Louise Ells wrote her debut novel in a Scottish castle, and she’s bringing it to North Bay this Saturday, Nov. 23.
Her book, Lies I Told My Sister, from Latitude 46 Publishing, “Is a story about love, and family, and knowing when to hold on and when to let go,” Ells detailed in a release. “This novel explores how our childhood can shape us, and how much power we ascribe to the stories we tell — and believe — about ourselves.”
Ells elaborated, telling BayToday that the novel also delves into themes of loss, the importance (and fragility) of memory, and how a community collectively remembers as well.
“I’m very interested in liminal spaces,” Ells said, those places of transition, where one thing ends, and another begins. The author noted, “The now of the novel takes place in a hospital waiting room, which I consider very liminal because there are so many people coming and going.”
She offered some more examples, like “the Northeastern Ontario winter to spring, lakes and rivers. So, there’s a lot of liminality in the book and that is supposed to echo the frailty of human memory. When we remember an event, we’re really just remembering a memory.”
“That last memory we have of an event can become quite untrustworthy quite quickly,” she said.
These themes play out throughout the novel as sisters Lily and Rose reunite in an emergency room after Rose’s husband is badly injured in a car crash. As they wait, we learn Lily holds some secrets that could help her brother-in-law’s chance of recovery, but such a revelation will require her to delve deep and face her own childhood traumas — traumas she has yet to deal with.
The novel “explores how our community of loved ones can both buoy us up and tear us down and how lies of omission can cause profound chasms,” the publisher detailed in a press release.
Although Lies I Told My Sister marks Ells's debut as a novelist, she is no stranger to fiction. She has a short story collection, also from Latitude 46 Publishing, called Notes Towards Recovery. Ells also has a couple of handfuls worth of short stories published in top-shelf literary magazines, such as the Cardiff Review, Crisp, and Open Minds Quarterly.
She’s also a published poet and scholar and teacher as well, lecturing at many colleges and universities, teaching literature and creative writing. Her next teaching stop is right up the hill at Nipissing University.
Now what about that castle? Ells was awarded a Hawthornden Castle Fellowship, along the River North Esk in Midlothian, Scotland. The fellowship allows six writers to stay at the castle for a month, which gives them time to focus on their writing.
Ells was honoured to receive the fellowship and planned to use the opportunity to indulge in some more short stories. But alas, living at the castle changed her best-laid plans, and it was there that she turned her thoughts to this novel, and she wrote the entire first draft during her month at the 17th-century estate.
“It was incredible,” Ells recalled of her stay, “I was sitting in the castle library, and walking around the trails surrounding this castle, and I was fully engrossed with my characters the whole time.”
“They became so real, so quickly,” she added, and from there, the words flowed to page.
Now you can read those words for yourself, and hear the author speak as well. Join Louise Ells at Churchill’s restaurant from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at 631 Lakeshore Dr. in North Bay. It is free to attend. She’ll be speaking with fellow author Liisa Kovala, so you’ll learn much about the new book and the process that brought it to life. You can also purchase a novel at Churchill’s as well during the event.
You can also pick up a book at Barclay House’s Christmas Market at 600 Chippewa St. W., Saturday 1–4 p.m., in North Bay. For more information about Ells, visit her website at www.louiseells.ca.
David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
