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Synopsis

It is the summer of 2000 and Bell, a student from Minnesota, is employed at an elite restaurant on Mackinac island. With a circumference of just nine miles and no automobiles allowed, this unique resort on Lake Michigan is teeming with horse-drawn carriages, top-shelf vodka, bicycles, smoked whitefish and inspiring relationships.

Forty years later, Bell is stranded in her St Paul home clearing away the belongings of a lifetime while she awaits the arrival of a guest from that deceptively idyllic summer.

Afloat is an exquisitely distilled exploration of material and spiritual values and – equally – a riveting story of  loyalty, betrayal and survival.

Reviews

Critic Review:

"As with the best current dystopian writing (Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go come to mind), McCartney's Afloat stays rooted in the real, the daily details, the human side of political and environmental inevitability. When Bell says, of her daughter, "All that living, all those places visited, the pins on the map and still—her skin and insides so vulnerable to pain," she might as well be talking about herself, or any of us. Often insightful, never sentimental, Jennifer McCartney's Afloat is a smart, contemporary debut well worth reading."
—The Globe and Mail

Interview

Jennifer McCartney talks to Penguin about mutilation, unusual names and summer romances.

Do you imagine yourself, like Bell, eventually anchored to a particular time or place? Do you believe we all find ourselves more attached to a moment in time rather than the moment we’re in?
I’m more tethered, than anchored. With a kind of floaty string that leads back to different places and times. So far I’ve avoided the anchor, but that doesn’t mean it won’t get me eventually.  Hopefully when it does it’ll be worth it. Something incredibly life-altering that I can’t ever let go. I think if I win a Pulitzer or get a really good manicure I’ll be content to sit around at my kitchen table, like Bell, staring at my award or my fingernails, memorializing the past.

Blood, alcohol, horse shit, and rain flow so freely in Afloat, but tears, even though there’s good reason to shed them, do not. Is it the age of the characters that prevents them from releasing their pain in this way? The young being too stubborn and the old too tired and too wise?
I don’t like crying in novels. There’s not really a good way to write about that, for me. I think the novel succeeds if the reader can cry, but I don’t need the characters bawling along with everyone else. I’ve been told people have cried at various stages of Afloat, and that’s amazing, to me.

Mutilation, either by accident, murder, or surgical necessity, is a theme that seems to run through Afloat. Why do you feel this theme is so important to the work?
Mutilation. That’s a great word. Very dangerous sounding. I think you’re correct in that the theme is mutilation as opposed to a neat surgical clipping. Every "ending" in a sense is a messy one that gets crusty with pus and time. There’s no neat remembering of Mackinak, no compartmentalizing of Bell’s experience; it’s damaged.  So is Trainer’s body. Bryce’s father is purposely disfigured. The only thing that properly heals is her surgical scars. A scar is a nice thing to have, it’s very clean.  It’s the best form of mutilation, for me.

Why have you given your characters such unusual names?
Because I didn’t want to write about someone named Ted for hundreds of pages.

Did you mourn the loss of Bell’s relationship with Bryce right along with her? Was there ever a moment when you wished that you could re-write her history – that you felt you’d somehow been too cruel to her?
No.  Everyone has these tiny moments of cruelty in their lives. Lives hinged on a single choice or regret. Bell is no different. She felt she’d found her soul mate.  That’s what a summer romance is, essentially. That feeling of perfection, of never ending. We all want these kinds of relationships to mean something. We all mourn them. Personally, I’m not sure they mean anything. Or maybe they mean everything, I don’t know. I can’t imagine Bell’s life as being any different. I felt bad for both of them, for how things turned out. But that’s life.

Does it aggravate you when people ask you how someone as young as you are can create a novel with so much emotional depth and complexity, or do you look upon it as a compliment?
I think some people are confused not so much by the emotional depth, but with the concept of how someone so young can have anything to write about in terms of life experience, and that’s fine. I’ve been lucky enough to have lived in six American states, in Scotland and England, and held over twenty-five jobs. That emotional depth comes from having a lot of different experiences, but that’s not a necessity for writing, really. A lot of Canadian and U.K. writers publish in their twenties - from Leonard Cohen and Margaret Atwood to Gwendoline Riley and Rodge Glass. I’d like to think Afloat stands alone as a novel, regardless of my age. Most readers won’t know it was written when I was twenty-four.

You write about tragedy as though you have an intimate understanding of the way its effects imprint upon your soul. Are you writing from experience or are you simply an incredibly skilled observer?
There has been no tragedy in my life, fortunately. None. I think that fact, for me, magnifies the smaller tragedies. Leaving a place you know you won’t return to. The end of a relationship. The end of a carton of orange juice. Lint.

You have dedicated Afloat to Mrs Holder. Who is she, and why did you decide to honour her this way?
Mrs Holder lived on Rosemary Lane. Every week, from the time I was ten years old, I would go to her house and sit on her green couch and read books to her.  Every week for an hour. At break time we would eat cookies and drink cranberry juice and gossip. We did that for ten years, until I went away to university. She loved reading, but was legally blind. Because I was "discovered" doing a public reading in Aberdeen, I always felt I owed that success to my time with Mrs Holder. As if my whole life I’d been unknowingly gearing up for my one shot in hell in some obscure pub in Scotland.

How easy is it to let go of your characters once you’ve told their story? Are you ever tempted to delve into the lives of Rummy, Bryce, or Blue, or are you content to let the story be?
I have a lot of family and friends that read the big blockbuster bestsellers, the Clive Cussler, James Patterson-type books. I can’t count how many times they’ve asked when the sequel is coming out. There will be no sequel, and I have no interest in what the characters could have done, or will do in the future. I’m working on my second novel now, so those are the characters I’m interested in at the moment.

Who inspires you, both in your work and in your life?
Other writers. Every sort of book. Nice shoes. An excellent latte. Windows. And the conversation of strangers. I write it down. Dialogue is one of my favourite bits about the world. The rhythms of people speaking to one another.

With which of the characters in Afloat would you most like to sit down and have a conversation?
Bob Seger. I know him the least.

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