Claire Cameron Talks to TSR

Posted 11 June, 2007 in Author Interview |

Toronto native Claire Cameron’s first novel, The Line Painter, tells the story of Carrie McDonald, a woman who flees the city following the death of her boyfriend. When Carrie’s car breaks down on a lonely stretch of highway in northern Ontario, she is forced to seek help from Frank, a subcontractor who paints the lines on the highway at night. In a story that straddles the line between psychological character study and a particularly Canadian kind of thriller, Cameron traces the shifting and often-uneasy trajectory of Carrie’s relationship with Frank. Cameron agreed to answer some questions about the book and her writing process for That Shakespeherian Rag.

Where did the inspiration for The Line Painter come from?

I was driving the Yellowhead highway in Manitoba and got stuck behind a line painter who was doing the middle line on the road. My impatience turned to fascination as I watched the paint go down on the road in a perfect, crisp line.

That image stuck with me. About ten years later, I was writing a song about a line painter and started doing a bit of research. That’s when I discovered why the lines glow at night. They spray a fine layer of glass beads into the wet paint that reflects the light from the headlights of your car back at you. I loved that idea and went from there.

You write songs as well? What prompted you to pursue novel writing as opposed to songwriting?

I am terrible on the guitar and have a so-so singing voice, meaning I couldn’t make the idea in my head turn into anything worth listening too. I sound much better when I am silent and typing.

The Line Painter is atypical of what has come to be identified as “CanLit” in a number of ways: it’s set in the present, the writing is not overly descriptive or lyrical, and the story has genre overtones. Were you conscious of trying to buck any specific trends while you were writing?

No. I had been out of the country for twelve-plus years and was living in London, U.K. when I wrote The Line Painter. I was aware of Canadian writers, but I certainly wasn’t conscious of trends here. I thank my lucky stars for that. Such a self-conscious aim would cause me to crawl under my desk and roll into a ball.

The protagonist in The Line Painter is a Toronto woman on the run from a traumatic incident in her past. She winds up in the town of Hearst, Ontario, which is a very specific location, but the author’s note at the book’s beginning points out that the story is completely fictional. Nevertheless, Carrie is a Toronto native and shares a given name that is arguably similar to yours (especially with the hard-c sound at the beginning). Were you worried that readers might too closely identify Carrie’s experience with your own?

The beginning of my book has an author’s note that says, “Hearst is real, but this story is not. I made it up.” That is partly my idea of a good joke, but I was thinking of small business owners and the people who call Hearst home. Many people who read the book will never visit Hearst. Their perception of the place will be entirely based on Carrie’s and she, as Frank so aptly puts it, has her head up her ass. I worried about that.

As for people thinking I am Carrie – if they want to think that, they will. I’m not worried about it. Some of her experience is mine. Some of Frank’s experience is also mine.

Actually, that is what I should really worry about – people thinking I’m Frank …

Place is very important in The Line Painter. The specifics of the Kapuskasing area of Ontario – the town of Hearst itself, the Husky truck stop, the King’s motel – are all carefully drawn and vivid, yet you were living in London, England when you wrote the novel. Do you think that the experience of living across the Atlantic helped or hindered your ability to render the book’s setting?

I think living in London gave me enough separation to write a story. I could imagine the setting in a way that suited what I needed it to do. My job is to write a story in a setting with the convincing details, but not necessarily to create slavishly accurate record of a place.

One of the most impressive aspects of the novel, for me, is that neither Carrie nor Frank is one-dimensional. I’ve read responses to the book from readers who have complained that some of Carrie’s decisions render her unsympathetic. Do you think that your characters need to be sympathetic in order to appease a reader, or should readers be willing to embrace Carrie’s more Machiavellian side, for example?

I did not intend for Carrie to be entirely sympathetic. I hope the reader, at times, might be put off enough by Carrie to find his or her loyalties shifting toward Frank. This puts the reader in the same position as Carrie, questioning their perception of Frank, trying to reconcile their disapproval of him with, perhaps, attraction or, at least, compassion toward him.

Both Carrie and Frank have lost loved ones, and there’s a sense that both of them are trying – with little success – to outrun their respective pasts. Is it fair to say that this is one of the things that bring these two disparate characters together?

Carrie is trying to resolve her past relationship, as is Frank. They have a parallel experience and try to find relief in each other. But, they are both trying to take something from the other, rather than give as you might in a healthier relationship. And, of course, they are brought together by their love of smoking too.

Do you see the attempt to outrun the past as a futile, doomed endeavour?

I would say outrunning your past is futile. You have to learn to exist with it. I have a great distrust for people who attempt a sharp break from their past. It can make for a very unsettled person.

Carrie attempts to escape by leaving the city and striking out for the west. This lends her journey an almost mythic aspect – the pilgrim striking out for the frontier. In doing so, she also sloughs off the civilizing aspects of the city and encounters a kind of wildness for which she is totally unprepared. How and why was it important for you as a writer to thrust Carrie into this alien environment?

I have done quite a bit of mountaineering. I love being outside, but the most interesting thing about climbing is the group dynamics. People change, or reveal much more, when they are tired, hungry, and scared and in an alien environment. You learn much more about a person in a short period of time.

You’ve cited Margaret Atwood as an influence. In her book of literary criticism, Survival, Atwood writes, “Our stories are likely to be tales not of those who made it but of those who made it back, from the awful experience – the North, the snowstorm, the sinking ship – that killed everyone else. The survivor has no triumph or victory but the fact of his survival; he has little after his ordeal that he did not have before, except gratitude for having escaped with his life.” Do you agree with this assessment, and do you think this is true for Carrie in The Line Painter?

Atwood is clever, isn’t she? As for The Line Painter, I don’t know. That’s the honest answer.

But, perhaps it’s the opposite. Carrie has lived a fairly cushy life up until the death of her boyfriend. Her actions thrust her into a place that forces her to start making decisions and taking responsibility for her life. Many people, when put in a position where they are forced to cope, come out the other end, if they do, with more tools to tackle the future.

This is especially true of someone from a more privileged background, like Carrie. If you are less privileged, like Frank, there is often less slack in the system. Life, in this way, is not fair.

In Survival, Atwood posits “a superabundance of victims in Canadian literature,” but this description doesn’t seem to apply to Carrie. For better or worse, she is the author of her own situation, which is one of the aspects of her character that may render her unsympathetic to some readers.

Carrie is not a victim. She makes her own bed, so to speak. She comes to understand this by the end.

The structure of The Line Painter is fairly subtle, and doesn’t yield itself up to close analysis on a first reading. With a second pass, however, the parallels and repetitions that have been built into the story become apparent and the moments of foreshadowing take on a more symbolic resonance for the reader. Were these aspects of the story that you shaded in during rewriting, or did you have a very detailed structure in mind when you sat down to write?

The backbone of the structure appeared during the first draft, which I wrote quickly and fairly spontaneously. I then rewrote endlessly, which mostly involved trimming back, but I did some shading in as well.

Is this your preferred process, or could you see yourself doing something else with another story?

I don’t know. I hope I keep trying new things.

When I was writing The Line Painter, I was very worried about the process and convinced I was going about things the wrong way. I didn’t, for example, realize that many writers don’t outline before they start. My lack of outline worried me deeply. This time I hope I can relax a bit more – but angst is clever and evolves. It finds new ways to attack.

What are the advantages of structuring your novel as a suspense story? How does this allow the reader a different experience than would be the case with a more straightforward, chronological telling of the tale?

I wasn’t aware I was writing suspense until I was writing the final draft. I went to visit my agent’s partner, Bill Hamilton, at A.M. Heath in London. I asked him how he would categorize the novel and he said “suspense.” I was surprised to hear it. I think of The Line Painter as a love story with a dark comedic undertone. Or, perhaps the end of a love story is more accurate.

I think this has got me into some trouble. The story looks a bit like a thriller, but it does not have a classic thriller structure. If you pick up the book hoping for Stephen King, the end is going to disappoint you.

I wrote a book that I hope a few people will love. The rest can go buy Stephen King.

The last word in the novel is “home.” On one level, the entire story could be seen as Carrie’s attempt to find her way back home. How important is this notion of home for you?

I grew up in Toronto and had no question about where I called home. Then I moved to California and became very attached to the place. I moved to London, England, and, after several years, started to feel it was home. There is something comforting about knowing where “home” is and I was disconcerted to realize I didn’t know and probably never would again. These things were on my mind while I was writing.

So would you say that your definition of “home” has changed as a result of your moving around?

Yes, the idea home has become a decision, rather than a place.

What brought you back to Canada?

There are all sorts of complex reasons we moved to Canada (my husband is from San Francisco) that I’m not sure I know myself.

The simple reason is that selling our flat in London meant I could be a writer in Canada and still have enough money to eat.

The Line Painter is written in a spare and stripped-down style, which is reminiscent of Raymond Carver and Ian McEwan, two writers you point to as influences. What attracts you to this style of writing?

I am attracted to the risk of trying to say more by saying less.

(Author photo by Ryan McIntosh.)

3 comments to “Claire Cameron Talks to TSR”

Shaine B. Parker, June 11th, 2007 at 10:56 pm:

• Well prepared interviewer with intelligent questions, and calm, asssured and thoughtful answers.

patricia, June 12th, 2007 at 10:00 am:

• Yes, excellent interview. Thanks, Steve, for bringing Claire’s book to my attention. Definitely on my ‘must read’ list.

Miriam Goldstein, June 12th, 2007 at 4:02 pm:

• I enjoyed reading the novel, as well as Claire Cameron’s interview.
  Specifically how she (Cameron) does not give away too much detail of what happens throughout the novel. Seeing as I have already read the book, one word to describe it as is “chilling”!

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