April 16, 2012 - Lilian Nattel 

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Additions and leafy neighborhood is the scene setter in lily and mattel 's new novel web of angels if the place of old renovated houses narrow streets and happy families except of course for all the secrets that bubble under the surface that things do happen inside good homes and the contrast between the sunny exteriors and the evil inside plays out page by page lillian story is underpinned by place and it propels plot and creates character lillian intel will be in our place in a few minutes i don't think even google earth can be a novel when it comes to evoking the look and feel of the place and nobles as well our location maps of the human heart miranda hill knows this as a reader and a writer she wanted to mark this intersection of reading in place so she started a project bookmark a labor of love that puts flags in the actual locations where literary scenes are set maranda will be here along with sherry nielsen a writer whose book sailor girl has been bookmarked on the welland canal the scene commemorated by the bookmark involves a phone booth quote of sailors from smelling of tobacco and aspiration unquote and also today the former movie reviewer reviews the movie reviewer 's memoir our columnist david gilmour on roger ebert spoke life itself i'm sheila rogers welcome to the next chapter in a.

Seton grove is a fictional neighborhood where everyone feels safe kids play in each other's sandboxes teenagers to calm work together adults gather for dinner parties down the block it's kind of neighborhood where lily in the towel but in fictional seat and drove the setting for her new novel web of angels is a mystery in the community it's set in motion when a pregnant sixteen -year-old kills herself as the neighbors struggle to understand what happened and why only one person consents the answer and that's sharon lewis happy wife and mother of three sharon is also lissa and police bill and alec as well as many other personalities she has dissociative identity disorder or de- id triggered by trauma that she suffered as a child from here the author lillian intel takes us on a gripping journey showcasing humanity at its worst and at its best web of angels is lillian 's third book and she joins me today from toronto hi lillian hi sheila i ripped through us also glad to hear that that's exactly what i was looking for well you did it in and it's been eight years since her last novel yankees say that this was the most challenging of your career what made it so challenging it was a hard book on many levels it was technically hard because i was taking a subject that is foreign to most readers and has also been largely misrepresented people have an idea of de- id that very far from the reality and i wanted to bring that foreign world into the readers hands in a way that would engage the reader and give the reader an theories of what it's really like to be dig at the same time be a really gripping story against the idea that we have comes from popular culture and has as many of our ideas do of course for the movie symbol from dynastic talents on right now there's this show the united states of tara ps i wish you could see me rolling my eyes shut and think i can hear you is telling you know watching the united states of tara is a bit like watching a train rack it's fascinating and there's a grain of truth in it but at the same time and so appalling why is it so it's shows people with tid as basically being the same as every other portrayal people who are so extreme and out there and not able to live a functional life and for ninety five percent of people who have tid that just is not the case they are out there working having friends mary having children and doing everything they can to live a normal life while at the same time hiding his they really are and carrying that extra burden of all the how did you first hear about tid well i was on the internet and i was participating in a time frame for people who've been through difficult experiences and i began to meet people who were dig it's the kind of form that attracts people who are multiple it's anonymous and it's a way to meet and talk to other people who had similar experiences and you know what i then discovered that someone quite close to me has dig and i was so upset that i had never realized that because my own idea about the id came from sample and i was just as outraged by the fact that i didn't know i think it's it's something that isn't talked about very much and when is why i have her discussions even on cbc radio this never conclusive up feelings that this is for real well you know i i've been anticipating that and think to myself what am i going to say when somebody stands up and faces man says the idea isn't real and in fact that's having on my blog and what i can say is i know quite well more than two dozen people who are multiple and their real those are real people that i've met and talked to over years and i've talk to their altars and i can't see what is possibly unreal about those people i have a friend lillian who has de- id and she's given me her permission to describe her experience a little bit with you and she wrote and told me that she was delighted that this would be put into fiction action just pulled up for e-mail and it says i'm glad some fiction is being written because you can't discredit fiction or argue with it there is a much higher risk in writing nonfiction especially with this topic and she's as i might say that writing that for after retirement but she's really really delighted that you were going to go into the emotional truth of it and i'm really glad to hear that and in fact i also have had friends who are dig read the novel before it went into the final at it and they were really happy with it and in love with it and that made me happy to okay so now that we've established what it is and and then how it works in you you have many people in wine and you don't know when they're going to use the verb switch yes the purpose which are come forward and different people have different amounts of control over that and part of healing is for people to be able to switch in a more fluid way and to be able to have part of them forward that makes most sense in the moment and that not that different than a single tenant you know when you come on the radio you have your voice ready your public voice ready which i imagine would be different from your voice with the little baby for example lower your voice with a dog with a god yes and so when people are multiple it's like that except the parts are more separated and actually have a wider range of interesting guests so having the right part forward for the rate situation can really enrich life so that we will be first meet sharon and she is right handed she likes to sew and vacant net and then we start meeting other personalities like callisto whose left hand and interested in classical music and then there's alec in about half a dozen others and in the personalities are very different how did you decide which personalities to create for sharon well i has to do with who they are as a whole because people who are the id have very different parts but they also have a certain gestalt of the whole this is a person who is living a life as a stay-at-home mom who also has a part-time job in and that's going to affect all of them by these authors are also fairly typical so there's often a male altar in a woman there's often a teenage altering their child alters so that was the starting place to have typical types of people with in the gestalt again it's a little bit like your typical single tenant who has a work mode and a play mode and a romantic mode but every single person is different and every system more individual pid person is also different and so as a fiction writer than i'm creating individual characters who are also part of this whole and that's part of what made the book so challenging to the individual alters really characters and yet at the same time have that gestalt that link among them for instance you've got husband dan and he's getting into bad without yes indeed ready and he and due to my knowledge no dance not bisexual right but it it's it's a very is a very challenging i mean it was it was a fascinating seemed to read because the heat be happy i don't know how much dan knows necessarily but of course that can happen it did happen and there's often an interesting companionship solidarity between a male altar and the spouse when the relationship evolves and i had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine whose lesbian about this and she said to me that as far as she's concerned she can't see why it would be a problem because she has female aspects and mail aspects and all these other different aspects within her that are part of her relationship with her partner and that really made so much sense to me it say you know really you're you're so right when you point out that we all have these different aspects yes we do and and part of what i noticed about partners who are dig is that their spouses often experienced some growth & freedom because as they see their partner heal and more of their parts coming out and being all of who they are no kind of a male fix it guy married female who likes to dress up the nana kind of more mom type that also freeze their spammers to be more of who they are and explore more aspects of themselves which is really cool aspect of the relationship that you don't see talked about let me ask you about about dan who is sharon's husband he is so consistently supportive that sometimes he seems almost too good to be true is he for real he is for realities based on several people that i know and i was actually rereading the book asking us often i may stand to nice and as i was rereading at that and he's really like people that i know and he's not perfect is not a saint he gets angry he gets frustrated he gets insecure but what i noticed about people with dig is that they tend to choose either worse or better than average because on the one hand and abusive or limited partner can seem familiar but on the other hand they have finally teamed radar and they tend to look past the externals of a person and look for that in side view of the person and so sometimes they end up with really super partners and remember these partners are attracted to somebody whose multiple sharon was always multiple even though she and dan may not have known what can name this gestalt whole that she was sharon went through some kind of childhood trauma i don't know how much you won't reveal here not to manage okay fine and good the book raises the issue of how someone who's suffered through something like that deals with being a mother herself what are your thoughts on that e-mail again the people that i know who are multiple vendor over backwards to ensure that their children don't go to any thing like what they did they'll read they'll talk to their partner 's adult talk to friends who are moms to get anything that they need in order for them to be good parents to their children are they perfect know who's perfect right but there it makes that such a priority in their lives and you know i was abused as a child myself and i'm quite open about that i'm a writer and that's my life and i have a fantastic life now with the children in a family of my own by i i know what teeple have gone through when they've been deeply hurt by i understand that from a personal place i understand the place of healing and so it it's not just theoretical for me know and we were focusing a lot on sharon but i'm very very powerful in and very sad event takes place very early on in the novel as sixteen -year-old killed herself why did you want to set your novel into motion in this way you know i actually got an e-mail shortly after i started web of angels the very first draft from a friend who sent me this story this new story from somebody who died in the story and very much the same way and can you talk about that at least because these are the seven pages and we know what happened sure and so this young woman kills herself we don't know why she's pregnant and there's an emergency cesarean her mother who is a doctor extracts the baby and the baby laughs and the real story was actually rather more gruesome there was a woman who was murdered while she was pregnant and the murderer extracted that the baby and the murder had connected with the mother on the internet and the murder was caught through the internet within a day or two and the baby was recovered and healthy and whole but that image of the dying mother under whatever circumstances and the living baby just so haunted me that i thought this is what has to set the novel emotion this this incident because this young woman in my novel would have been so suffering and so much not wanted her baby to you live the life she had lived and feels so very helpless because there is nobody she could tell and i think it it brings out in a dramatic way the possibility that anybody here anybody listening to this program can have their eyes open and had the opportunity to save the child through nothing more than getting that child hope that there is calling this out there in the world and that is very much what sharon does yes.

It's more of a challenge was to develop the suspenseful plot when you already had to involve so many different personalities in the story while this is what took me so many years p.m. i went to draft after draft and i would send it to my agent and my poor agent would read it and he says emphatic in sake lillian are you sure you want to write just like this maybe you want to write a nonfiction book and i would say no know it's got to be and he would say well okay then you can't go back to the drawing board and i would go back and i would revise it and bring it back to him again and each step of the way there was a little bit more hope that i was getting closer until finally at the end he said you did it through the moment it was a very very big mouth but i can tell you after working on this for so long it was such a feeling of achievement because i'm so passionate about everything about this subject about the stigma around the idvd parents about tid that the need to have more freedom to come out as all of who we are that's what we all want we all want acceptance every single human being you have a wonderful counterpoint to sharon and dan and their family and the family of the young woman who had killed herself in the grandparents get it till it's about them all i love taken mainly i just love that i've known people like them i'm sure everybody has jade is a very old man whose declining mentally but the fact that he's declining leads to some very funny and very honest situations his wife mimi is rather critical and at the same time that a very loving person who feels that she's fighting the universe to make everything come out right and really dared the air in their own funny i imperfect way the backbone of the family it all comes down to rice it is theorized in a that that line in the novel but i should add that mimi is chinese and i have chinese children and that hueneme is chinese and then the line in the novel about the rice cooker being too small and there not being enough rice at the table actually comes from a friend of mine 's mother who said those things to her completely lifted from life yes what about the neighborhood of seat and drove its vividly described the place where i would love to live myself that there are landmarks that the tad just seem so attractive that people seem wonderful the setting is is really important why did you want to create the third of what i don't avail most utopian but it's a it's a very kind of community-oriented place where it's based in my neighborhood and i love my neighborhood so i wanted to bring it to life because i wanted to show that these sorts of things happen anywhere and everywhere and i could do that fast by bringing to the novel my own feelings of safety and affection for my own neighborhood and ie fictionalized it so that it would have that anywhere feeling and i wouldn't name the city where it was and for that reason but in the same time i put a real historical landmarks to give it that strong sense of place so that it also counterbalances the exoticism and foreign nests for the reader trying to understand what it's like to living in someone multiple and and it has a safe feeling as well to go at it the place to go where you know the reader is dealing with this this tragedy as well absolutely yes well if they does sound like an amazing place there is there is hope there is certainly human decency in web of angels despite the trauma i'd i guess i want to ask you what what sustains you and what would you believe deeply in well you know this is not those infused with my own fashion which is an optimistic one despite everything that i know about the inhumanity of human beings which is quite a bit i am sustained by the people around me just like sharon is sustained by her created family by my children by my husband who by the way clucks so i think he has one up on dan and by my my neighborhood and my own spiritual connection because i do believe that ultimately what we are as human beings is more than who we appeared to be that what we are bottom line is light and mosque and connecting with that is what sustains me and i have to tell you she let all kinds of strange and magical things have happened since whether the angels has gone into print i've connected with different people in so many odd ways even what you and i just discussed earlier your your friend who is de- id and the e-mail that she sent it right that this is very strange and magical and completely something i could not predict what so ever i want to thank you so much suddenly and very much for for this bookend that and for coming in to talk to me about it well i have to tell you sheila that i'm i'm so thrilled to be interviewed by you that was really really fun and i'm kind of awesome stuff there to grieve the loss of guys i get their degrees in boston in a winning note winning a prize that would be really quite often lillian bank of iraq out lillian the dell is the author of web of angels are.

The gartner and gardening writer marjorie harris has an urban backyard garden in toronto long and narrow in the neighborhood very much likes eton grove dissenting lilly in the child created such great effect in her novel i'd seen pictures of marjorie 's garden at one point i was actually in that and it's magnificent filled with rare plants and her creative spirit and apparently she pruned implanted with a sharp eye on the balance sheet to thrifty gardening from the ground up is the title of her new daughter to me gardening is has become a metaphor for my life as i can watch when i was a very young gardener and had kids little kids and stuff like that i get all of the typical things you let catalog color and hue so i had lots of annuals and then the next stage was as i became a little more mature i wanted perennial that would last for years and years and years and then came the big middle-aged where you do a lot of maintenance on your body in the garden i learned about maintenance and now that i'm in the final stage of my life i'm learning about how to make things simpler hotties simplifier garden buddies simplify your vision one thing i've been all my life is what i would consider thrifty gardener which is widely good title search to gardening from the ground up because i do not thrown away a lot of money i've done a lot of stupid things that i have wasted money on my garden and i ended up with something streaming satisfying very complex it's exactly what i need and it's full of really really wonder now would be considered valuable plants because i got them when they were tiny strictly by small and grow them survive better i've always paid attention to the soil and whenever my garden is needed anything scott compost and composting is at freebie that nature gives us and it is fantastic it if you do it properly you can have sort of a compost kind of mulch kind of stuff in a matter of months and save a lot of money and if you combine that with products find it fairly inexpensive and make yourself a mulch mulch is like a blanket on the garden it really is it's it's a very loving thing to do is to cover the soil because soils extremely fragile and as this most breaks down its feeding the soil has accomplished breakdown exceeding the soil and the roots of the plants is holding temperatures out at a constant level and it's protecting them from whatever baker's nature throws at one of my favorite sixty chips is to these plants in their containers and the room if you have a glass of wine at a certain place that's your viewing platform that you're always seeing it go to view this site and how might i view these gorgeous plants you want to be very sure certain that you know what that position yet so then you're looking out at the plant and you keep rotating plant until you get face to face is the most beautiful thing you're going to see if that's compared part of the plant that takes time but it doesn't take a lot of money and if you have a vision of what it is you want or need from your garden doesn't matter whether it's on a balcony or you got a little tiny weenie pat choate front between you and the sidewalk it's thinking about what is that garden supposed to do for rushing into a garden is really really foolish since it's a way of spending a lot of money and probably not getting very good results marjorie harris is the author of three ski gardening from the ground up such her fellow fungi quite the author of the forest leaving and it was a good mix chapter with sheila rogers on cbc radio one and on sirius satellite one fifty roger ebert has been a regular at the toronto film festival since it began more than thirty years ago and he was back again this past september to watch movies and promote his new memoir life itself he feels a special connection to toronto while covering the film festival one year he started on the road to sobriety by going to aa meetings in toronto it's an experience he writes about in his book along with many other memories of his life at the movies david gilmour was a film reviewer for many years and then a television host during the tv part of his life he interviewed the movie critic roger ebert david has read life itself and he joins me from toronto today to talk about hi david i see the color here i well i'm fine and you well i'm just fine thank you in particular after after reading the book when he decided really do remind yourself that your life is a lot better than you think it is delayed until someone else's suffering will add because well it's it's not quite that simple it if you know the holding up pictures of bombay is not necessary to make you feel better about your own life but what's interesting but ebert uses is that when you read the book you do find yourself saying what are the basic elements i need in my life to make my life worth living in other words it would views of voters question what is the bottom line because some like ebert has had this extraordinarily awful experience he can't speak he can't i eat he can't drink he has a monstrous appearance his body has been suitably dismantled work for failed corrective surgery and yet within the ghastly parameters of his life he seems actually exactly as cheerful as he was when i interviewed them fifteen or sixteen years ago which makes me think that my suspicion about you know my the sunshine quote is probably true god but such agreements of the that i simply think that you were born each of us is given us a certain quota of happiness were certain court of unhappiness and ended really regardless of the circumstance in our life we tend pretty much live at that level and and if you happen to have a lot of sunshine which i did when i was a child you tend to be a very happy person if you're not you tend to select and choose pulled gloom of even the best circumstances when i read the story about ebert would seem to me interesting was that she has he is pretty much as happy as he was when his body was intact when he was cruising me was the star of the cannes film festival is just in case you people don't know he is body is intact because he had a really disfiguring bout of thyroid cancer is well a what what happened was he aiming to hear if anything is if if if people say money is the root of all evil actually isn't wanting to be on television is an and idiots created more her rent this behavior i think in the last fifty years in the else in the traveler tragedies roger ebert was there was a plump guy who got on television after a long time got really good at it that he got diagnosed with job cancer and the surgeons had to look you have to have surgery and hebert went on the internet and found some slightly wacky laser treatment and settlement did not know you know what i would do it i would take a laser treatment not the surgery that way i can get back on television faster and he says it in the book the disabled laser treatment was directly responsible first condition not being able to eat drink or talk and this this this this pillaging of his body for bolan 's for the failed reconstructive surgery that it was all due to his wanting to get back on television faster than he could take a regular surgery that's an extraordinary thing since an extraordinarily honest mission there is nothing a book about his rueful candor of a situation which he says look i looked in the mirror i look monstrous this is my life i have to live with it but he also says in the book don't lose any sleep over me i actually have quite a good life and the odd thing is i think that the sunshine theory with him through other words he's pretty much happy as he was before all this happened but okay that the sunshine factor was that something you understood about roger ebert when you first met him back at the toronto film festival when you worked there well you were critic the sunshine pixies have thought about a lot in my own life because i spend too much time asking myself not only am i happy but am i happy enough and when i read roger ebert book i realized that i was happy as i've always been no more or no less than actually he is to so instead of feeling sorry for him am i actually thought know this is a man who suffered this extraordinary bad circumstance but is who he is and he's remarkably similar to the guy that i interviewed me the tone and it's not hyper and it's not drunk this is another horrific to me he's a very strong and admirable creature first book he lost a hundred pounds before he got his cancer so he goes on a vegetarian diet he looses a hundred pounds and life were wards him by sending him to the doctor 's office of sisyphus and congratulations for losing a hundred pounds oh by the way you've got jaw cancer then when he undergoes these randomness randomness operations which fail he's in such pain that he then becomes addicted to oxycontin so he has to check an oxycontin addiction on top of this ring the situations that do not have taken oxycontin and what oxycontin does the next days and makes you feel like you've mismanaged your life in the july position of something really terrible was just about to happen to you and roger ebert 's case something really terrible actually did happen to him and for him to actually muscle his way through kicking an oxycontin addiction after the surgery is remarkable how to treat addiction in his memoir what he's very interesting because i've i've i've i've been wrong about a million things in my life i was wrong about marceau cruised that i was also wrong about aa size debit and then recently sold her close to me has gone into in their life has been saved ? a jesus people 's lives and ebert was was a drunk social civilized functioning drunk but a real real drunk and he when he was in toronto suddenly realized that every morning he was waking up with these excoriating hang that were really arrogant enough i'm not sure if you ever had a bad hangover shield that i have in there is a kind and if i have a horrifying self-examination goes on four o'clock in the morning friend and you'll never drink again and it's a real damage of of of alcoholism answer your behavior on alcohol was damaging it's your self-esteem and its disintegration at four o'clock in the morning when you remember with horror of the foolish obnoxious things to do a sib abraham accumulation of these two two the actions that i cannot ensure the agony of this before ? so we went off to aa very very interesting observation because when i talk to myself and to my said that at one of the hazards of being a lawyer is that you drink too much and one of the hazards of being a film critic is to follow the sound of your voice because nobody ever challenges you to start to think you're right on time we stopped me and said weld sheet when your description of of the hazards of being a lawyer that you drink too much of those are precisely the hazards that you have in your film critic but he did not want to tell me that he was in a and the need to make a guy for ten years he was quite proud but it wasn't like he was ashamed that he has a very very interesting theory about which is the people who go public with quitting drinking tend to relapse very quickly and other widgets not a successful strategy for people who seriously want to give up drinking to go around blabbing to all her friends that they've given up drinking that it doesn't work as a strategy let's talk about this film criticism hard part of his career data training along with jean sisko a lot you know siskel and ebert the thumbs up thumbs down right now they were the original so as to what i i i i mean between you and i always thought that the roger that was a much much finer and more interesting critic gene sisko i always did but i thought that they had good chemistry of the thing about ebert which is rather deceptive was that he he was not a flashy stylus to me if you look at cale she had a beautiful prose style and when you read polling to new yorker who was she was the predominant critic there for twenty years he began to assume that truth equals beautiful prose style perceptiveness equals a beautiful prostyle so when you come across some like ebert who has assaulted but i have an eggs prostyle takes a while to realize that while it's not flashy prose it is extraordinarily intelligent and perceptive and trustworthy but because it doesn't have a lot of glitter to it i could just how good critic ebert was for many many years and and how does he look back on that part of life is that i think that ebert was his city was sort of in that school was pulling killing if you've ever read any academic writing but felt it is the most turgid unreadable nonsense you can imagine i don't know why anyone ever studies at university or can read those film a comment magazines because it gets us crazies reading gourmet magazine about cooking but but at what what's interesting is this is that huber took a very straightforward approach which he said look i'm a critic but i'm also a guy and i'm the guy who goes into a theater and i sit down theater screen opens and i have this experience for two hours and i write about what happened to me in the theater and i don't write about anything else i put all theories and ideas to the side i only deal with my direct experience of how i felt during the movie and what it did for me and that is a absolutely trustworthy and snobbish approach to writing the film and polling ~ dissenting tillman and rodriguez were the two great writers i thought you said look never mind all the auteur theories involve the phenomenologist just talk about how did the make you feel and be articulate about that and if you do it you will explain something essential to the viewer so there's there's the critic and then there's you the critic interviewing the credit quality like interview he was a son of a short copy of man and and and who was wonderfully your the french haven't an expression dental septal of comfortable in your own skin hebert was completely comfortable and and and while he may have no way to hundred pounds more than he should have he never gave up the impression of self loathing he seemed to be completely content to be what and who he was but what surprised me was how bright how bright a man he wasn't at one point i think i'm just showing off because i was keeping the problem of televisions makes everybody show off him and i asked him a question i mentioned northrop frye that i is someone studied with when i was doing my masters but it was necessary to interview i was just doing appear with the audience but in any event i mentioned northrop frye and pulling killed in the same sins and hebert november he was on a book tour he was not expecting a question about northrop frye he was expecting question about what was lee marvin is and he just said immediately said always said actually there's a real difference between fraud which is fried tends to go from the general like the bible down to the specific like bob dylan walt whitman was pulling k we start with a specific scene say from last penguin parents and then blow it up into the general ideology of of philosophy and art exhibits a difference one starts big ghost moldovan guzmán said bigelow was astonished that somebody could get to his time so quickly such a perfect and an exact description of the literary theory of northrop frye on the spot in a live tv interview i mean i thought well that's my gut it's also literate guy so life itself roger ebert 's book sums up thumbs down it it is i do want to say on a cautionary note to the reader which is a good the first hundred pages are a bore that anyone has ever been trapped in a bar with some said one martini too many missed beginning and indiscriminate stroll down memory alley when they're talking about their childhood in forest hill knows what a bore other people 's childhoods really are the only problem with the book is the first hundred pages are precisely that but the second the second he starts writing but movies have been filmed for the book and immediately becomes totally engaging in the kind of book that you should never try to read just before a nap because it's so engaging you won't have your nap boy but that the terrific racket is entitled to put on the cover but that's been my experience of david gilmour is the author of the perfect order of things of which vitally made me feel better about my old hood is and what it actually made me feel better about my life to having written excellent and today was talking about life itself by roger ebert thanks david thank you very much him and him and him and him and him and him books bring together the world of the imagination and the place or environment where the story unfolds unless it's fantasy fiction the story often unfolds in a place that actually exists in the real world if you've ever read mordechai rich alert you know that montréal is dotted with reminders of his books or if you've walked down water street in st. john's you recognize landmarks from a lisa moore or michael winter book or walked over the bloor street viaduct in toronto and recalled its construction from micah one she's in the skin of a lion in fact if you want to hear this very day you'll find a plaque with an excerpt from that book and it's been there since two thousand and nine the first installment of project bookmark this is an initiative started by the writer and journey prize winner and passionate reader maranda hill she joins me from toronto and with her is sherry lee olson and the author of sailor girl and an excerpt from the novel is the tent and most recent bookmarked installation will find out more about that in just a moment hello to you both are nice to have you witnessed or is it weird that this idea come from while long before as a writer i identified myself as a reader first i think i still do so like most avid readers i need i interpret my world through the books that i've read and that at the time when i came up with the idea bookmark i was a mom of young children living in that around the foot of toronto and at one point the books that i was reading surreptitiously as fast as they could whenever i was nursing has to baby sleeping and started to coincide with the places that i was walking when those children were awakened needed entertainment and i needed to get out of the house and and i thought would be wonderful if i could walk across the border street viaduct for example and just at show to the people who may not know about it that the that place in our city was also a place in fiction or not there was an intersection there between the imaginary and in the real and that i started pressing books on people single if you're coming from moving to this neighborhood you should definitely read this author and eventually i thought that's way too slow what could i do that people would actually encountered in the space and that's how i came up with the idea of project with our canada see you kind of the book pusher i asked my husband pressure and then you get the exurbs so maybe it's more like pushing a safe but i don't know yeah right exactly but it was important for you to have the people shared this deep experience you are happening right absolutely an end-to-end the date expand i was having and knew i could have it other places as well but it wasn't even aware of and that i have this sense had the sentence and still have it that that all these things that are then fiction are existing just below the surface the actual surface of the places and wouldn't it be beautiful to bring them bring them to the surface and let people see it but people go there is a pilgrimage if they'd really love the passage love the book go to the places told pilgrimage and appreciated at and corrupt people literally off the street and say hey here in this path you walk to work the way you're going to the subway the way you're driving wherever is a story and and it it should matter to you because it's your space sharing the yearbook senior girl was the inspiration for the most recent bookmark import holder on the welland canal tells about how that place is important in your story the wellington alleys the center of this book which is about all the people who work on the great lakes freighters and twenty years ago actually longer when i worked on the freighters and the like and how assertive the hub that boats passed through to go down to the st. lawrence in the past going anywhere to got to thunder bay in and load grain and found it was where you got your mail because pre- cell phone it was the only contact he had with the outside world for literally months of the time so the wai canal is very symbolic in the book as just a kind of center of things but physically and historically it's hugely important to canada and the states so all these things kind of came together and miranda what made it at the kind of book you wanted to excerpt and make into a bookmark while the bookmark is very inclusive all kinds of genres and eight in her prose and poetry and different at different showers approach are all eligible for bookmark what you have to do is be able to stand in the place that the characters are the narrators stand to appreciate that particular scene and that this was very much possible for sherry leads book of sailor girl at loc aid at the welland canal and the character gets off that looked at k2 goes and uses a phone booth which of course is no longer there is something of cell phones as shale he was staying at and called someone she had been working with to who lives in the area and she wants to connect with it but it's been put and i think that the passage is possible on doesn't just place you there but couldn't places you in the tone of the book and that is a wonderful passage for that and it really introduces new into the conflict of the book and the big questions of the book and to the place itself in the importance of the place in the novel shady woods that passage means you it means loneliness it means isolation and marginalization and yet that was the key lesson that my character learned in the book was in her to go at integrated and working this very challenging physically job and well socially and emotionally as well to be so isolated and and to be able to develop a relationship with the old cook's announces she's calling on the phone book is the old chief cook was in trouble she's connected and that phone booth at visually is just such a beautiful symbol to match that lit up in the dark so how did it feel when you saw it there the bookmark that phone booth that is the foliage is god the bookmark it was it was it was really emotional and it felt so real it felt like suddenly the most marginal person on the boat are you know the most marginal person in this industry pending the top i did cleaning rooms and washing dishes was the lowest paid job possible to have in that union and then to have that characters experience in immortalized in a way or marked on seemed almost like a fairytale it would be like a chambermaid at the royal york getting of you know bookmark in the front lobby to have the experience of someone who was basically anonymous industry being acknowledged i i got the passage rate here and i just love the way it begins with it was a sailor 's phone booth smelling of tobacco and desperation at know that smell is made of and and she she holds the receiver away from her face she dialed hazel 's number and imagining the ring peeling through hazel 's little house from the heavy black phone in the hall at and it's acted so it's so evocative and of course let's think about the phone booth for a moment i remember talking and patch it back in june is that it is difficult for novel even to be written in the age of the cell phone because novels are all about missed connection had the opportunity felt out how can you set it realistically in age and in an age where you can be trooping through the amazon even as she does in her novel and a silicone ring fixed so that you know where we have a different challenge now that we we have that kind of an immediate gratification into indication and i think it's even more important now to find a way to isolate yourself given the constant barrage just to find an empty space that you know you're getting a million signals entering episode it was also really love leon on the day of the lunch and when we install the bookmarks we have a ceremony and at that ceremony and the and the other comes in and read the passage is usually a representative of the community is there to help unveil the bookmark with the authentic s&m americans that away and was that representative for coburn and it was just wonderful to to watch that and unity really be so excited bout having this vital part of their community am just marked in this way and a cultural marker for it as well as various other markers that they have you noticed or calling an industrial on those sorts of things but that the mayor actually has a family business it's been working to service and these ships on the canal for generations and and he was so moved by this having sherri be there having her read the passage having an existing his community and he wanted to go run out and buy the books for christmas gifts for his clients and and it it just showed you know what really you point out people that that their space is a setting in fiction and it says something different to them about themselves and about the space and also that you're going to be calling attention to the that geographic part of their lives and and it really touches a chord now that the brand is so far the bookmarks are in ontario yes but some were very excited because that were just starting to work on a national strategy we are a national charitable organization and we've always had a national mandate was hoping to do is kind of book in the country and place one in the middle and use those as our acres to work from there so so were talking to people in vancouver we are working with that carol shields family in winnipeg to her to have a marker for her and and her fiction there and also playsets and dear to your heart i know sheila we have bookmarked that levine would appoint newfoundland very soon so all the places you'll go straight i have to say ensuring the i hadn't read sailor girl and just i i i came across this passage preparing for this interview and now i want to read the book so that you no mission accomplished on seventh and july that you don't even have to do that all by what you had affected thank you thank you very much this that this was really great thanks to thank you randy hill is the founder project bookmark and the winner of the two thousand eleven writers trust mcclelland and stewart journey prize and sherry lee olson is the author of sailor girl.

And that's it for today's program jacqueline kirk is our producer with aaron noble and me and thanks also this week to sarah cooper executive producer literary programming is susan feldman out next week alexi ventnor on his debut novel touch is a book filled with magic and myth there seems a singing dogs witches and rivers that swallow people hold it very inventive and extreme lxe will be here to tell us about it as well become today another literary smack down which we may have to rename the writers respecting each other's opinions because everyone we've spoken with has been very courteous and considerate so very canadian what can i say that's how we roll that i hope you come back a week from today i'm sheila rogers thank you for listening to the next chapter in him and him and him.

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