Toronto writer Alison Gadsby on the book she wishes she’d written — and the one that needs to die - Toronto Star

The author of 'Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive' answers our Reading Habits questionnaire.

Alison Gadsby is the co-founder of the west-end Toronto reading series Junction Reads. Her speculative short story collection, “Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive” (Guernica Editions), combines the macabre and mundane as if they were perfectly matched literary bedfellows.

In “The Deal with Roger,” Mirabel endures an abusive relationship with a humanoid life companion whose psychology is imprinted from a deranged police officer. In “Yesterday’s Gone,” three siblings return to their family home after their father’s suicide so they can put the house up for sale. 

In varying measures, workaday realities are turned askew by sci-fi and crime-fiction elements, creating an unsettling milieu in which characters must confront their innermost fears and desires.

The book is anchored by a literary sensibility versed in plumbing the depths of human suffering; and while the collection includes time travellers and sentient robots, there is a groundedness to the stories that will prove charming.

Gadsby’s writing has been published in failbetter, Literary Heist, the Temz Review and the Ex-Puritan. Her forthcoming novel, “Dreams of the Weary,” will be published next year by Palimpsest Press. She also interviews authors for the CIUT-FM radio program “HOWL.”

What did you last read and what made you read it?

I just finished Jordan Abel’s new poetry collection, “Dad Era.” There is a poem in small print snaking around photo cut-outs that made me take a picture so I could zoom in on “SometimesIampunchedintheneckbyyourtinyfists.” I love this kind of interaction with a book. Poetry is a privilege for a reader, and I am grateful for these deeply personal poems that explore the beauty and joy of dad-hood. 

“Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive” by Alison Gadsby, Guernica Editions, 214 pages, $22.95.

What book would your readers be shocked to find in your collection?

“Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Human Body” by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson. I have many books about carnivals and sideshows (research for an upcoming novel), but this book is a deep and multi-faceted exploration of the history of the human body on display, especially in understanding the ways we have viewed different and uniquely formed bodies.

When was the last time you devoured a book in one, or very few, sittings?

I read Jane Park’s “Inheritance” in a morning. I opened it about a week before, read five pages, got distracted, and then sat down and devoured it. Forgiving, forgetting and guilt — I love novels that explore complex families and the history they hold.

Who’s the one author or what’s the one book you’ll never understand, despite the praise?

I hate that I’m going to write this, because hating this book is as cliché as loving it. I just saw “Infinite Jest” on an indie bookstore shelf, and thought, “When is this book going to die?” No need for this book to be 1,000 pages, and no need for anyone else to read it.

What’s the one book that has not garnered the success that it deserves?

When I read “Gutter Child” by Jael Richardson, we were still not leaving the house much, and the confinement of this speculative dystopian novel gripped me. All too real given the very present policing and imprisonment of Black bodies. It sits on my shelf warped from the rain because I carried it everywhere for two weeks. 

What book would you give anything to read again for the first time?

“The Tenth of December” by George Saunders. I don’t read books twice (too many on my TBR list) but when I first read this collection, I didn’t have my writer’s brain switched on; it was just me, myself and the girl who loves short stories. The spectacular awe of reading that collection for the first time makes me miss reading as a reader.

When you were 10 years old, what was your favourite book?

It would be a Nancy Drew book, whichever one takes her to a summer camp. I also treasured an anthology of poetry my dad brought to Canada from the U.K. I memorized “Ozymandias,” “Daffodils,” “To a Mouse” and more, and then recited them to him. I wanted to be a poet.

What fictional character would you like to be friends with?

I want to be friends with Ruby, the camp counsellor in Aaron Kreuter’s “Lake Burntshore.” I never went to camp, but if I did, I’d like to go with a kick-butt anti-Zionist like Ruby. Also, Tróán from K.R. Wilson’s “Stan on Guard” because a 3,200-year-old immortal Trojan princess would up my cool factor!

Do you have a comfort read that you revisit?

I often pick up my favourite short story collections to remind myself how to write. Elaine McCluskey’s “Rafael Has Pretty Eyes” is one of those collections. It is filled with unique characters surviving life, each with a very particular flair for the dramatic.

What was the last book that made you laugh or cry?

“Pizza Before We Die” by Hassan Kanafani, edited by Yasuko Thanh. I haven’t finished it yet, because bearing witness isn’t easy, but it is our responsibility to read stories and to listen and to learn from current history — not only from interpretations and opinions on social media, but through the eyewitness accounts we find in books.

What is the one book you wish you had written?

I absolutely love a book with a unique element or a narrative style that makes it an instant decades-from-now standout. “The Unravelling of Ou” by Hollay Ghadery is a complicated story about womanhood and motherhood. I want to write stories that challenge a reader’s empathy, or feature characters who contain their pain, trying to appear fine. A smart-aleck sock puppet narrator is also a stroke of genius!

What three authors living or dead would you like to have a coffee with?

I’d probably choose the writers who most intimately know my “weird.” I could talk to Sydney Hegele (“Bird Suit”), Kate Henderson (“Dogleg”) and Farzana Doctor (“The Beauty of Us”) for days. 

What does your definition of personal literary success look like?

Community. It is in those coffee chats. It is in my funny DMs with Zilla Jones, Jowita Bydlowska, and Hollay Ghadery. It is in the beautiful notes I get from Louise Ells. It is in the decades-strong friendships with workshop pals Marianne Miller, Damian Tarnopolsky, Pamela Ferguson, Rebecca Higgins. It is in sharing my publicity journey with Margo LaPierre, Jennifer LoveGrove, Jaclyn Desforges, Liz Johnston, Lisa Richter, Liz Worth, Aga Maksimowska, Heidi von Palleske, K.R. Wilson and more. It is in witnessing the bravery and efforts of activist writers, who continue to challenge me and our community to do better. It is in the blogs by writers I admire. It is in reading and meeting new writers through Junction Reads, and it is in the honour of being read by all the writers I’ve come to know and love.

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Jean Marc Ah-Sen is the Toronto-based author of “Grand Menteur,” “In the Beggarly Style of Imitation” and “Kilworthy Tanner.”