Think writing a historical novel based on Aristotle's relationship with Alexander the Great sounds intimidating? Try doing it through two pregnancies and while raising two very young children – the sleepless nights, the baby brain.
But, boy, have things ever worked out for Annabel Lyon. She has become Canada's newest literary star, with her debut novel for adults, The Golden Mean, short-listed for three major awards: the Giller Prize, the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and this past Wednesday, the Governor-General's Literary Award for Fiction.
You try and strike a balance, but I don't even know what that would look like.
The three nominations have thrust the thoughtful, introverted New Westminster, B.C., writer into a spotlight she may be a little uncomfortable with, but is struggling to appreciate nonetheless. She never expected mass-media interest in her book, written from the ancient philosopher's point of view and set 2,300 years in the past.
“It's all good news, but it's overwhelming,” she said over tea on Thursday. She's particularly giddy about being nominated alongside her long-time literary idol, Alice Munro, on the G-G and Writers' Trust lists. “If I get to meet her, I'm just going to stand there, not knowing what to say.”
Lyon, 38, was born in Brampton, Ont., but moved to Coquitlam, B.C., when she was 1. Her father, journalist Jim Lyon, taught her at a very young age – she thinks she was about 6 – to write short, concise sentences à la Ernest Hemingway.
“I have a very distinct memory – and I can't have been very old – of standing at his knee and him taking The Old Man and the Sea off the shelf and opening it up and saying, ‘Okay, look at this sentence. Look at how he does this.' … If you love hockey, you take your kid to the hockey game; if you love Hemingway, you show your kid Hemingway.”
It rubbed off. Lyon has published a book of short stories (Oxygen), novellas (The Best Thing for You) and a juvenile novel (All-Season Edie).
She started writing The Golden Mean after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, inspired her to reread Aristotle (her undergraduate degree was in philosophy) for comfort, and answers about the meaning of life. Then came the idea for a novel. For seven years, she researched ancient Greece and her central characters, while writing the story she imagined about Aristotle and his student Alexander.
On the way, she had two children – now 4 and 2 – and continued to press on with her heady project through the chaos that inevitably erupts in the household of a very young family. Make that household a one-bedroom suburban condo, and finding the head space – well, even the space – for quiet contemplation becomes fairly challenging.
Lyon, who had been used to working alone for long stretches, now found herself writing in very small snippets, setting tiny goals for herself: 200 words during naptime; a sentence or two on really difficult days. The writing was never a chore; she looked forward to those brief moments spent in another world.
Annabel Lyon's novel The Golden Mean has been nominated for three awards: the Giller, the Govenor-General's and the Writers Trust.
“It was something that I turned to, to keep me sane a little bit, to be an adult again,” she says. “That was my thing. I didn't go to the spa or go to the movies or hang out with friends. I would work on my book. That was my way of getting back to my old self. Being able to think with a grown-up brain. And then it was back to the diapers and the apple juice.”
