Verve sits down with Charlotte Grimshaw to talk about her memoir The Mirror Book.
There’s a fine line between probing and prying. If relevant to the story, general questions about relationships are okay, but heading straight for specifics is lurching a little too much toward tabloid snooping for my liking. All bets are arguably off, however, when the interviewee—in this case, novelist Charlotte Grimshaw—has penned a soul-baring memoir, but that’s not to say it makes me feel any more comfortable about asking them. I’m not entirely convinced that Charlotte is all that comfortable about answering them, either, and I certainly don’t blame her. So, thank goodness for her lovely labradoodle, Philip, lounging in between us, an ever-grateful recipient of a pat or a gaze to help alleviate occasional awkwardness.
“It was a total reversal of my normal approach, of my modus operandi,” admits the author, one hand on Philip’s back. “When you write fiction, you can say anything you like about the characters, but with this you’re nervous about what you’re saying about real people. Then you’re talking about yourself in a way that was previously very alien. I was always very reluctant to confide in anyone about anything.”
It’s a surreal experience, sitting in the living room of one of Aotearoa’s most lauded writers discussing deeply personal issues which often involve her mother and one of Aotearoa’s most iconic cultural figures, C.K. Stead, who also happens to be Charlotte’s dad. I ask if she ever felt any competitiveness with him.
“I never had that feeling. I think I always just had a sort of confidence about what I wanted to do, while knowing that what I was doing was quite different in style. Although he could be intense and a disciplinarian, we always had a good relationship and I always felt able to stand up to him. He didn’t loom in that kind of oppressive way. Maybe if I was a son, there may have been more competition. But that was never any issue.”
Do you think he feels competitive with you? “I wouldn’t know. If he did, he wouldn’t say, but it’s not something I’m aware of.”
I point out that it appears her mother, Kay, is almost competitive on her husband’s behalf. In a standout paragraph a member of the public approaches Charlotte and favourably compares her literary talent with that of her dad’s. Kay later lets her disdain for the comparison be known with a shocking turn of phrase that leaps from the page like an uppercut to the reader’s chin. Even re-reading the sentence delivers a follow-up just as vicious.
“I probably shouldn’t have written that,” says Charlotte, “but it’s part of an interesting picture. So, I would say yes, you’re right.”
Have you had feedback from your parents about the book? “They were not happy. They didn’t want me to publish it.”
Isn’t your father currently writing an autobiography series? “Yes, he’s allowed to do that, but I’m not. I thought that I’ve played by his rules for so long that I’ll just do it anyway.”
Beautifully titled—and written—The Mirror Book reads more like a novel than a memoir, and one with, by the author’s own admission, an unreliable narrator. But then that was all part of the point. Memories fade, fuzz, and fracture, just like glass. Like a mirror. Memories are also so often so very personal and stored in a place of perspective that is ours alone. Experiences are open to interpretation, but facts and truth matter, and Charlotte goes in search of them all. Stead is so often so central to the book and his daughter’s focus that it sometimes feels as though it was written solely for him. More than once, Charlotte writes that as a child she’d tell him, “You are my favourite person in the world.”
Her childhood is a fascinating one of protest marches and European travel and houses frequented by famous writers and painters. But between the lines runs a current of uncertainty and of dread. Charlotte regularly references her therapy sessions and the tome itself often feels like a confession from an analyst’s couch.
I read that one of the reasons you wrote the book was to build better communications with your parents. How’s that gone?“Yes, I was really optimistic. I thought that now they’ll understand, you know, especially as I wrote about things that I’d never told them. I thought that maybe they’ll finally empathise. But it turns out that I was wildly optimistic.”
Charlotte also reminds the reader more than once about the quote from Czeslaw Milosz that “when a writer is born into a family, the family is finished”. When two are born, what chance does it stand, then—even if one is “my favourite person in the world”? With the dust having settled and having had more time to reflect, I ask if Charlotte harbours any regrets about penning the book.
“It makes me sad if I’ve annoyed them as I’ve always been a very devoted daughter,” she says. “I don’t feel it was wrong to publish it, I did it because I value the relationship with them. I did it to make them understand.”
The Mirror Book, published by Penguin Random House, is out now.
