squonky so had to go back and sort that out. I now much admire anyone who leaps merrily into writing multi-timeline novels – the fools.

Both this and your earlier novel This Is Our Undoing explore borders not just of counties and between characters but also between the normal and the fantastical. What draws you to this subject?
I have always been fascinated by the liminal, and I think that’s something a lot of people probably share with me too. They’re a great big ‘What if?’, aren’t they? Thresholds are such a strong theme in folklore, whether as gateways, shorelines, forest edges, wishing wells, equinoxes. And those moments/places often stand as symbols for psychological turning points – the moral choice, the coming of age, falling in love … death. I think that’s the lure of them – that they are a kind of Schrodinger’s box of the self. Step through the arch and all possible versions of yourself might exist in that interstitial moment, so who is it that emerges on the other side?

I think the other thing about gateways, pools, borderlands is that they are a kind of lens. What you see when you look through to the other side is only a version of the truth, or a partial truth, so how do you interpret that? What is the truth if everything you’re seeing is shaped by the unknown, or by your own perceptions? And I think those lenses exist everywhere - in our relationships with others, with the world around us, in the news etc etc. So one of the questions I always come back to with my stories is how do you find a path through a storm (whatever that storm might be), if you only have a partial, distorted view of ‘the truth’ or ‘reality’? I think in fiction characters are often (eventually, after making them suffer) granted all the information they need to reach their own climactic choice. But that doesn’t really happen in real life, does it? So I guess I like making my characters struggle in the dark a bit!

Was there a particular bit of folk lore you loved finding out preparing for this novel?
Anyone who’s read the book will know that it was influenced by the folklore around changelings – the book’s whole theme of identity and belonging within families connects with this universal mythological character of the child that doesn’t belong. I’ve always found that a really intriguing and heartbreaking story, especially when you start to dig into possible explanations like infanticide driven by famine. But the other thing I was delighted to discover was the dual nature of Cernunnos. I was familiar with him as a figure of the forest, fertility, growth, etc, but I hadn’t realised he was also linked to death and passages to the underworld. Like with the changelings, dual-headed or twin deities are a really universal mythological figure and I’m always fascinated by what that reveals about us as a society. It goes back to that idea of the gateway, I think, the co-existence of conflicting truths.

What else can we look forward to from you in the future and where can we find out more?
My third book is coming out with Fairlight Books sometime next year. I can’t say much about it, but it was influenced by the abandonment of St. Kilda in Scotland, and by the threat that climate change is posing on other island societies. It’s full of storms, superstition, family tensions and the weight of trauma. Keep an eye on my twitter (@raine_clouds) or my website (https://shadowsonwater.wordpress.com) for updates.

What books have you enjoyed reading lately?
I’ve just finished reading an ARC of HellSans by Ever Dundas which was a powerful and captivating read. Also loved the entrancing The Half Life Of Valerie K by one of my fav authors, Natasha Pulley. The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah was immense fun and I’ve just started Face by Joma West, which is already disturbing me!