Every once in a while, I read a book that makes me identify with several components in that book; so that I am touched by it in different ways.  “Emotional Geology” by Linda Gillard is such a book.

“Emotional Geology” is about Rose, a textile artist who moves to a remote area along the coast of the United Kingdom.  Rose is trying to emotionally escape from events in her past.  However, she meets Calum, a man younger than herself.  Their friendship and strong attraction towards each other causes Rose to realize she still needs to deal with her past; while discovering that Calum is also haunted by events in his own past.   We gradually learn what has happened with these two, while waiting to find out whether Rose and Calum will be able to put it all behind them in order to have a successful relationship together.

Rose is a textile artist (as I am; although I’m not a renowned one); and Calum is a poet who is also a school teacher.  In addition to exploring what they mean to each other, they agree to collaborate with each other  — Rose designs and makes some textile art to go along with some of Calum’s poems. 

Additionally, Rose struggles with bipolar disorder.  One passage has Rose recalling what she has been told by a doctor:

“You will survive.  You will grow as a result of all this.  I’ve seen it happen many times.  Your illness is a terrible gift.  It makes you see things differently, it makes you create.  Without it you probably would not be an artist, a maker.  And if you didn’t make things, who would you be?  After all, isn’t that the reason you stopped taking your medication? “

This isn’t meant to imply that all people with bipolar are artistic, or that all artistic people are bipolar.  Rather, I see this as meaning that if the artistic aspect is taken away from Rose’s personality, she greatly misses it.  Incidentally, I have a cousin with bipolar disorder (although probably a more severe case than Rose’s); so I thought of her as I was reading this book.

I really enjoyed the development of the relationship between Rose and Calum.  Even though they both have demons haunting them and they each have obvious faults, they find a passionate love and admiration for each other. 

Once I finished reading this book, I was compelled to e-mail the author, Linda Gillard.  I was curious how she came to write “Emotional Geology”.  After some e-mails back and forth, we developed a Q and A format which I hope will encourage you to seek out “Emotional Geology”.

Now, for the interview with Linda Gillard.  Be sure to read through to the end of this blog post for some additional information!

What inspired you to have Rose be a textile artist?   

When I started writing the book that became EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY I had no intention of trying to get it published. I was just writing for my own amusement, about things that mattered to me. (My original working title was SCRAPBOOK.) The novel became a sort of repository for all the things I was interested in: memory, creativity, mental illness, Hebridean islands and their culture, geology, mountaineering, teaching, and quilt-making. So I devised a plot to take in all those elements. It was totally self-indulgent! 

I’d taken up quilting in a big way when I had to abandon my teaching career after a mental breakdown brought on by stress and overwork. Quilting had been part of my recovery. It sounds corny, but as I pieced my quilts, I pieced my life back together again. So it seemed natural that if I was to have an alter ego in the novel, she should be a textile artist (but a much better one than me!) 

I was still quite ill when I started writing. I could only manage to produce short sections at a time and these were almost self-contained. (I was incapable then of planning a novel and wasn’t even sure that’s what I was writing.) So that’s how the book came to have its scrapbook structure, moving back and forth in time and place. 

I thought of these short sections as literary “quilt blocks”, which could be arranged in almost any order. When I’d got a lot of them, I printed them all out and spread them over the floor, arranging them in different ways to see if I could make them into a story. This work method was of course familiar to me from assembling quilts and I was fascinated to find I could construct a novel in much the same way as I constructed a quilt. 

Some of Rose’s works are described in great detail.  Did you come up with these in your mind, or are they based on any works you have seen (or made)? 

They’re just quilts I’ve imagined. (Readers are sometimes disappointed when I show up for events and don’t have Rose’s quilts with me for a Show & Tell!) My imaginary quilts were based on the work of a quilter and teacher I knew in Inverness, Sandra Kelsey, who made the sort of awe-inspiring quilts I would have liked to make.  

Rose has bi-polar disorder. How much did you draw from your own experiences when the personality of Rose was being developed in the story? 

I drew more on research than on my own experience. (My condition is mild and of a different type from Rose’s.) I also had a friend who’d been to hell and back with mental illness and I drew on that. But Rose’s ongoing battle with depression is very much my own. I was also writing from the heart about the struggle to maintain one’s creativity while medicated. 

My experience of receiving a shock diagnosis also informed the book. I’d found it difficult to get information about my condition (this was the late 1990s) and what I’d learned was all bad news. I wanted to know if there was any kind of upside to bipolar and this is what I explored in the novel which concludes – tentatively – that there can be. 

There is poetry throughout the book written by Rose’s lover, Calum.  Did you write this poetry yourself?  If so, have you considered putting together a volume of poetry? 

Yes, I wrote the poetry. Readers are sometimes disappointed to discover this, hoping that there’s an unknown Scottish poet out there called Calum Morrison! Thank you for the implied compliment, but no, I’ve never considered putting together a volume of poems. I’d never written any before EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY. 

The poems arose out of an interesting set of circumstances. I was trying to depict Rose’s internal, dislocated world of shifting time and place. I also wanted to convey my bipolar heroine’s mania from the inside – a state of mind unrecognisable (and rather alarming) to most people. As mania is a way of thinking and perceiving, it seemed logical to find a different medium for expression. As I found my prose style becoming more distilled, straining towards poetry, I decided to go with the flow. The result was a novel that occasionally broke out in poems. 

Poems needed to feature for another reason. The hero is a poet and the novel is about an anthology of his and an exhibition of textiles and poems. The poems should have been Calum’s, but as I wanted the reader to believe he was a gifted poet, I didn’t dare present my poems as his. He was a better poet than me, in the same way Rose was a better quilter! So the poems in the novel actually form part of Rose’s narrative, but I hope they also disguise the hole where Calum’s should have been. 

I still have mixed feelings about the inclusion of poems. I was convinced they would ensure the book never found a publisher. When Rose and Calum finally make love, there’s a poem instead of a sex scene. I thought this was either one of the best or one of the worst ideas I’d ever had! 

You wrote EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY as a response to your own diagnosis of bipolar. Clearly, writing it has helped you develop a positive attitude toward mental illness. Would you give the book to other, possibly vulnerable people engaged in a similar struggle? 

This is something I’m often asked, and yes, I would. EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY is a “safe” book to read because the overall message is positive, though the novel doesn’t pull any punches. It’s a celebration of hope, love and the healing power of art. I’d also give the book to carers – a much-neglected group of people. The book shows what a terrible toll mental illness can take on relationships, but I think it also demonstrates that understanding and loving support can make all things possible.  

Here is a quilt that Linda Gillard has made.  You can see a larger picture at her website www.lindagillard.co.uk.

"nine-eleven" by Linda Gillard. "A small wallhanging which I made very quickly without really knowing what I was doing or why. (I normally plan quilts very carefully and take a long time designing them.) It wasn't until I'd finished it and stared at it for a while that I realised it must have been a response to the constantly repeated images of the 9/11 destruction. This was my first attempt at embellishing a quilt with beads, sequins and embroidery. I hand-dyed the coloured fabric myself."

Linda Gillard is also the author of two other books, “A Lifetime Burning”, and “Star Gazing”.  All three books can be ordered postage-free from The Book Depository. 

Finally, Linda Gillard has offered to give away a copy of “Emotional Geology” to one of my blog readers!  If you are interested in a chance to win a copy, leave a comment here by April 23rd.  I’ll announce the winner soon after that.

Many thanks to Linda Gillard for answering my questions!

Disclosure:  I myself was a lucky winner of “Emotional Geology”; through a give-away sponsored by Rhapsody at Books.

How was your weekend?  Aside from it being cold and cloudy and at times rainy here, mine was OK.  My daughter was gone all weekend for a girl scout camping trip.  My younger son was at a sleepover on Friday night.  That meant Friday night hubby, my older son, and myself had a nice dinner together at a pizza place/brew pub, Il Vicino.  We had fun telling stories to older son (he’s 13) about the “good old days” of early computers, early internet, and stuff like that.  So much has changed with information technology over the last few years, that it’s so easy to feel like old fogies in that regard.

Last night I finished “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel and plan to write about that soon.  Great book.  Husband picked up “Slumdog Millionaire” which we have yet to watch, so I may mention soon what I think of the movie vs. the book.

Here are a few things I’ve come across recently that I thought I’d share.

Interested in short stories?

Julie at On the Curve tells us why she likes “One Story”.   This intrigued me enough that I subscribed (they offer two free trial issues to start with).  Information on how to get there is in Julie’s post.

Want more of poetry even though National Poetry Month is over?  Today’s featured poem at www.poets.org is “Sorrows”, by Lucille Clifton, whose poem “Adam Thinking” I quoted in my poetry month wrap-up post.

Want a little bit of literary everything?  Although Gautami tells us about a fantastic short story (“Blue” by Yuri Zalkow) at Narrative Magazine, this online magazine has a little bit of everything: fiction, book excerpts (reading the excerpt of T.C. Boyle’s latest book “The Women” only makes me more eager to read it), cartoons, poetry, and more.  It’s free to sign up.  By the way, it took me a while to figure out that clicking on the red “Narrative” takes you back to their home page.

Are you a creative one who occassionally gets blocked?  Subversive Stitchers  has a good blog post today where it’s suggested that you ask, “What If?”.  Also, I love looking at the various features in this blog’s sidebar; be sure to scroll through it all; I’m sure there will be at least one thing there to pique your interest.

(I am hating blogger right now. Trying to make this into a post where the pictures can be double-clicked to make larger…and keep running into all kinds of trouble! Hopefully double-clicking will work now.)

Last month, I started participating in an ATC trading group; you can read about the January ATCs here.

For this month’s meeting, which was last Saturday, the theme was “Words”. That meant participants could work on a single word, or several words, or what words meant to them…however it was interpreted by the individual. As it turned out, this theme was very timely for me! Various possibilities ran through my head, but finally I decided on the design (the top picture above). I chose the word “listen”. For some of you, you may understand why immediately, especially if you know I’ve recently undergone a cochlear implant. Right now, I’m having to work harder at how to listen, although ironically I can hear sounds a lot better than before! also, in a general sense, I chose “listen” because it’s something we all can and should do better…being better listeners when our family and friends want to talk to us.

For the background and lip fabrics, I used leftover fabrics form a project that I made a few years ago. For the word “listen”, I typed the word several times on the computer, then printed it out on freezer paper-backed fabric and cut them out. I highlighted each word with red iron-on crystals.

Also above are the cards that were traded within the group this month. Once again, they are fantastic and I love the creativity that went into all of them. I’m looking forward to next month’s trade, which will not have a theme.