In 1991, Terry Griggs's first book, Quickening, a collection of stories, was nominated for the Governor-General's Award. This gave Griggs what she calls "a shot of legitimization," and she went on to write her critically acclaimed novel The Lusty Man. Then came a children's book, Cat's Eye Corner, which, she tells me, she wrote for her son "because I don't make desserts or sew or cook." This, her gift to him, is in its third printing. Now, as she releases her second novel, it's easy to envision an equally impressive reception.
In Rogue's Wedding, Griggs spins a fantastic tale that begins with "luminous and strangely cool" ball-lightning chasing Griffith Smolders around his London, Ont., hotel room on his wedding night in 1898. The book ends with a fire that is "as wild and torrid as a visiting stage celebrity," as it is let loose on a crooked little hotel on Manitoulin Island. The fire has "the melting gaze of a Barrymore, the sultry mien of a Bernhardt. And the temper." This book tells the story of Grif's journey as, goaded by the ball-lightning, he runs as far from his new wife, Avice, as possible, only to discover in the end that being close to her suits him just as well.
Romp. That's the word that keeps coming to mind when I think of Rogue's Wedding. So when I meet Terry Griggs in the Random House offices in Toronto, I expect, well, someone who would write a novel that makes you think the word, "romp." Or "rollicking." That's another word that pops into my head. In fact, a rollicking romp of a novel would be a pretty good description -- although the book is sad at times. And it is much deeper than the word "rollicking" seems to convey. It's hard to pin down, really.
Come to think of it, Terry Griggs's work has been hard to pin down for more than one reviewer. In the information I've dug up on her, Griggs's writing has been compared to: Leon Rooke, Jonathan Swift, Robertson Davies, John Irving, Fay Weldon, Barbara Gowdy, Annie Proulx, Shakespeare, Eudora Welty, James Wilcox, Brueghel's paintings, Eric McCormack, Paul Quarrington and Michael Ondaatje. And the jacket of Rogue's Wedding tells us the novel is "like Odysseus in reverse." I saw some Mark Twain and a touch of Eliza Clark. Hints of Alice in Wonderland abound.
Griggs herself is hard to label. She's quiet but personable, ready to smile and appreciative of a good laugh. She's witty and interesting and a thoughtful conversationalist. But she doesn't exude "rompness." There's no guffawing and knee-slapping hilarity. There are no wild jokes that make you snort. What there is is a keen observer. You get the sense that Terry Griggs is watching you and filing you away in her mind for future reference. So if there's a blond woman who talks too much in her next book, I may be able to claim some sort of strange immortality. Griggs grew up on Manitoulin Island, "the largest freshwater island in the world," she tells me, "besides an island in the Amazon River which, depending on the level of the silt, is sometimes the largest." The island is two hours south of Sudbury, has no movie theatre and no franchising. "No McDonald's," she says, smiling at my wide-eyed stare.
Griggs's family owned a fishing lodge on the island that they sold when she was 16. They "moved around" and then settled in London, Ont., where Griggs attended university and then "travelled a bit." She recently moved back to her childhood haunt, along with her 17-year-old son, Sandy, and her husband, David Burr. When she tells me the island "is said to look like lace from the sky," there is a dream-like quality in her voice. "Islands have a claim on people," she says, and this is obvious from Rogue's Wedding. The minute Grif steps on the soil of the island, there is the overwhelming sensation of being bewitched -- there is music emanating from somewhere, a family of perfect-teeth people who seem to have a magical housekeeper, and a crooked blue hotel owned and built by a young, orphaned boy. There is a dream-like feeling to the island, a muted violence in the action there, an anything-goes atmosphere. Compare this to the dry and dull London, Ont., of Grif's wedding night, and you can see where Griggs's sensibilities are pulled. Romp, I guess, comes from the language in the book. And the action. But more the language. Griggs has a way of taking your hand and pulling you through her words, her rhythm, her metaphors, until you feel as if you have been on a fun-ride in a carnival. A woman's hat is "like a bad dream she might be having, exhibited on the exterior of her brain." Fire is "a sizzling hothead, a hotshot, too hot to hold. . . . It belched, its manner explosive." What fun this is. It's as if Griggs's rich language actually becomes another character in the text, guiding you in witty ways, playing with your preconceptions, easily forcing you to think about everything differently. Her metaphors often give meaning and significance to what you otherwise might ignore. This kind of writing highlights her theory that writers are "born with a certain sensitivity to narrative and language."
Griggs thoroughly researched Rogue's Wedding, but manages a finely tuned, natural feel, as if, while writing it, she lived in the period. She tells me that she "didn't want the characters to sound antiquated or stiff. I wanted to get the details right. I didn't want people to read the book and say, 'Oh, here's a fact for you,' or think I was showing off." She read a lot about this time period before and during the writing, and found it compelling information.
"There were so many changes coming about at the end of the Victorian Age, people searching for things, people confused about Darwin." An important symbol of this is found in an iconoclast's journal Grif steals from a priest at the beginning of the novel. He carries the journal throughout his journey, almost like an extension of himself, and represents this post-Victorian shattering of ideas. Griggs confesses to me with a sly smile that being an iconoclast might have been a "great job. Not that I have anything against icons, but shattering them . . . ?"
Rogue's Wedding ends with a look at the era's movement toward cinema, and questions whether that will take people away from reading ("The pen was dead," one of the characters muses). Grif and his cohorts end by filming a recreation of his fateful wedding night in London, using a hand-cranked camera. They even cast a young girl as ball-lightning in a "short, glittery shift over orange tights, golden ballet slippers and a tiara onto which Roland had grafted several spiky rays of copper wire."
I ask Griggs about this, and confess to being interested in what she thinks is to come. Is reading going to fade away as we find more and more technically advanced ways to reveal our creativity? "There isn't the urgency to reading a book that there is to seeing a film," Griggs says, and we both sadly laugh at the notion of all those people waiting for our books to come out in soft cover or in the library, but rushing out to see a movie.
But "reading will always be ways be important to some," Griggs says. And as she tackles the sequel to her children's book, and plays with two new ideas for novels, that gives her the push to continue. Besides, she says, "Writing is difficult and exacting, but I would be lost without it."