Sympathy is the story of Kerry Taylor, a former ballet dancer who slips into a catatonic state after a car accident claims the lives of her husband and son. The novel charts her progression through Dr. Michael Myatt’s controversial new therapy, sympathy-based healing. This is a gripping, moving and often surprisingly funny examination of the relationship between mind and body.

In February, I asked Alexis to read Dede Crane’s new novel Sympathy and suggest some interview questions for this blog. She kindly obliged, and below is the interview with Dede Crane.

——————-

Question 1
Did you consciously try to weave your own understanding and belief in the mind-body connection into this book or was it something that just evolved over time? How did this book evolve? Did it start with the character who was a dancer, or from wanting to talk about grief?

Dede:
I started with no idea of where this book might go, no story in mind. All I began with was a blank page and one thought: I want to explore my relationship with my mother and my history of bulimia. The catatonia was just suddenly there and, I believe now, a subconscious sense of being deeply stifled intellectually and creatively. I was kind of hoping to blame some of my struggles on my mother, but by the book’s end, realized it was the patriarchal side of things that I had to come to terms with.

Question 2
What kind of research did you have to do to be able to create the hospital of Rosewood and the experience of the catatonic character?
  Dede: I’m afraid I did none. It was all imagined. Though when I lived in Halifax, I was invited to a clinic by a psychologist friend of mine to teach some dance moves for the patients’ upcoming dance. This took place over a several weeks. There was an assortment of characters including: manic Wolfman Jack the self-appointed DJ, a suicidal, chronically depressed but sweet young woman and a catatonic man who never spoke a word. I remember being especially curious about him and several times attempting to draw him out by dancing with him—holding his hands and gently mirroring his movements. Sadly they were all heavily medicated.

Question 3
I found this novel to be both very sad and very uplifting. What’s your take on it? Were the sad parts difficult to write? What was the most challenging thing about the book?                                                                                                             

Dede: I’m glad you found it uplifting and hope you found it funny at times too. I see a lot of humour in our foibles as humans. As for the grief part, I lost my father during the writing of this book. So part of the grief was for him and part was how losing someone that defines you in such a basic way, means losing that part of you. At this time I had also had to say good-bye to dance. I have fibromyalgia and after turning forty, a certain youthful physicality was lost to me. And I was always a fiercely physical person.

Writing and editing the funeral scene never failed to make me cry. I’m not sure why. And Hugo’s relationship with Kerry I found very touching. Hugo is my favourite character in the book. I find him deeply feeling, creative and his sense of humour comes from understanding life’s utter sadness but not being defeated by it.

The most challenging thing in writing this book was just about everything. Being my first attempt at writing, it was a huge learning curve for me. If you could have seen the first draft you would understand how far it’s come. My brain often felt like a muscle as I struggled to find the structure, the authenticity of the characters and to keep all the various threads straight.

Question 4
I understand that you’re a former dancer. How did your background in dance prepare you for writing and how did that shape your book?

Dede: My dance training probably helped a lot with the discipline and stick-to-it ness it takes to see a book through to the end and then some. As a dancer I saw how over time, practice brought results. So when the going got tough, and I was convinced this book was destined for the delete button, I could slowly tease myself around to knowing that things have to start somewhere and that knowing something’s awful means it can only get better.

As a dancer, I loved ballets with a story and emotional arc. I’ve always had a great imagination and writing brought it together with the love of story.

Question 5
How long did it take you to write this book? What’s the significance of the snipings/shooting? Is there a significance?

Dede: This book took five years in total. Two years writing nothing else. And then three years of on and off editing and revising. I write everyday, often seven days a week, which I think help allows things to percolate on a subconscious level.

I wrote the original draft of Sympathy before 9-11. After 9-11 happened I knew I couldn’t set a book in a suburb of D.C. without incorporating it. I heard stories from my family who still live in the area about the day the plane crashed into the Pentagon and how militarized life was becoming. So I set [the book] in the fall of 2002 and only later realized that was the very time of the beltway snipers. So I researched that and put it in along with real incidents reported to me from my family, such as having to pump gas behind giant tarps separating them from the streets, armed guard on street corners, having to keep their kids home from school, etc.

So I realized I had a macrocosm of PTSD happening outside the microcosm in Rosewood clinic.

Question 6
What do you feel are some of the themes of the book?
  Dede: The most important theme to me is the interconnectedness of people. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we are influencing and continually being influenced by our environment and the people in it. And in this way, we all, as individuals, help create our world and the society in which we live. A first step to understanding this is to understand that our body and mind aren’t separate from each other. And when the two are in sync, in balance—and not just conceptually so—we discover our fearlessness and our goodness, and therefore our ability to love.

Thank you to Dede and Alexis