Interview with Karen powell - Author of 'Fifteen Wild Decembers'
Interview with Karen powell - Author of 'Fifteen Wild Decembers'
Europa Edition out now.
INTERVIEW
Tell us about Fifteen Wild Decembers: including the title’s significance and why you chose to write it. Are you a fan of Emily Bronte or the Brontës in general?
The title comes from Emily’s wonderful poem, Remembrance. I chose it because it’s so evocative of the bleak moorland surrounding her home in Haworth, a remote village in the Southern Pennines, and of Emily’s untamed, poetic spirit. I love all the Brontes, could happily have written from the point of view of any one of the siblings, but feel a particular affinity with Emily, perhaps because Wuthering Heights, Emily’s only novel, was the first ‘adult’ book I ever read. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it captivated me from the first page.
How much research was required to bring Emily to life on the page? What did you find most helpful in accomplishing this? Did you take any special trips for inspiration?
I reread Wuthering Heights and Emily’s poetry, then revisited Charlotte and Anne’s novels too. After that I worked my way through various biographical works to gain a deeper understanding of context. It’s helpful that when researching famous historical figures like the Brontes, much of the research around primary sources has already been done for you. You still need to interrogate that material though, approach these assemblages of fact with the understanding that even the most consciously objective history can only ever be one person’s interpretation.
I live in Yorkshire now, within driving distance of Haworth, so was able to spend many hours at the wonderful Parsonage Museum, once home to the Bronte family. The parsonage sits at the very top of the incredibly steep village, next to the church of St Michael and All Angels where the children’s father, the Reverend Patrick Bronte, preached. Moorland encompasses the village on all sides, rises directly behind the parsonage. The sisters’ novels were mostly written here – Jane Eyre started life in Manchester but was completed in Haworth – in the dining room that overlooks the graveyard; in secret. The table at which they wrote is part of the Museum’s collection, the ‘E’ carved into the wood by a young Emily still visible.
Emily was passionately attached to the wild moorland surrounding her home, so much so that she suffered physical and mental breakdowns almost every time she was forced to leave. It was a gift, therefore, to be able walk in her footsteps across those moors, to immerse myself in the same landscape. Besides the reservoirs down in the Worth valley, the signposts to spots associated with the Brontes, little can have changed.
What was your greatest challenge and greatest joy in writing Fifteen Wild Decembers?
My greatest joy was being ‘in’ the parsonage with this extraordinary family. I felt I could stay there forever, was bereft when I had to leave, but also exhilarated to have been ‘allowed’ in. The greatest challenge was to settle on the book’s structure and themes – what to use and what to discard. I wanted to keep as close to the known facts as possible, while also allowing my imagination to work its way into the gaps. I am novelist, not a historian or a biographer, so it was essential to construct a compelling narrative for a reader who might know nothing – perhaps care nothing - for the Brontes.
What traits of Emily do you admire the most and how has she inspired you in your own writing?
Nowadays we could call Wuthering Heights a debut novel, but it doesn’t read like one, a testament to the many years the Bronte children devoted both to reading widely and to what Charlotte once termed scribblemania: the endless writing and reworking of stories about their fantasy worlds of Angria and Gondal. Emily’s storytelling technique is sophisticated, her voice is compelling and her subject matter unique, which is why we are still reading and talking about Wuthering Heights almost two hundred years after it was published.
Ultimately though, it is Emily’s bravery that most impresses. Not many people would have the courage to cauterise their own wound or to face early death so steadfastly – she was just 30 years old. That courage extended to her writing too. Even today Wuthering Heights still has the power to shock, and Victorian audiences considered it savage and godless. One critic was surprised the author hadn’t committed suicide rather than continue writing. One can only imagine how this critic might have felt if he had learned that ‘Ellis Bell – the pseudonym Emily adopted – was not male as he assumed but in fact the daughter of an Anglican clergyman! Emily was stubborn though, determined to write exactly as she pleased. I’m not a brave person by nature but she inspired me to follow my creative instincts when writing Fifteen Wild Decembers.
There is a large focus on Branwell in the novel. Why does he inhabit such a large space in the story?
Anyone who has visited the Parsonage Musuem will be aware that it is a small house. There is no remote wing to escape to at difficult moments, no attic in which to lock away uncomfortable truths. When Branwell, the only son and once the great hope of the family, became addicted to alcohol and laudanum, it must have had a devastating impact on the whole family. Fifteen Wild Decembers belongs to Emily and to her sisters, but it would have been remiss of me to gloss over the trauma of living under the same roof as someone in their brother’s condition. I wanted to convey the fact that the parsonage was not some idyllic writing retreat tucked beneath the moors, but a place where an entire family was in jeopardy. Every scheme the sisters had explored to support themselves financially had failed at this point in their lives and now Branwell’s health was failing. By the time they came to write their novels, they were no longer writing just for fun but as a last-ditch effort to avoid penury.
Please discuss the spiritual aspects of the novel: particularly Emily’s connection to the natural world such as her beloved moor landscape and how it inspired her.
It’s a mistake to read any work of fiction or poem as autobiographical, but I cannot help believing that Emily’s poem No Coward Soul is an expression of her unwavering faith. It’s so passionate and direct:
No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from Fear
I suspect Emily had little time for the minutiae of clerical life, scant interest too, in the comings and goings of her father’s parishioners at the parsonage. Her God was vaster and wilder and could not be confined to the church, resided instead in the natural world for which she felt a visceral connection.
Your writing is wonderfully atmospheric and poetic. Do you have an interest in or write poetry? Are there any poets from the past or present you admire?
I don’t write poetry these days but am drawn to any form of writing that exhibits precision and grace. Naturally, I’m a fan of Emily’s work but also enjoy George Herbert, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, Ezra Pound, T.S Eliot and Plath.
Please share your writing journey in becoming a published author. Who or what inspired you to become a writer?
I’ve always written in some form or another but didn’t consciously construct a story until my early thirties. I had some early success followed by many years of rejections and failed projects. In 2017 I won a Northern Writers’ Award for an early draft of my novel The River Within, a retelling of Hamlet set on a country estate in 1950s Yorkshire. A year later I signed with an agent which led to a two-book deal with Europa Editions, who also publish the magnificent Elena Ferrante. The River Within was published in 2020, followed by Fifteen Wild Decembers in 2023.
What type of writer are you? A pantser, plotter or a combination of both?
Somewhere between the two. I generally start with an opening and closing scene in mind which slowly, sometimes painfully, accrete a narrative around them. Numerous drafts are necessary but that seems to be my process. My work in progress also started this way but for practical reasons I developed a full synopsis at an early stage. I worried that this would preclude creativity but so far that doesn’t seem to be the case.
If you could time travel back to the past, which author would you like to meet?
Emily, naturally, but I would prefer a fly on the wall perspective. I fear I would try too hard to be her friend and cause annoyance.
List three books you read and loved this year and why they are special to you? Also, have you read any other fictional releases on Emily Bronte and if so, is there a favourite among them?
Determination by Tawseef Khan is a polyphonic novel about a Manchester-based immigration lawyer and her clients. It’s both timely and beautifully written.
The Unwilding, Marina Kemp’s second novel, moves between Sicily and London. I loved the acute observation and gorgeously elegant prose.
I read Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera as research for my work in progress and soon realised that there were enormous gaps in my education. The book is a forensic examination of the legacy of imperial Britian.
I recently enjoyed This Thing of Darkness by Nicola Edwards, an inventive reimagining of Heathcliff’s lost years.
Are you working on a new writing project and, if so, please share a little about it?
My work in progress is a contemporary novel which moves between Italy and suburban England. It’s a story about in-between places, the weight of our own histories, and the lure of what Keats described as ‘a beaker full of the warm South.’
A huge thanks to Karen for being my guest author! It has been a great pleasure to read her beautifully written novel which I encourage everyone who is a fan of the Brontes to get a copy. Connect with Karen on Facebook and also here for more information on her work.
About the Author:
KAREN POWELL
Karen grew up in Rochester, Kent. She left school at sixteen but returned to education in her mid-twenties, reading English Literature at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. Karen lives with her family in York and works at York Minster Fund, a charity which raises money for the conservation and restoration of York Minster.
Her novel, THE RIVER WITHIN, has been published by Europa in the USA and UK (2020) and Edizioni E/O in Italy. The novel has been described as ‘Consistently elegant and absorbing, THE RIVER WITHIN is a supremely accomplished first work… This is a novel whose shimmering surface conceals hidden depths.’ – Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Karen Powell’s new novel, FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS, was published by Europa in 2023 and was shortlisted for the inaugural Nero Book Award for Fiction.
