Reframing Truth-Telling Through Fiction with Claudia Dey

This week, we are reframing fiction as truth-telling with novelist, playwright, and clothing line creator Claudia Dey. You’ll hear our conversation filled with so many truths born of fiction, creating constraints to create, and the companionship of language. We talk about Claudia’s newest novel Daughter, and Hamlet, and theatre school memories of Claudia’s play Trout Stanley. We also get into how we can’t waver from value systems in terms of what we put out in the world. For Claudia, that shows up in her books and her clothing brand. For us here, it’s tied to who we bring on the show.

Claudia Dey is a bestselling novelist, playwright, and essayist based in Toronto. She has written the novels Stunt, Heartbreaker, and Daughter, as well as the plays Beaver, The Gwendolyn Poems, and Trout Stanley. Other writing of hers has appeared in The Paris Review, The Believer, Toro, and The Globe and Mail. Claudia is also the co-founder of the clothing line Horses Atelier.

Links:
Daughter
Horses Atelier
For more from Claudia, follow her on Instagram and take a look at her website

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Transcript

Natalie
Hey, it’s Nat. 

Rebecca
And Bec — two very different sisters who come together to reframe some of life’s big and small problems. We’re moms, writers. 

Natalie
We have soft boundaries. We see the world differently, but we both lean into vulnerability together and with our guests, because we like deep dives. So come with us — let’s reframe something. 

This week, we are reframing fiction as truth-telling. 

Rebecca
With novelist and playwright Claudia Dey. 

Natalie
Bec, I have to admit I’m a bit jealous of your jumpsuit, by the way. 

Rebecca
Right. I should have included that — novelist, playwright, and creator of my favourite clothing line, Horses. 

Natalie
Yeah. You have the jumpsuit, I’m saving up for the high neck lace blouse. 

Rebecca
In this episode, you’ll hear our conversation filled with so many truths born of fiction, creating constraints to create, and the companionship of language. 

Natalie
We talk about Claudia’s newest novel Daughter, and Hamlet, and your theatre school memories of Claudia’s play Trout Stanley. 

Rebecca
We also talk about how we can’t waver from value systems in terms of what we put out in the world. For Claudia, that shows up in her books and her clothing brand. For us here, it’s tied to who we bring on the show. 

Natalie
So let’s get to it: reframing truth-telling through fiction with Claudia Dey. 

Rebecca
Claudia, I love this book so much. So today we’re talking about Daughter, and I guess all things Claudia Dey, but there’s so much wisdom in these characters. They’re all kind of, like, screwed up in just the way humans are, but then there’s so much wisdom that you infuse through them. I was just saying before we started recording that you were a bit of an icon in theatre school because we all wanted to do monologues from your play Trout Stanley. And then I read this book too, and I know my friends had loved Heartbreaker and I haven’t read that one, and I know there’s more novels in your history too. But I just felt like, “Oh,” — like it was a reminder of you and how this really amazing person behind this book. Like, I felt like, “Oh, there’s a lot of wisdom here,” which I really appreciated. I was really sucked into the book, and excited to get to talk to you, the living being behind it. 

Claudia
That was such a panoramic compliment. Thank you. 

Rebecca
Yeah. Ok, so can you tell us a little bit about the kernel of where this latest work came from? I guess wherever you are in your life now that this book came about. 

Claudia
It’s funny, today almost feels like a pandemic day because the weather outside is so, like, hostile. It started during the pandemic. I went to a friend’s empty apartment to write and I’d been writing in a searching way for a couple of years. And I had an image in my mind of a father and a daughter meeting in the back of a restaurant — a kind of a darkened restaurant, the father’s favourite restaurant. And there was something in their dynamic that imitated an affair. It held the mould of an affair. And the image obviously disturbed me, but I couldn’t shake it. And then Mona’s first line of the novel, which is still the first line of the novel, came to me and I knew that I had in that line the voice of the book — which meant, for me, the book. But I felt spooked by it, so I put it in a drawer for a couple of months. And then I went away again and wrote the whole first draft in two months — so, very quickly. 

I’d been, you know, obediently writing a novel and building a world and creating characters and conflict and writing beautiful sentences and perfecting them and doing my job. And then I think with the framework of the pandemic, when all of us were really contending with ourselves on a very existential level, within that framework the effort felt really false. I thought I need to do something much more direct, much more undecorated. And that’s really when the image came and that voice came — that kind of, like, hot voice in your ear. And I knew that was the book that I needed to write. 

You know, and I was outside of my life as we all were in that time. I wasn’t at my job every day. I wasn’t picking up groceries. I wasn’t taking my kids to activities — like I was completely, as we all were, unsocialized, right? I was outside of duty and routine, so I could think in a new way. It gave me, like, a different kind of permission, being I’d exited society as we all had — not all, I should say. That was a privileged position. I wasn’t working in emergency rooms and so forth. 

Rebecca
Because even the switch in point of views that you do — like, I’m a writer too, and sometimes I think, “Oh, what?” Like, my point of view, I have to, like, carefully... and in Daughter, it feels really visceral and the switches feel really organic, and now it’s this person talking, sort of now it’s sort of jumped into their heads, and did you really have to consider that or did that just kind of flow? 

Claudia
That just kind of came. I don’t want to over-romanticize it — like, I did work for a couple of years kind of badly. Like, I was looking for something and being dutiful and sitting in my chair and taking notes and reading and writing, but none of it felt like it had the heat and, like, that obsessive quality that I always want when I work. But in terms of the shifting points of view, that came as a surprise, but it just felt so right because it created this kind of velocity and momentum in the narrative, and it also saved the book from becoming too much of a hero-villain story, which I don’t like. I always think they think that they’re dramatic, but they’re anti-dramatic — like, life is far more entangled and nuanced and shadowy than that. So I loved getting behind Cherry, who’s the spiteful stepmother. I loved getting behind her eyes. Or Paul, who’s the, you know, magnetic, completely self-absorbed, very destructive father. I loved getting behind his tormented eyes, you know? And Wes, who’s like this sort of aloof, wise partner to Mona, our central character, I loved just getting into the private channels of his mind. 

Rebecca
And yeah, Nat, you just said that to me when we were walking the other day. You said, “Oh, I liked finally getting a little bit of Cherry.” 

Natalie
Yeah, and I actually liked not liking Mona at times — like that feeling of her being allowed to be a nuanced human. And I think I used the word ‘nuanced’ a lot in the past in my teaching and my own sort of, like, work on the podcast. And I think the word can be a bit romanticized when actually, I mean, nuanced just means complicated, which can often mean ugly. And there was an ugliness to kind of the emotional responses that Mona gave out that felt very human. And therefore, interestingly, I connected with her. Becca and I were walking through the Junction yesterday and I’m like, “I like that I don’t like her.” And that’s an interesting feeling. 

Rebecca
I liked her though. 

Natalie
Yeah, well, that’s ok. But I didn’t like her all the time. And I think that that felt more honest, which I appreciated as a reader. 

Claudia
Yeah, I love that. I love a divisive central character where you’re like, “Ok, the moral code is blurred. The response is blurred. You know, the action is imperfect. She’s a confused person, but she’s taking a risk, but I’m not sure that she’s chosen the right outcome,” you know? I’m glad to hear that there was some divisiveness on Reframeables. 

Natalie
Team. Well, and it’s interesting too, because Becca and I, as sisters, we have never held the same immediate opinion about pretty much anything. I mean, that’s what makes our conversations interesting is that we can come and bring two very different ideas to the table of whatever it is that we’re sort of unpacking, whether it’s a book, whether it’s a story in our own lives, whatever it is, and then you kind of gain some new perspective, right? I felt like with this book, like Becca started by saying, there were so many wisdoms that kind of were shared throughout — through the different characters’s voices, whether they were of the world or of themselves. And I loved the one line… and I actually now can’t remember who said it, which bugs me, but maybe that’s part of it — like maybe it’s ok, because it could be any of them. But the line was: “Love is reinvention.” 

Claudia
I mean, it’s really a line and an idea that Paul and Mona share. I think it indicates what you’re talking about in terms of nuance and in terms of familiar love, how you can very uneasily share almost, like, your deepest thought and instruction on how to be a human being and then at the same time have a lot of dissonance in the relationship. It was a sentiment in a line that they essentially shared toward the end of the book. 

Natalie
And I sat with it because… I think you just hit on it for me — like, it was a wisdom that was dropped, but not necessarily in a moment that felt like, “Here’s a lesson.” Like, it was very much just a line that captured me for a second, and it actually made me really ponder. And maybe this is what I loved about this reading of fiction as an experience of late, because I did not actually read much fiction during the sort of definitive years of what we call the pandemic, even though we know that the pandemic continues. I didn’t read a lot of fiction at that time. I was reading a lot of nonfiction and I have spoken with friends, English teachers like me from our past, saying I actually couldn’t even go to novels during that time. It all felt too far away from what we were sitting in. That was my experience. So this was sort of like a return to a novel with a pace that I felt like this meets my mind where I’m at right now, which is fast and kind of fragmented and sort of, like, knitting things together. And then these wisdoms just show up and sometimes they’re from the person I don’t expect. 

Claudia
I love that comment about the frequency. Certainly that was something I was after and I’m always after because I think that, you know, a book’s a mechanism and it doesn’t work unless you want to turn the page. But also this idea of, you know, sharing wisdom inside, like, a domestic or menial moment — like without commenting on it. I think that’s also how life operates. It’s not like, you know, I set the stage and then I say something incredible to my children. It’s like, “Oh, that was accidentally,” — you know, we had that moment together and it was completely unscripted between us. You know, I wanted the book to feel, I guess in its structure and in its language, much closer to how life feels. 

Rebecca
That idea that love is reinvention, that feels like something I wouldn’t have known in my 20s. 

Claudia
You got to be old to know that. 

Rebecca
What do you think? 

Claudia
You know, now that I’m 51, I know so much more. No, in my 20s, I was like, “Love’s for burning through.” 

Natalie
That’s a good one. 

Claudia
Right? It’s like, “Ooh, I just want as much love as I can get,” right? And then of course you get to a point where you’re like, oh, “Oh, wow. It’s like this force, and inside this force I can keep remaking myself.” 

Rebecca
Ani — is that how you say her name? A-n-i, ‘Ani’? Is that how you imagine it? 

Claudia
That’s how I have it in my mind, but I’m never offended — like, if a reader hears it differently, I’m like, “Great.” You know, it enlivens a book, right? It’s that interface between a book and a reader is what makes the book alive. Ani, Ani. 

Rebecca
Ok, I’m going to say ‘Ani.’ Ani, the protagonist (so that’s Mona’s best friend) says, “When a white man is described as a genius, even once, he can get away with anything, including murder.” Which is another great line. And there are a couple of these white men genius types in the story. Was this commentary? 

Claudia
Yes, it’s commentary. It’s commentary, but it’s also, like, an alarm. It’s an alarm about the protections we afford the patriarchy. I mean, look at the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial. That was murder in the court of public opinion, right? Like, it still goes on. It’s not like it stopped with Norman Mailer. Like, it just… it goes on and on and on. You know, it’s because it’s within that frame of female friendship — which in some ways you could argue is the true romance, you know? They’re so close and they advance the world together, and their understanding of the world. There’s a playfulness — like, it sounds like it’s playful, but it’s actually like, when you examine it, so disturbed and so disturbing because it remains applicable, you know, to any time period. So yeah, I wanted to fuck with the patriarchy. 

Rebecca
Yes. Good job. 

Claudia
Thank you. 

Rebecca
It’s always interesting. I mean, do you feel very much in your career that even, you know… sometimes when you’ve just put out a book, or we go, “Oh, this is the successful founder of Horses,” (like, all of my Roncy moms are wearing your coat) so we could, you know, put a woman on a pedestal and think she’s overcome the patriarchy. But do you very much feel in your career that it continues to be something you have to surmount, or is it more kind of an ideology you have to surmount? 

Claudia
Ooh. Ok, like the practical presentation of the patriarchy? 

Rebecca
Yeah. I find it useful to hear from women and how they’ve navigated it. 

Claudia
Yeah, this is a great question. I mean, I’ve had incredible good fortune in terms of who I work with. Like, I work with a group of powerhouse women, you know? And I’ve scripted my career so that it reflects that, and it feeds me and hopefully, reciprocally, I feed them, right? So in that way, whatever I’ve made is not a response to or a reaction to the patriarchy. I’ve carved out my own thing. But no, I feel it all the time. Truly, I do. Like, in subliminal ways and subtle ways, and I mean, in global ways — looking at the state of the world right now, who’s running it, who’s creating chaos, who’s funding chaos and pain, you know? I mean, we could really unpack this for weeks. 

But in terms of my own career and whatever that definition of success might be for me personally, I’ve tried to keep it, like, very private, very scripted, very meaningful, very intentional in terms of who I work with and my own relationship to what I do and how it’s received. Like, put it this way: the book you write always has to be enough. Like, that always has to be the central thing. It can never be the response to the book. You have to know that you wrote the book that you needed to write and that you gave it your soul. And that has to be enough every time. 

Rebecca
Because if you’re waiting for the world to give you a... 

Claudia
What is that? That’s just a bottomless hunger — like, to me, that’s hell. 

Natalie
I sat with my son the other day on the couch, just thinking of the patriarchy. Just because I think this adds to that idea of, like, what is hell — this was heaven for me. We were watching, like, a video of some sort — I don’t know, it was on YouTube or whatever. And then he turns to me with, like, this world wariness and he goes, “White men over 50, mommy. They run everything.” And I was like, “I know baby, I know. And this is what we have to fight.” And now he’s heard this from his father, who is a white man over 50, but who’s constantly trying to problematize that reality, that construct for a boy who has to, you know, be a part of coming up and making change. I mean, like, we put a lot of pressure on kids to move us forward. 

And that was, like, a nugget in the book for me, was this idea of this child, this hoped for child that is sort of a central part of the story. The novel’s called Daughter — like, it’s about a relationship between parent and child, but there’s also this hoped for future with the potential of a new child. I don’t know, there’s pressure, right? Like, on little ones, I certainly feel hope for my kid — like, I felt hope in that moment when he said it, but I hated that he had to say it because it’s, like, not the world I want him in. But anyways, it brought me right back to the book, because I was just like, for Mona, there is this desire for newness, for hope beyond this really cyclical, painful relationship with her dad in something potentially new. 

Claudia
Well, that’s again that line: “Love is reinvention.” I don’t know if it’s pressurized, I’m sure it’s pressurized for our children, but it’s also something more hopeful than that to see them have insight like that inside a moment and to bond with you inside that moment. Like, I’ve been watching a lot with our sons as well — you know, looking at a lot of headlines, a lot of writing and a lot of video around the war and talking to them about, you know, always look at how you’re being told a story. Right? 

And certainly, yes — Mona, part of her narrative arc is like looking for resolution from within the family, as we do, and then understanding that any revolution is actually going to come from within. She has to activate it — and not in response, again, to the patriarch, to the patriarchy. She has to make that happen for herself. And certainly the act of motherhood and all of that promise, all of that reinvention is there. Yeah, that is like the binding force of the title, right? Like renaming, redrawing your life. 

Natalie
I love that. And then, Ani — I was calling her ‘Annie,’ so I’m going with Annie. Annie, who’s so ever wise all the way through, also had this theory that really struck me when she said, “Most internet searches are a form of self-harm.” And I was like, “That’s really true. Oh my gosh.” 

Rebecca
I totally agree. 

Natalie
I’m going, “We need to go have coffee, Annie.” Because that is it. In these moments in your writing, did you ever feel like the sting of your own character’s insights? Like did you go, “Oh, yup, ok.” 

Claudia
I mean, I don’t know, because you’re so inside it when you’re writing it. I remember having dinner with a girlfriend within a year of writing the book, probably. And we were having this, like, totally impassioned conversation about Greta Gerwig. And, you know, this was before she cheated on us with Barbie. We were like, “Why is she not a friend? How are we not in constant contact with her?” I mean, we would have the most incredible text stream, and… anyway, and we were, like, Googling her so hard. I was like, “Yeah, this is basically a form of self-harm. Like, this is creating, like, psychic pain for us. We have to stop.” 

Natalie
And it’s kind of nuts, because how the internet can do it for those parasocial relationships that are sort of beyond us, but then also the ones that are gone, but never forgotten because of the internet. You know, like, when we think of who it is that we could easily access, even if actually their exit from our lives has been the healthiest step forward. There is that chance where you could just check. 

Claudia
They haunt you. 

Natalie
They haunt. 

Claudia
They haunt you because you can search for them and you can see what they’re up to. But you don’t do that anymore because it’s bad for you. 

Natalie
It’s really bad for me. So don’t do it, Natalie. 

Claudia
How old is your son who made that incredible comment? 

Natalie
He’s nine. 

Claudia
What a cool kid. I want to have coffee with him. 

Natalie
I think you’d like him. Bec is actually planning her next coffee date with her nephew, so… 

Rebecca
It’s true. Yeah, because he is a very wise kid. 

Natalie
Sometimes potentially to his own detriment, but… 

Claudia
Can we talk about what’s behind you? Is that a wood-burning stove? 

Rebecca
Oh, it is. It’s amazing. It’s called a Stûv. We had this vision for this room, and it was an amazing vision until we realized that this is actually far too hot though for this room. My daughter was in here last night. I was like, “Let’s do your homework by the fire.” And she’s, like, sitting there and then all of a sudden she’s like, “I’m sorry, mommy, I can’t take this anymore.” Because it turns into a total sauna in this room. My husband loves it, but then, like, we all get headaches. It was, like, the weirdest thing to create this vision and then to go, “We really miscalculated.” So it’s amazing, but it also, just… it’s too strong for this. 

Claudia
A little bit Icarus, I guess. 

Rebecca
Yes, yes. 

Natalie
Literally. 

Rebecca
Literally. Violet was like, “Ugh, I gotta get out of here.” 

Natalie
Well, and Simon built that. So Becca’s husband actually built this room — like, he built it out, so… well, it was art, right? I mean, they were art-making, and sometimes art doesn’t quite play out the way that you sort of dreamed. So now they’re having to re-envision the space. 

Ok, I’m going to dive in here because I have another question about art — but it’s, like, old art. So you do go the road of Shakespeare in this piece. There is this, like, Hamlet referencing throughout the story. And I don’t want to give it away because I want people to read Daughter. I really do. I feel like there’s so much to be taken from however one approaches the story. But the Hamlet piece was very interesting to me because again, as a former English teacher, I have had very emotional experiences with students who have resonated with different characters in different plays that I’ve taught over time. 

I don’t even know if I teach Shakespeare anymore, but back in the day when I was teaching King Lear, I had like an 18-year-old stand up in front of the class and start crying because she’s like, “I’m Cordelia, that’s my life,” and then share this big open wound of her story in a class full of 18-year-olds who didn’t know how to love her in that moment, but she tried to sort of open herself up. And so it was a really, really intense experience. So maybe I had that in my mind with all the references to Ophelia in this piece. But that one line, it’s Ophelia’s father, right? It’s Polonius who says, “By indirections, find directions out.” I was like, “Ok, that’s like the mantra for me for this whole book.” 

Claudia
Yeah, that’s a brilliant comment. I would never have thought of that. 

Natalie
But yet you put it in there, Claudia. So that’s what’s so wild about the artistic experience. Like, you guys put the stove in there, Bec. 

Claudia
Yeah. 

Natalie
It’s going to do something amazing. So I don’t know — like, what was it when you were playing with Hamlet in this piece, because that literally is… for me, it’s like the book summed up in, like, a line. 

Claudia
Yeah, no, that’s really beautiful. It’s funny how once you finish a novel, you start to gain altitude and you can start to see it more conceptually and how the pieces are working. Like, when you’re working on it, each stage is so distinct. Like, that first draft has to be a transmission and it has to be really unselfconscious. Like, you have to just keep up with the voice in your head with no analysis, no scrutiny. Otherwise, you’ll fuck it up. And then you start to build out, and then you start to draft and to perfect and to compress. Like, for this book, I wanted so much reduction for the speed of it. 

Of course, I would have put that line in, and I know exactly where it is in the novel and why it’s there. And it’s certainly more a suggestion than it is, like, a perfect tendon between scenes. But I love the idea of it as actually a suggestion for how to read the book — like, that’s so interesting to me. I think I wrote the book so intuitively. And again, I don’t want to, like, mythologize it, because it takes huge amounts of, like, weird monkish devotion and discipline to do it that way. But I did write it kind of like channeling in that way. And actually that was a line I added later. It’s inside a sort of a key revelation for Mona, and I’d reworked the way that revelation came to her — so reordered it very slightly. And when I saw that line, I just thought, “Oh, what a line.” Especially when I wanted to write prose that was so direct — like, direct to the bloodstream, but I wanted to create a structure that was unconventional but certainly believable because of its confidence in itself. 

Rebecca
And now, some housekeeping. Hey Reframeables: do you get something from these conversations? Would you consider becoming a supporter on Patreon? For as little as $2 a month, you could help to keep this show going. It’s meaningful financially, and relationally — it feels like a hug. For our Patreon supporters, we do mini-episodes which we call Life Hacks and Enhancers — our five best things in a week. You could also tip us on our Ko-fi account, where Natalie’s recipe book is also for sale. Oh, and tell us what you want to hear more of — listener messages make our week. And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter. All the links are in our show notes. Love, Nat and Bec. 

You’re very much a writer that wouldn’t be showing your work to anybody when you’re in this. 

Claudia
I’m a Scorpio. I’m so secretive. I am so secretive. 

Rebecca
Like, even your husband or your kids or… it would stay with you. 

Claudia
I showed it to my husband. We’re kind of like two halves of one thing, and he’s my person. So I did show it to him. I think I waited though, which I hadn’t done with another book. Like, I finished the draft and I think I waited, I don’t know, maybe a month or so. And then I showed it to my friend, the novelist Sheila Heti, who’s a genius and who I just trust so deeply. And she read it. And then I showed it to my agent who I’m very close with. But it’s like I wanted to keep it secret for a couple of months, almost like a pregnancy — like, I didn’t really want to announce it. I just wanted it to be mine for a little while, make sure it was right. Because once you do start sharing it, immediately of course it’s an invitation for commentary, for insight, for scrutiny, for all of those activating things. And it’s sort of how I felt in the promotion of the book, too — very unrushed. Like, I was like, “It’s just working.” 

Rebecca
Now is that connected to… like, right as we started this conversation, we said, “Oh, we should do a backup of the audio.” And you said, “Oh wait, I don’t have my phone. I have to go find my phone.” I don’t know if you said this, but I’m going to say you said this: “I’m untethered from my phone.” But is that whole mentality, that not rushing, because there’s a wisdom there for all of us. Is that a conscious practice that you’re like, “I’m going to live my life a little bit different.” As you said off the top, “I’m going to create the career I want.” 

Claudia
Yeah, I think it comes after years of feeling like I was just in a sprint, you know? Natalie, you were talking about, like, pressurized moments. That’s true for our children, sadly. It’s hugely true for us too, just the psychic load of mothering and working in combination. So I guess all of my inward-facing strategies around, like, “Ok, how can I slow it down?” — like, I made a joke with my husband the other night. I’m like, “Wow, I’m in my, like, ‘be here now’ years.” Like, I actually… that has real resonance for me, you know? I want to experience things. I want to move more slowly. It’s just there’s so much more pleasure in it, I think. Because, you know, the anxiety is real and then we’re so good at manufacturing it. And then there’s no better collaborator than your iPhone, right? 

Rebecca
Just one second. One second, you guys. Sorry. My mom just dropped in. Hold on. 

Natalie
That would be my mom too. 

Rebecca
Mom, I’m just recording a podcast. Here, do you want to come on the screen? 

Elizabeth
Oh, I do not. 

Rebecca
Thank you. I love you. 

Claudia
Oh my gosh. I love that. That’s very meta for the book. 

Rebecca
I thought it was my husband, so I, like, put up my finger like that, and my mom was like, “Are you putting up your finger at me? I’m doing you a favour.” I love you, mom. She’s gone. 

Claudia
Oh my God. I’m drinking out of my father mug. 

Natalie
Oh, good. See, life — life and art. 

Rebecca
Nat and I totally had this conversation and were like, “We’re not going to ask it,” but now I’m going to say: do people want to know about your relationship to your father now? 

Natalie
Oh yeah, does that happen to you in interviews with this? 

Claudia
I mean, when they do, I’m sort of like… 

Natalie
Do that? 

Rebecca
I love your face right now. 

Claudia
I think I’m borderline insulted because I’m like, “You’d only ask that to a woman.” Like, “Oh, do I not have the craft and originality to have come up with this book — like, from my mind?” You know, can I only do something diaristic? Are those the limitations of my being? Let’s make sure we keep me small. So yeah, I guess I do get offended. 

Natalie
I can only imagine, though, that it would happen. Because we’ve talked about this — we had another author on that we were just speaking to, Lisa Whittington-Hill. Her book, Girls Interrupted, is nonfiction and she’s, like, writing as an essayist and we were talking about the idea of, like, how do you sort of meet your art and yourself in your art without it having to be sort of, like, pinpointed down into simply quote-unquote ‘being diaristic’? And then Bec, you brought up that other author. 

Rebecca
We were talking about how women often write memoirs and the reviews often will not pick out her achievements. They will pick out, like, her dating life or if she wanted kids or couldn’t have them — like, they focus in on aspects of her domestic life. Like, that’s what we’re obsessed with when it comes to women, it seems. As opposed to maybe she won six Oscars, but we want to know… 

Natalie
How are her ovaries? Yeah. 

Claudia
Yeah, exactly. That she doesn’t maybe have also a cerebral life — hmm. Yeah, it’s a question that bothers me for sure. And typically what I’ll say is, like, “No, it’s not autofiction,” and this is true — but I did want it to imitate autofiction. I wanted it to have that kind of confessional closeness. That was my, like, workaround. But it’s been really interesting to see how male critics have dealt with this book. Women critics — I mean, thinkpieces, essays, insane engagement. Just, like, the most, I don’t know, like, subterranean, like, serious contention with the text and the ideas of the book. And men are like, “Woah. Woah.” It’s been really interesting — like, they don’t know what to do with it. 

Natalie
Wild. 

Claudia
I view it as a compliment. I’m like, “I love your hate. I love your hate.” 

Rebecca
Does it feel like they’re not liking it? Or they’re just dismissive of it — is that what you felt? 

Claudia
It feels like they’re confused by it. They’re like, “Such a good writer, but it’s like, she just… she has no sense of humour. She has no insight.” You know, it’s that need to make a woman’s voice invisible. Reviews have been super gendered that way. And I’m like, “Oh, sorry, did you hate that I eliminated the patriarchal canon and made it a matriarchal canon? Like, is that the problem here? Like, am I bugging you?” 

Natalie
And so interesting if you’re saying that some folks weren’t getting the humour because there was actually one scene where I was laughing out loud, and I started talking about with Rebecca on our walk yesterday because it was that email exchange that was happening within the family. And I was howling because it was so serious, this engagement they were all having with each other. So for when folks go out and buy Daughter and then read the book, they’re going to actually hit this point where there will be, like, about five of them (actually I’m trying to count in my head, it might’ve been more like six), where each of them are engaging with each other and you slip from descriptive voice into descriptive voice with each of their emails, but with just enough distance for me that I could laugh without feeling like I was laughing at anybody’s pain, because it’s not about that. It’s like, this is hilarious how our minds can, like, do gymnastics to, like, morph our feelings into, like, “I need you to understand my feelings,” but nobody’s understanding each other. 

Claudia
Yeah, I love that. I’m so glad it made you laugh, and your assessment is exactly right. It’s that thing of like, “In this argument, what I’m interested in doing is just maintaining the correctness of my own position.” Like, “I’m not going to be listening, I’m not going to be learning, I refuse to evolve, I refuse to make peace, what I know is myself and my own rightness.” 

Natalie
Yes. 

Claudia
Yeah. It’s like gunfire — like, I wanted it to be like verbal gunfire. But then of course, her relationship with her sister, it’s almost like an antechamber — like where they can, like, leave the argument and, like, have that sort of release valve of humour of, you know, just being, like, symbiotic and aligned and then return to the verbal gunfight, slightly emboldened and then defeated again. 

Rebecca
You were talking about sort of this stage of your life and wanting to slow down. And then I feel like you were referring to maybe that speed of early mothering days. And I feel like there’s some really insightful comments about mothering in the book. And so I’ve noted this one: the protagonist knows that her and her sister’s entrance into the world had split her mother’s consciousness. And I just feel that split. I mean, I continue to feel that split and I don’t think I’ll ever not feel that split as a mother. And I’d just be curious to hear about how you have navigated that split as a writer, as a mother and entrepreneur. Do you still feel that split in your consciousness, and if it’s a good split now, or…? 

Claudia
I still feel this split in my consciousness certainly — and it’s, like, foundational. Like, I don’t even know if I can ascribe a quality to it — if it’s good, if it’s bad. I think when I wrote Heartbreaker and when I wrote the essay Mothers as Makers of Death, you know, we’ve talked about pressurized environments and pressurized mental environments and I was certainly writing that novel and that essay from that place just because my children were younger. And so physically, it was just a much more demanding life in terms of where I needed to put my body at all times. Now that my children are older (Dove, my eldest is 17, Ozzy, my youngest is 12) and so they’re much more autonomous and independent in the world. They have their own lives, and this is the place where we get to meet at night, you know? 

You know, physically I have a lot more freedom, but certainly my consciousness will never not be split. And I don’t know that split connotes something negative, and it’s not that. It’s just the ‘love is reinvention’ thing. It’s, like, a new way of being. You know, before I got on the call with you, I checked just to confirm that Ozzy had, you know, made it to school. And I’m sure you did the same thing, or you walked your kids to school. And I don’t feel embattled by that at all. I really don’t. I actually think that the psychology of this book is much more aligned with the idea that motherhood is this kind of source — for creativity, for power, for expression, for truth. 

Natalie
I like that reframing, because it’s not always presented that way. Like 100% not presented that way in much literature as many folks who attempt mothering navigate it in real time, right? That does take, I think, some distance, some retrospection to be able to name it. I mean, I’ve only got nine years under my belt. Becca’s got 15 years of mothering under her belt, so she’s experiencing it differently. You’re saying 17. 

We did an event the other night for the podcast. We try and sort of create community in here, like in this sort of, like, internet, you know, in your ear space, but also in person. We really want to support female-owned businesses. We try and sort of do it locally. So there’s this candle studio near us. We had some folks there and one of the folks that came, she’s a new mom and probably her kid was the youngest of any of the folks who happened to be there at that point. And the questions she was asking were not the questions any of the other parents were thinking about anymore. And it was like she was searching for community around the candle table. And it was hard for her because I think she was like, “Oh, I don’t feel seen in this space because none of you mom types are living this anymore.” And it took a little bit of work to, like, go back and meet her, to be honest, in that moment. And I felt for her. 

Claudia
You graduate from these stages in motherhood and you can hardly remember how it was before. 

Natalie
Yeah. 

Claudia
And you graduate and you want it to be quite a final line. 

Natalie
“I’m over here now.” 

Claudia
That’s really interesting. 

Rebecca
Just as we’re winding down here, do you want to go back to Trout Stanley for a minute? 

Claudia
I’m happy to. 

Rebecca
Do you still have a fondness for that play? 

Claudia
Yeah, definitely. I love that play. 

Rebecca
I mean, we loved so much the words. They were such fun words to say. 

Claudia
I wrote that play after I met my husband, when I was in a state of, like, just mad love. So… yeah. 

Rebecca
But also some complicated sisters, a sister relationship. I mean, do you view it that way, or…? 

Claudia
You know, it started with this idea of twins who look nothing alike. And I just am always drawn to complicated family relationships because of the just uneasy proximity and the conflict that that can present. And I needed to create a kind of love triangle. So the older twin who has all the power, who’s the one who exits the house and goes to a job every day, Grace — and then she kind of keeps Sugar, the younger twin, captive. Sugar hasn’t left the house in 10 years and then is suddenly, you know, visited by this handsome stranger, right? Right as she’s about to take her own life, about to end it all. 

Yeah, I loved writing that play. And I loved the discipline of writing the play. I liked writing, like, a three-hander in a single setting with no swearing. As I did for Daughter, I created constraints for myself. I like working like that. Actually, it does kind of dovetail with Daughter too, in terms of when you’re outside of society, an odder psychology can enter the work. And so I think the playfulness of the language comes from that too. It’s like a cult in a way — like, they’ve invented their own, like, faith, their own superstitions, their own routines. Like, everything is so locked down and has to be observed, you know, by the detail. 

Rebecca
The author Kyo Maclear, I remember listening to her in a workshop and she does that — like, creating the constraints for her children’s books. She loves constraints as a way to begin. 

Claudia
Oh, I love hearing that. I love her writing and thinking. I think she’s one of our foremost philosophers. She’s a beautiful prose writer. That makes a lot of sense because a lot of her work seems to be about the negative space and what’s been extracted, and then only the gems remain. I always think her books hold this kind of sentience. She’s really special. So I love hearing that. I’m like: yes, I also work like Kyo. 

Natalie
Well, it’s funny. I interviewed Kyo for Rebecca’s writing publication, I don’t know… that has to be, like, seven, eight years ago. And I was so naive and I sat down with her at that time, I had just graduated from the program that she was at that point doing her doctoral work in, and her advisor was my friend. So we had this kind of, like, intersection, but I honestly didn’t clue in to who Kyo was. And so I’m like, “So you have a book, right?” Like, oh my God. Really, honestly, I hope Kyo can hear this at some point and go, “Oh, Natalie, you were so lovely in that moment,” because I really did not do my due diligence in terms of what it meant to go in and have a conversation with someone where you do a little bit of, like, background checking. But it actually opened up the space for it just to be kind of this, like, I had my philosophy work, she had her philosophy, and now we were talking philosophy. And it sort of, like, put everything else out to rest. That’s what I tell myself now. But it was this funny moment of, “Oh, this is what it’s like to talk with people.” 

And I feel like that with you today — like, it’s really lovely to sit and just get to enjoy actually sometimes how the answer sounds. Like, I want to hear your thoughts, Claudia, you’re lovely. But I also am just enjoying these words — like, Rebecca, when you said you really just enjoyed the words of Trout Stanley. Like, I love being able to share the words and wisdoms that kind of just come out in an organic moment of conversation. So thank you for having proffered us that. 

Claudia
It’s my pleasure. I’m feeling that especially right now — I’m reading a lot and I’m feeling so much just the companionship of language and how it too holds that power of reinvention. Of reinventing your psyche, of reinventing the world around you. It’s such a solace. 

Rebecca
I feel like though we would be remiss to just at least not ask you: how did Horses come about? Tell us that in 30 words. 

Claudia
Sure. It too came about in a romantic moment. We had new children and we were like, “How are we ever going to make any kind of livelihood, you know, as writers? Why don’t we start a, you know, fashion studio?” And talk about naive, thinking that would be an easy way to make a living. But that was 11 years ago, and in many ways, it’s very complementary to writing because it’s such an opposite thing. It’s heavily administrative. It’s heavily visual, of course. Heavily tactile. You’re in the real world. You’re going to a place every day to work, to touch things, to make micro-decisions. You know, drafting a collection is like drafting a book. So they are complementary. Yeah, we just decided that we wanted to make what we wanted to wear. 

Natalie
That’s so fun. 

Rebecca
Is it actually difficult to make? 

Claudia
Fashion’s so hard. Yeah. 

Rebecca
It’s as hard as writing a book — it’s just a different kind of hard. 

Claudia
A hundred percent. Yeah, we had no idea. We entered it completely ill-prepared and filled with romance and, like, misplaced hunger. Like, we were like, “Oh, ok, we’ll be able to, like, piece together a livelihood for our families.” Listen, we also make everything in Toronto. All of our fabrics are from Italy and Japan. Like, it’s not like we’re going in it with a commercial mindset. And that’s our own stubbornness around our own kind of value structure, but we can’t waver from it. Otherwise there’s no point in putting things in the world, you know? You have to stand by them. 

Rebecca
You know, when they joke about, you know, $30,000 — like, you see that on some runway. Are you like, “Yeah, but…” Do you sort of have a different relationship to prices too, where you’re like, “Yeah, if you want to do something really interesting you’re going to have to charge more than, like, what H&M charges.” 

Claudia
Yeah. You very quickly get corrupted in your mind in terms of understanding cost. But the $30,000 — sure, if it’s all, like, crystals that have been hand-sewn and have taken a year to apply to a dress. But if it’s just because of, like, brand, that’s very discouraging — like mostly for human beings. Like, why would you pay for that? How does that make you feel? How does that change your relationship with your soul? 

Rebecca
Your soul. 

Claudia
Listen, it’s November. These are the questions we need to be asking. 

Natalie
These are the big ones. 

Rebecca
It’s hard to find soul out there right now. 

Natalie
It’s here. It’s right here. We found it today. Claudia, thank you for taking the time with us. This was super. 

Claudia
I loved speaking with both of you. Thank you so much.