The following article was published by the Victoria Times-Colonist, the local daily newspaper, following an interview with Grant Kerr*
Fallow period ends with a literary rush
Bailey, who teaches creative writing, recalls struggling to get the words out
ºGRANT KERRSpecial to the Times Colonist Grant Kerr is a journalist and writer who recently moved to Victoria from the Atlantic Coast.
D.F. Bailey
stands atop Anderson Hill Park and breathes in the coolish
winter air. As many times as he has been up here, the
Victoria-based writer is still awe-struck by the panoramic
view of the harbour from these rocks overlooking Oak Bay.
Bailey once lived in this neighbourhood and came here for
walks to clear his head. So too does the main character in
his new novel, The Good Lie (Turnstone Press, 2007,
$19.95), his third. There are other similarities between
the writer and Paul Wakefield, Bailey’s conflicted
protagonist. Both drive a Volvo, knew and admired the late
artist Jack Wise, have a love of jazz — particularly Miles
Davis — and are prone to philosophical utterances that
would seem trite if they weren’t so sincere.
Bailey uses his own experiences as the skeleton of the
novel, too. As an eight-year-old growing up in Montreal, he
nearly drowned on summer vacation and can still recall the
experience vividly. Decades later, he watched in horror as
his own son nearly perished in the icy waters of Oak Bay
during a sailing lesson. And, like his character, Bailey
once took paddling lessons and kayaked out to Discovery
Island, which the writer points out with a sweep of an arm.
These experiences hovered in the back of Bailey’s
consciousness for years, emerging only after he junked what
was to be his third novel, what he had hoped would be his
breakthrough hit.
This was the late 1990s. His first two books, Fire Eyes
(1987) and Healing the Dead (1992) had received some
critical praise, the former shortlisted for a literary
prize, the latter translated into German.
“I thought, I have two novels out, one went into
translation and I wanted to make a bestseller. I had a
manuscript and it wasn’t going anywhere and I thought,
‘What the hell am I doing?’” Bailey gave up writing for an
entire year. He hardly looked at his computer, didn’t read
a book. Around 2000, he got his mojo back and started
sketching out a scene for a new work, to see what would
happen.
An amiable chap with a full head of iron-grey hair and
wire-rimmed glasses, Bailey talks now of how his new novel
practically fell from his finger-tips. But he acknowledges
there were days when he had to give a mighty tug to get the
words out.
“It was hard, I was out of the groove, out of writing. I
had got out of the discipline…. [But] that’s one of the
beauties of this novel is that I had no plan. “It was a
gift. I delivered it.” While finishing a kayaking course
for novices, The Good Lie’s central character and a
13-year-old girl get separated from their paddling party in
the fog. A passing yacht swamps them and the girl panics,
nearly drowning Wakefield as he tries to scramble back into
his craft. To save himself, he hits her with his paddle,
rendering her comatose.
With no witnesses, Wakefield concocts “the good lie” of the
book’s title in order to save his family, his career and,
he tells himself, so the girl’s family can maximize the
insurance payout that it will surely collect. But he has to
live with the lie, good as it is, and the guilt.
Bailey, unlike Wakefield, has never hammered anyone into a
coma, nor has he faced the kind of moral or legal dilemma
in which his character gets entangled.
And better than most, Bailey understands human nature. He’s
a former school teacher and clinical psychologist who runs
the professional writing co-op program at the University of
Victoria.
Of his time as a psychologist/ teacher at the Eric Martin
institute in the late 1970s, he says, “I learned more about
the human condition in those three years than at any time
in my life.”
With his new novel, Bailey feels as if he has had a
re-birth of sorts. And with the story set in Victoria in
such familiar surroundings, the characters leap to life,
even for their creator.
“I feel strange talking about these characters as if
they’re real. But after spending so much time with them,
they become your friends,” Bailey says as we walk down
Anderson Hill’s rocks toward his car.
* Published here with permission from Grant Kerr