When memory is gone, what is left behind? Award winning author, Susan Sinnott, joins us from her home in Newfoundland to chat about her recent novel, The Remembering. The book—which Lindsay gives five enthusiastic stars—follows three generations of Newfoundland women as they navigate the triumphs and difficulties of life and explores how memory—in its many forms—impacts our lives. Susan shares a bit about her writing process and how she creates "mountains of backstory" for her characters, why she chose to explore themes of dementia and memory, what types of books she thinks her characters would read and more.
About The Remembering:
Some memories are treasured, re-read like a favourite book. Some are traumatic and won’t stay buried. But memories can be unreliable, can fade and mutate. They affect our actions and choices.
Memories of a happy marriage comfort Liz through widowhood, while flashbacks to a devastating sexual assault overwhelm her youngest daughter, Eve. Her middle daughter, Carlie, is building a new life in another country but longing for home is pulling her back, while Ginny, the eldest, takes on everyone?s problems as her own. Eve’s daughter, Rosie, remembers nothing of her absent father and yearns to track him down against her family’s wishes.
Then Liz is diagnosed with dementia, and the family’s resilience is tested as the matriarch begins to falter. If life is all memory, what is left when it’s gone?
Memory is at the core of all these women’s lives: elusive, intrusive, helpful or misleading. What’s revealed is a story about the struggle to maintain a sense of family, home, and self, amidst all life can throw at you.