ERIN HART: FICTION = REALITY

DEBORAH CROMBIE: A new novel by Erin Hart is about as big

a treat as Christmas as far as I'm concerned. Set in Ireland, her books feature archeologists Nora Gavin and Cormac Macguire as they delve into mysteries as well as the past.

I'm not alone in my enthusiasm: According to a starred review in Publisher's Weekly, THE BOOK OF KILLOWEN, the fourth novel in the series, "Combines powerful insights into human nature and pristine prose...offers food for thought that persists beyond the immediate thrill of a well-told tale."  (Gorgeous cover, by the way.)

Not only does Erin Hart give readers eloquent language and deftly plotted mysteries, she creates characters that stay with us, and today she's going to share some very interesting theories about just why that is.

ERIN HART: I got a lovely, heartwarming message recently from a reader who was already missing Nora Gavin and Cormac Maguire when she finished reading THE BOOK OF KILLOWEN. That’s got to be one of the most satisfying moments for a writer, to hear that the people and places that have sprung from your imagination feel so real to other people as well.

I’ve long joked that some of my best friends are fictional characters. I was about eight when I wept for days over the death of poor Beth March after my mother read aloud from LITTLE WOMEN. I fell in love with the flawed and tragic Sydney Carton as I read A TALE OF TWO CITIES at age thirteen. Caught up in WAR AND PEACE at the cabin one summer, I remember telling my mother that I simply hadn’t the strength to wash dishes after supper—because I’d just lived through the Battle of Austerlitz. (Didn’t get away with that drama-queen excuse, as I recall, but heck—it was worth a try!)

Literature has always felt a bit more real to me than real life, and I don’t think I’m alone. I’m sure we all have certain characters who still linger in our consciousness, some for years after we’ve finished reading about them in a novel. The rational part of us knows that they’re made up, and yet…
 
Then, about a year ago, I read a wonderful article by Annie Murphy Paul in the New York Times. “Your Brain on Fiction” was about how sensory language stimulates the same areas of the brain as actual sensory or motor experiences. You can read the whole piece here.

Here are a few little excerpts from the piece that really stood out to me, as a writer and teacher of writing:

In a 2006 study published in the journal NeuroImage, researchers in Spain asked participants to read words with strong odor associations, along with neutral words, while their brains were being scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. When subjects looked at the Spanish words for “perfume” and “coffee,” their primary olfactory cortex lit up; when they saw the words that mean “chair” and “key,” this region remained dark. The way the brain handles metaphors has also received extensive study; some scientists have contended that figures of speech like “a rough day” are so familiar that they are treated simply as words and no more. Last month, however, a team of researchers from Emory University reported in Brain & Language that when subjects in their laboratory read a metaphor involving texture, the sensory cortex, responsible for perceiving texture through touch, became active. Metaphors like “The singer had a velvet voice” and “He had leathery hands” roused the sensory cortex, while phrases matched for meaning, like “The singer had a pleasing voice” and “He had strong hands,” did not…

… the brains of participants were scanned as they read sentences like “John grasped the object” and “Pablo kicked the ball.” The scans revealed activity in the motor cortex, which coordinates the body’s movements. What’s more, this activity was concentrated in one part of the motor cortex when the movement described was arm-related and in another part when the movement concerned the leg.

The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.

Is this not just wildly fascinating? And at the same time, it’s only confirmation of what readers and storytellers have always known. Still, it’s stunning to have this concrete scientific evidence that words contain stronger magic than we realize. In our heads, we actually LIVE the stories our eyes take in from the printed page. In a way, reading fiction is a bit like dreaming, a state in which we sort through reality and possibility, where we can sift and sort and re-order and imagine, and try to make sense of things.

To me, one of the main points of reading fiction is to get inside the heads of others, to live vicariously through a diversity of characters. It’s amazing how easily we fall under the spell of a story, and feel a thread of connection to the characters, putting ourselves in their place, asking what we might do in the same situation. And it turns out that reading fiction actually does expand one’s sense of empathy and experience.

In her article, Annie Murphy Paul also cites some studies in which social skills are affected by what they read, which, again, is not at all surprising:

Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, performed an analysis of 86 fMRI studies, published last year in the Annual Review of Psychology, and concluded that there was substantial overlap in the brain networks used to understand stories and the networks used to navigate interactions with other individuals — in particular, interactions in which we’re trying to figure out the thoughts and feelings of others. Scientists call this capacity of the brain to construct a map of other people’s intentions “theory of mind.” Narratives offer a unique opportunity to engage this capacity, as we identify with characters’ longings and frustrations, guess at their hidden motives and track their encounters with friends and enemies, neighbors and lovers.

It is an exercise that hones our real-life social skills, another body of research suggests. Dr. Oatley and Dr. Mar, in collaboration with several other scientists, reported in two studies, published in 2006 and 2009, that individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective. This relationship persisted even after the researchers accounted for the possibility that more empathetic individuals might prefer reading novels. A 2010 study by Dr. Mar found a similar result in preschool-age children: the more stories they had read to them, the keener their theory of mind — an effect that was also produced by watching movies but, curiously, not by watching television.

Since reading this piece, I’ve been asking people about the books and the characters that have stuck with them for years. So, how about it, readers? Tell us about some of the characters who have never left you, fictional creations who are so real that you still wonder about what they’re up to from time to time…

DEBS: Fascinating stuff! And I love that science is confirming what we readers have always known...

 Erin will be dropping in to answer questions and respond to comments, and she'll be giving away a copy of THE BOOK OF KILLOWEN to a very lucky commenter. You can learn more about Erin and her books at www.erinhart.com, on Facebook, on Twitter, and at her blog.

How Does It all End?

"Hart writes with a lovely eloquence about how character is shaped by the music, the achitecture and the history of this harsh and beautiful land..."
—New York Times Book Review

HANK: Mystery authors meet in mysterious ways. I think Erin Hart and I "met" because we share the same web designer, Madeira Jamesa at xuni.com. (Erin's website is so perfect, go see.) And then I found all kids of wonderful things about Erin. She's--well, you can read all about it.

But then we found we shared another mysterious phenomenon. When we begin writing our mysteries, we don't know whodunnit. How does that happen? And why?

ERIN HART: One question I'm always asked at book chats is: "Do you know how the story ends when you begin writing?"

And my answer is a resounding: "Never."

It's not that I haven't a clue, mind you; I do have theories about whodunit, and why, but I'm wrong more often than I am right. How can that be? you ask... Aren't you, as the writer, the creator of your own story, the manipulator of character, the inserter of clues? Well, yes, but...

All I can say is that I don't HAVE to know how the story ends before I can start. And that's because I write to find things out. For me, the process of writing is similar to what my characters -- an archaeologist and a pathologist -- go through when they are engaged in an excavation or an autopsy. Writing is an investigation, and I sometimes think it's better if I'm finding things out along with my characters, rather than directing them about what to find, even what to look for.

So what do I need to know in order to begin?

Most of my stories have begun with some actual piece of history: HAUNTED GROUND grew from a true story about two farmers cutting turf who came upon the perfectly-preserved, severed head of a beautiful red-haired girl. LAKE OF SORROWS sprang from many visits to Ireland's National Museum, perusing displays of mysterious votive offerings -- gold jewelry, weapons, and human beings -- found in bogs. My new book, FALSE MERMAID, is a bit of a departure, because it finally digs into the main character's backstory: pathologist Nora Gavin finally returns to Minnesota to tackle her sister's unsolved murder.

I usually also have an idea for setting before I begin -- for HAUNTED GROUND, I envisioned a 17th-century manor with an adjoining ruin of a tower house at the edge of a lake. I wanted to set LAKE OF SORROWS in a place that not many tourists would have seen, the barren-looking industrial bogs of the Irish midlands. It helped that my husband Paddy used to work on those very bogs, and was full of fascinating details about peat storms and blood-red sunsets that would help color my tale. (It also helped that Paddy's cousin discovered a 2,300-year-old corpse while digging a drain in a bog, just as I was finishing up research for the book. I really couldn't make this stuff up.)

For FALSE MERMAID, I knew that the Mississippi River would play a role in the story, because of the themes I wanted to explore...

At the risk of sounding like a major geek, I have to say that theme -- the central idea behind the story -- is really at the root of what I do. It's the single most important factor driving the plots of my novels. And once again, the writing becomes an investigation of my characters' thoughts and feelings around that central idea.

HAUNTED GROUND grew out of look back at Irish history, at all the various waves of invasion over the centuries and seeing that the lives of the conquerors and the lives of the people they conquered were far more intertwined than one might at first imagine. Archaeology has been a wonderful metaphor for me. I'm fascinated by the layers of the past that remain directly underfoot, how pieces of the past are constantly intruding into the present.

As William Faulkner once pointed out, "The past isn't dead. Hell, it isn't even past." LAKE OF SORROWS was about pagan sacrifice, and exploring the notion that humans have been repeating the same patterns -- the same beliefs and behaviors -- for thousands of years. How all of us are connected to the past in so many ways we don't even perceive.

So what's the theme in FALSE MERMAID? One of the few details I'd settled upon in the murder of Nora's sister was that she was killed by several savage blows to the face. In psychological terms, it meant that the killer somehow wanted to destroy her identity. At the time that I decided upon that detail, I wasn't even sure where it might lead. My other strong desire was to somehow connect the murder of Triona's sister with something that lies deep inside us, and that is a strong belief in the Otherworld. I'm fascinated by folklore about fairies, mermaids, and selkies, because those stories tell us so much about our fear of changelings, of people who can slip from one personality into another.

I wanted to play with the multiple meanings of the words "true" and "false." There's an awful lot of gray area between what is fact and what is fiction. And when the words "true" and "false" are used about a person, as they are in old traditional songs about true and false lovers, those words take on implications about faithfulness and loyalty. As Nora is exploring her sister's final days, I wanted her to face the possibility that she didn't really know Triona at all, that the person she discovers at last might be a complex, hybrid creature from mythology, half animal and half human, wild and even dangerous, a disturbing embodiment of the duality that exists in all of us. Even though Nora has suspected her brother-in-law all along, I wanted her to begin to doubt her own convictions about him as well.


And because I'm not satisfied with a single mystery, part of the story is set back in Ireland with Nora's sweetheart, Cormac Maguire, I gave him an historical murder case, the disappearance of a woman many people believed to be a selkie, a seal that could shed its skin and become human. In the folktales, the selkie only retains its human form if someone captures its sealskin; once the skin is returned, the selkie must return to the sea. Cormac comes to believe that the woman who disappeared was not a selkie who returned to the sea, as local stories maintained, but that she may have been murdered by her husband. It's a puzzle that seems unsolvable, since her remains have never been found.

As I write, I find that each of my characters embodies some aspect of the theme, and as the characters themselves develop, their thoughts and actions drive the plot. So that's why I don't know the ending before I arrive there, along with my detectives. As I said, I might have a few pet theories along the way, but I can't really know what will happen until I get to know each of the characters and discover what they might do.

I'm working on a new novel as we speak, based once again on a fragment of a real-life story, about a ninth-century book discovered in a bog -- but I'm adding something that wasn't in the real-life story: the ninth-century monk who was carrying the book. I think the theme for this one will be something about the power of language, and about Ireland's transition from pagan oral culture to a Christian society that revered the written word.

Growing a novel is such an intuitive, organic process for me, every single time. Maybe it's just that I don't know any other way to work, but I'm very curious to know how other writers begin! Where does the impetus come from, and when do you know that you have enough of an idea for a whole novel?

HANK: So interesting! I think I beging with the--well, I fear to reveal call it "the one cool thing." It's the twist or the scheme that's new and unique and suprising, usually something that begins as very ordinary, and gets twisted into something that makes it not what it seems. Then I have to discover out how to make a whole mystery out of that. How about you, Jungle Red readers?

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About ERIN HART
Erin Hart writes archaeological crime novels set in the mysterious boglands of Ireland. Her debut novel, HAUNTED GROUND, introduced readers to pathologist Nora Gavin and archaeologist Cormac Maguire.

In addition to winning the Friends of American Writers award and Romantic Times Best First Mystery, HAUNTED GROUND was shortlisted for Anthony and Agatha awards, and was named by Book-Of-The-Month Club and ALA Booklist as one of the best crime novels of 2003. Second in the series, LAKE OF SORROWS, was a Minnesota Book Award finalist in 2004, and now FALSE MERMAID, published on March 2, has been selected as an Indie Next notable, and won starred reviews from all the major trade publications.

In addition to being published all over the English-speaking world, Erin’s work has been translated into German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, Russian, and Japanese. She lives in Saint Paul with her husband, Irish button accordion player Paddy O’Brien, with whom she frequently visits Ireland, carrying out essential research in bogs and cow pastures and castles and pubs.

Visit Erin's website at http://www.erinhart.com/
her blog http://erinhartbooks.blogspot.com/.