Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. This piece of advice from literary powerhouse Franz Kafka is something Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donoghue has taken to heart. Fans of Donoghue\u2019s work \u2014 14 novels, nine plays, five short story collections, three film scripts, three books on literary history and two children\u2019s books and counting \u2014 know that everything she creates begins as an obsession.<\/p>\n
Her newest book, The Paris Express, was inspired during Donoghue\u2019s hunt for a Paris rental apartment, and a search of the city\u2019s Montparnasse neighbourhood had her down a rabbit hole for nearly a year. The reason? A collection of photographs of the area on October 22, 1895, a day French historians consider to be one of the country\u2019s most catastrophic locomotive disasters.<\/p>\n
One photo in particular captured Donoghue\u2019s interest. Titled Accident \u00e0 la Gare Montparnasse<\/em> and credited to Studio L\u00e9vy and Sons, the snapshot freeze-frames the moment when a steam train has broken through the station\u2019s buffers and walls while coming off of an elevated track. This breathtaking image captures the crash that left part of the train hanging off the upper floor of the station, dipping onto a Montparnasse pedestrian street below.<\/p>\n\u201cI saw that picture and it was like falling in love,\u201d says Donoghue. The snapshot prompted her to hunt down the train\u2019s passenger list and tap into French state military and matrimonial records of each person riding coach or first class on that fateful day. More than 40 archival articles reported on the accident also helped fill in the gaps. \u201cSeeing that train spill onto the street was a thrilling sensation. It made me want to research anyone and everything that had to do with this incident. I found myself going through sources which informed the characters I built on, real and fictional, They\u2019re not hard facts about my story, but they\u2019re really rich sources.\u201d What surprised Donoghue most was the cast she found on board.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople often assume that those who were riding were only very rich white people, but 1890s Paris was just such a happening place with people from all over the French Empire and other countries in the West. I was able to assemble a multicultural and varied cast\u2026. And to think all these characters came to be because I took one look at an old image. After that, I had to write a book about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A similar long-standing connection to history happened in 1990, when Donoghue was studying in Cambridge and stopped by a bookstore because she saw in the window I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister 1791-1840<\/em>, edited by Helena Whitbread. Initially, she was drawn to its green spine, yet Donoghue\u2019s fascination piqued when she discovered she nabbed a collection of diary entries by a woman often referred to as \u201cthe first modern lesbian\u201d in England.<\/p>\nAfter reading Lister\u2019s entries, Donoghue was hooked, writing a play adaptation of I Know My Own Heart and a novel, Learned by Heart, a fictional take on Lister\u2019s romance with heiress Eliza Raine. Lister\u2019s diary entries, which were often written in code, kept Donoghue looking for hidden meaning in the text for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my teens, I chose to write poetry because it\u2019s wonderfully ambiguous,\u201d Donoghue says, \u201cespecially if you write poems addressed to a gender-neutral \u2018you.\u2019 This way, you can say a lot without ever having to specify a gender. I remember moments when I\u2019d win a poetry prize at school, in my school of 600 girls, and the nuns would have me stand up and read the poem aloud. The girl I was writing the poem about was right there. Those situations did feel extremely coded, tense and, of course, thrilling. As soon as I switched over to fiction, there were no more disguises.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moving into fiction gave Donoghue the kind of success that most authors merely dream of. She\u2019s won over 20 literary awards and received global attention when her novel, Room, was made into a film by Lenny Abrahamson in 2015. The book focuses on a mother and son held captive in a bunker by a sexual abuser, and had many studios bidding for the movie rights. Donoghue insisted that she be the one to write the script. Her instinct was spot on as the film went on to win an Academy Award for Best Actress and received nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.<\/p>\n
Room<\/em> \u2014 which at its base speaks to a child and mother being imprisoned \u2014 has become a mix of allegory and a forewarning for many astute new reviewers on TikTok who are making the connection.<\/p>\n\u201cI think the questions that I tried to ask in Room<\/em> are kind of existential. How can you make meaning of your life when you are unfree? How does a mother take a pregnancy, which was in no way intentional, and turn it into something to give her life meaning and joy completely separate from her captor? Those tensions between being a mother and being a person have stayed extremely relevant.\u201d<\/p>\nIt\u2019s the golden ticket for a writer to be connected to multiple generations and to represent voices that have historically been silenced. For the longest time, Donoghue would joke that she was the only lesbian in Ireland when asked about why she moved to Canada (it was for love, she\u2019s married to Canadian professor Chris Roulston). Instead of seeing her identity as something that could pigeonhole her work, Donoghue embraces all facets of herself and her audiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very happy to represent for the Irish, for women, for queers of all stripes, for Canadians, so long as nobody then expects me to always write about those people,\u201d she says, laughing. \u201cAnyone who\u2019s had a best-seller is lucky, so you won\u2019t catch me complaining.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nBy Jeremy Freed \u2014<\/em> *This article originally appeared in Insight: The Art Of Living Magazine \u2013 The Connection Issue<\/u><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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