This episode of BOOKSPO is guaranteed to put a song in your head, as Michelle Hébert tells me all about how revisiting Emma Donoghue’s 1997 story collection KISSING THE WITCH helped her discover solutions to problems she was facing in developing the characters in EVERYTHING LITTLE THING SHE DOES IS MAGIC, her debut novel, which is out this week and pretty magic in its own right.
Hébert tells me about the serendipitous way in which she’s managed to build her own fairy tale library, about what Donoghue’s twists on familiar tales showed her about understanding difficult characters’ motivations, about how female characters are so often adversarial and she wanted to do something different, the leap she took to couple her story of age-old curses and fairy tale tropes with a brilliant 1980s’ pop and rock soundtrack, about how maybe ‘80s pop culture and the world of fairy tales are not so incongruous after all, and names the most bonkers ‘80s song of all time, which turns up on her novel’s soundtrack.
About EVERY LITTLE THING SHE DOES IS MAGIC:
Kitten Love's family is haunted by the memory of her teenaged aunt, Nerida, who died just days before Kitten's birth in 1970. Her mother, Queena, believes the family is cursed, and she's determined not to let disaster strike again. She won't let Kitten out of her sight—especially to visit the beaches that surround the town. She's built a bomb shelter to protect against Soviet attack, and she's desperate to protect her husband, Stubby, from the fatal and mysterious Love Heart.
Kitten thinks she knows how to defeat their curse: magic. But when protection spells and clues from tarot cards aren't enough to save Stubby, Kitten turns her back on the things that make her life magical, and Queena turns her back on reality. She preserves everything as it was the day Stubby died in 1987—from the gold shag rug in the bathroom to the Duran Duran posters in Kitten's room. Kitten, herself, is forbidden to change.
Kitten tastes freedom when she falls in love and moves to British Columbia, but reinventing herself without the curse is harder than she expects. Tragedy and her own reliance on magical thinking eventually lead her back home to Queena, her brother Thom, and Aunt Bunny, who are equally stuck in their pasts. When tarot cards begin mysteriously showing up in her room, warning of a betrayal and encouraging an unlikely romance, she's certain someone is watching her. Could the heartbreak that almost destroyed Kitten's family be the very thing that helps them move on?
A darkly humorous family saga woven around tarot cards and a mixtape of '80s songs, Every Little Thing She Does is Magic is a heady mix of music, ghosts, love, and nostalgia.
Michelle Hébert grew up on the beaches and marshes of Cumberland County, Nova Scotia. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction, degrees in journalism and social work, and she studies tarot on the side. Her writing about mental health, social justice, and finding joy where it seems there’s none to be had has appeared in Writerly magazine and in audio essays and short documentaries for CBC Radio. Her first book, Enriched by Catastrophe: Social Work and Social Conflict After the Halifax Explosion, was published in 2009. Michelle has lived across Canada but makes her home in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Mi’kma’ki), with several cats, a dog, and her two adult children. You can find more of her writing (and pictures of her cats) at michellehebertwrites.com.
Episode 10: Michelle Hébert