Andrew Pyper will do anything for a good story
Andrew Pyper’s new novel The Killing Circle set in Toronto follows fast-sinking protagonist Patrick Rush. His wife has died and he struggles to raise their son alone while facing demotion and disillusionment at work. Feeling the need to find some meaning in his life Rush joins a writing group hoping to start on the novel he feels will be his salvation. Unfortunately no one in the writing group seems to have much in the way of talent except Angela. She tells a disturbing story of the Sandman an evil man who does evil things. As Angela reveals a new chapter each week Patrick finds himself showing up just to know how the story will play out. Then a real serial killer appears in Toronto and his technique is just like that of the Sandman. The need to know how Angela’s story will end takes on a new urgency — especially when the evidence points to Patrick as the killer.
In a recent visit to Calgary Pyper noted that some people will do anything for a good story. “Story is everything. It’s how we understand others ourselves. It’s what politicians try to sell us how wars start how we fall in love. And of course story is what writers need. I’m certainly always on the lookout for ideas anecdotes jokes barroom tales.”
Pyper’s first novel Lost Girls captivated the fiction world with the story of crooked lawyer Bartholomew Crane. The book won the Arthur Ellis Award for a first novel in the crime genre. At first he bristled at the idea of his work qualifying as a thriller or mystery but he is more comfortable with the labels now always bearing in mind that he tries to write the most engaging provocative exciting novels possible. “People can call them what they want so long as the category they cite isn’t used to disqualify the book in advance. As for thrillers in CanLit: it’s something we don’t really do here is it? Our literature tends towards the quiet the sombre the earnest remembrance. It’s our specialty our brand. But that’s not the kind of story — or more to the point the kind of tone — that interests me. My primary criterion is excitement.”
Canadian culture and scenery figure prominently in each of Pyper’s novels . “I was born in Canada live in Canada and have travelled throughout Canada. It’s home so naturally it figures in my work though not consciously. I’ve never set out on a novel thinking ‘Here’s my big Canadian novel’ or something so self-aware as that. Canada is just the cultural air I breathe. Having said all that one of my ambitions is to shift or broaden however slightly what we understand as the Canadian novel. To challenge what we think of as the ‘Canadian voice.’ I would be delighted if my books were seen as opening the doors a little wider.”
Pyper’s novels ( Trade Mission Wildfire Season ) are appealing for their movie-like feel — twists and turns psychological suspense surprise endings — but he tries to avoid thinking about his books as movies when he is writing. “If I thought about it that way it would never get written. Or if it was written it would be shit. I love movies but movie storytelling melts all the idiosyncrasies and rambles and many of the ideas away. Movies have a fundamental sameness to them. But novels have to be themselves have edges be a little odd.”
There is also room in Pyper’s novels for a little social commentary. In The Killing Circle Patrick Rush mourns the slow demise of the arts section of the paper he writes for which devolves from meaty literary criticism to celebrity junk-food snippets and TV listings. When asked about the state of literacy in western culture Pyper notes that “there’s no question that the place of books in mainstream culture is shrinking. And to some extent I think we in the book biz are partly to blame. We’ve overlooked storytelling in favour of life lessons or comfort or moral reaffirmation. Dickens meant so much to the culture of his time not because books meant more back then but because he was a writer who grappled with the issues of his day in an entertaining suspenseful way. I don’t blame the Internet or Grand Theft Auto for the diminished place of books so much as I blame books’ retreat to the safe corners.”
For his next novel Pyper plans to take his readers back to their childhoods to the old abandoned houses that could be found in many towns and neighbourhoods. “I want to write a novel about grown-ups who must return to such a house. One that you’d cross the street just to avoid walking in front of and confront what really happened inside its walls when they were kids… and how it formed who they are today. I believe there’s a haunted house in all of us.”
