Readers will be forgiven for mistaking Mary Rose the hero of Ann-Marie MacDonald’s new novel Adult Onset with the author herself. “She’s me in a parallel world” says MacDonald who drew heavily on her personal experiences for the book.
The novel is the third in a loose trilogy she says thematically linked but stylistically different. “I seem to have snuck up on myself.”
Adult Onset will surprise fans of MacDonald’s two previous and wildly successful novels Fall On Your Knees and The Way the Crow Flies with a story that trades historical grandeur for the microcosm of family life. It details a week in the life of Mary Rose MacKinnon a famous Young Adult author in her early 40s who has traded her writer life for parenthood. Her wife is an in-demand theatre director whose busy schedule has made Mary Rose the default full-time stay-at-home parent.
The pressures of raising a two- and five-year-old test Mary Rose’s last nerves bringing back painful symptoms caused by bone cysts surgically removed as a child. As Mary Rose begins to reconsider her old memories she discovers that the cysts might not have sprung from a mysterious childhood illness but a bone fracture incurred in a moment of parental anger — much like MacDonald discovered herself.
“It was my left humerus” she says. “I did tell my parents about the material I was drawing on some painful personal experiences. I said it wouldn’t be published if it wasn’t honest and I wasn’t going to ask them for permission. Forgiveness doesn’t feel like forgiveness when you’re halfway working through it.”
MacDonald says that although she never reads her finished works she plans to read this one. “I’m going to read the book eventually” she says. “I have this sense that this book is kind of damaged tired and tattered — gets its shit together then blacks out again gets up and gets on with it. It reflects its process cognitive chaos.”
MacDonald started writing the novel when her youngest child turned five and started school. “I could stand some physical abandonment to engage in the marathon of fiction” she says. “I couldn’t work all night or take off on a research trip so I decided to work with what I know.”
She says the writing of Adult Onset was quicker than her previous novels. “Ask any woman who has borne more than one child — all the pain was packed into the first one” she adds.
Like Mary Rose MacDonald became a mother at the age of 44 (“Not a biological mother” she says “that part was taken off the table — it didn’t matter to me”) and is glad she waited until she was older.
“Toddlers are a massive amount of work” she says. “It can be really boring then a shit storm all hell breaking loose. My patience was tested but I knew when I was losing it. I don’t think I would have had that capacity when I was younger.”
Wordfest presents Anne-Marie MacDonald at Gals and Good Times on October 18 at Theatre Junction Grand; Banff Distinguished Author Series on October 18 at The Banff Centre; and Ryeberg Live on October 19 at Theatre Junction Grand.
