Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Tara Calaby on spiritualism, representation, and grief l Author interview
66 Plays1 month ago
Tara Calaby joins us on today's episode to discuss her latest novel, The Spirit Circle: a speculative historical fiction on the intersection of spiritualism and grief. The novel features women who are haunted by grief and come together as a church under the charismatic leadership of a medium. Tara discusses writing cult-ish dynamics in the story, marginalised identities in a historical context, and the impact of grief.
- Detailed show notes, and other links: linktree.com/novel_feelings
Content notes for this episode: death of a child.
Our podcast was recorded on Wurundjeri Land, which is home to both of us in Naarm/Melbourne. Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Guest Overview
00:00:09
Speaker
I'm Priscilla. And I'm Elise. Today we have an interview with Tara Callaby, where we are discussing her book, The Spirit Circle, and we're going to have a lot to talk about, including topics like spiritualism, grief, and neurodivergence.
00:00:24
Speaker
Yeah, so Tara Calabi is a writer, editor, and PhD candidate. She's currently living in West Gippsland with her wife. Her debut historical novel, House of Longing, came out in June 2023. The Spirit Circle is her second novel.
00:00:39
Speaker
Her speculative and historical short fiction has been published in many journals and anthologies.
Plot Synopsis: The Spirit Circle
00:00:45
Speaker
A little bit about the book. For Alan Whitfield, the betrothal of her dear friend Harriet to Alan's brother has brought both loss and solace.
00:00:53
Speaker
But when Harriet suddenly breaks off the engagement, ostensibly at the insistence of her deceased mother, Alan is bewildered. And when she learns that Harriet is involved with a spiritualist group led by the charismatic Carolyn MacLeod, she fears losing her friend altogether.
Themes: Historical Fiction & Women Support
00:01:09
Speaker
so it is that practical sceptical ellen moves into the gloomy east melbourne mansion where caroline along with her enigmatic daughter grace has assembled a motley court of the bereaved ellen's intention is to expose the simple trickery hidden cabinets and rigged seances the levers and wires that must surely lie behind these visits from the departed what she discovers is altogether more complicated And a huge thank you to Text Publishing for linking us together.
00:01:35
Speaker
This book is sort of like a niche that I forgot I had. ah Historical fiction in Melbourne, found family, slightly woo-woo. I don't know woo-woo is the right word. but you know they were Women supporting women. Yeah, exactly.
00:01:54
Speaker
All right. As usual, please check out our show notes for disclaimers and content notes.
Inspiration & Research Behind the Novel
00:01:59
Speaker
Let's get started with our non-spoiler questions first. Welcome, Tara, to Novel Feelings. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me.
00:02:08
Speaker
ah real pleasure to have you on the podcast. Let's let's jump into it. Congratulations on the publication of your second novel, The Spirit Circle. Thank you. What draws you to writing historical and speculative fiction?
00:02:20
Speaker
I think two two different things that actually coincide a little bit. Historical fiction, I'm just a history person. I've always been a history person. I'm a historian as well. History has always been, i guess, my dearest love since high school. My father was a history teacher, so I grew up with it. So,
00:02:38
Speaker
I think historical fiction combines my love of history and my love of fiction and literature. So it was a bit of a given, although it took me a long time to write. And then speculative fiction, I think it's just the all of the possibility that it has.
00:02:54
Speaker
You're not constrained by reality. i i do tend more towards science fiction. So there's you have to
Exploration of Spiritualism & Cult Dynamics
00:03:02
Speaker
make it make a little bit of sense, but there is that way of going outwards.
00:03:07
Speaker
And I think really both of them are just ways of I guess, exploring things modern world and the real world through different lenses. And I think that's what I like to do with both of
Queer & Neurodivergent Characters in History
00:03:19
Speaker
them.
00:03:19
Speaker
So, you know, if I'm writing fantasy, if I'm writing science fiction, if I'm writing historical fiction, the same concerns I think are coming up time and time again. i mean, I don't necessarily mean to write these things, but then I think, oh, okay, well, this is about robots, but actually it's about class.
00:03:36
Speaker
Or this is about, I don't know, dragons, but it's actually about capitalism the patriarchy whatever and I feel like it just gives you the way to explore things in a way that's I guess a little more interesting but also not quite as confronting as having to actually face the reality of of it and of course I quite like combining the two as well and I think it's a nice uh opportunity to sort of explore real world and modern ideas and concerns and challenges with quite a unique lens.
00:04:11
Speaker
So rather than taking something that's just purely contemporary and putting it contemporary context, you can use metaphor, you can use analogy, you can have parallels to things that have happened in the past and things that have happened now. So, yeah, both both great genres to be to be exploring and to be using.
00:04:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's this contemporary, it just it feels just a bit too real, a bit too close, and i I guess I like to have that little bit of distance. And I think that actually,
Character Dynamics & Personal Guilt
00:04:38
Speaker
strangely enough, my writing's more honest, more um personal and more vulnerable as long as I have that that distancing lens. For me personally, I know it's very different for other people, but I would struggle to have as much truth come out, I think, in just normal contemporary fiction. Yeah.
00:04:55
Speaker
And speaking of history as well, so we understand that you're currently a PhD candidate at La Trobe Uni. um We'd love to learn a little bit more about your PhD studies and how your research has inspired your writing of the Spirit Circle, if it has, of course.
00:05:10
Speaker
I'm researching female lunatic asylum patients from the mostly the Victorian period in Victoria. um It really actually inspired my first novel a lot more, which is
Ambiguity of Spiritual Abilities
00:05:22
Speaker
set largely in Kew Asylum.
00:05:25
Speaker
But ah the era of my second book is still very much what I'm researching. And it was actually inspired just by one particular patient's story and the patient had been involved with a spiritualist group.
00:05:39
Speaker
And it fascinated me because a leader of the group was a Christian pastor. And that that went against absolutely everything that I knew about Christianity and, you know, what we'd call the occult these days. It seemed the absolute opposite of what I would be expecting, you know, having grown up with Christian environments and things like spiritualism were absolute no-nos. And so that actually really inspired my interest in the spiritualism of the period, the
Cultural Influences on Spiritual Interpretation
00:06:12
Speaker
Victorian spiritualism, which, as I, you know, quickly found out, was very mainstream, was very much tied with the Christian church. And that's not to say all Christians believed in it, but a lot of them did. And it was that spiritualism really occurred through that Christian lens. It was combined with, you know,
00:06:31
Speaker
God and heaven and hell and Christianity in just a way that really interested me. And I think that's what made me think, well, I need to write about this. And, you know, it got a bit culty because I like cults. So, you know that's that's nothing to do with historical research. That's just me liking, well, not liking cults. That sounds dreadful.
00:06:50
Speaker
Being fascinated by cults.
00:06:54
Speaker
Same as well. Yeah. yeah I think I find
Belief Systems in Storytelling
00:06:57
Speaker
that topic so interesting. i did like I did one class of his historical history of psychiatry in undergrad and I'm fascinated by that era of the asylum and how women are put into asylums as well and that intersection between mental mental illness, hysteria and yeah what's the word gender dynamics I suppose but oh yeah we won't go too far into that tangent
Book Recommendations & Writing Style
00:07:24
Speaker
um I could go for a long time so it's probably a good idea yeah maybe if we're having a three-hour recording session yeah um
00:07:32
Speaker
And I know this is a dreaded question for PhD candidates, but how is your thesis going? um I'm in the writing up stage. she is ah It's going. we we've gone We've got most of a draft at this point. That's brilliant.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, like I'm at the point of being thoroughly sick of it, as we all get to, but yeah, the that it it'll get there, hopefully relatively soon because it's been a while. Yeah.
00:08:00
Speaker
It'll be a huge relief once it's done.
Conclusion & Listener Engagement
00:08:02
Speaker
The feeling when you finally press submit is just, yeah, amazing. Yeah, it'll be, yeah. i I'm looking forward to it. i think I think there'll be a party or something anyway. Well, there should yeah.
00:08:15
Speaker
Well, let's chat a bit more about the spirit circle itself. So in the book, the main characters are drawn together by the universal experience of of grief, though most of the characters are lacking closure or sort of wrestling with complicated grief.
00:08:30
Speaker
That includes like feelings of guilt. Can you tell us a bit more about how you approach that intersection between grief and spiritualism? I didn't actually mean to write a second book about grief because my first book was largely about grief and, you know, I felt like I dealt with it.
00:08:47
Speaker
But It's impossible to separate spiritualism and grief because it's it's really grief that, well, the more nefarious types of spiritualism preyed upon, but also it's what gave rise to this fascination with spiritualism.
00:09:04
Speaker
And one thing I always find really fascinating is that you know spiritualism was really huge sort of the middle of the 19th century. It was a bit later in Australia because, you know,
00:09:15
Speaker
Back then we were a bit behind. um But, you know, by the end of the century, it really had waned in popularity. But there was a massive revival with the Great War because everybody was losing people. And so I feel like that really shows that you just cannot separate the two, that...
00:09:32
Speaker
that It is just so much a part, grief is such a part of spiritualism as as a belief system because it's all about wanting to maintain ties with the people that you've lost and and also just wanting to believe that they are in a better place, that they're not just gone, that they they're still somewhere you may be reunited eventually.
00:09:52
Speaker
i think today when you think about things like this, it's it's more of a ah curiosity, I guess, a playing about with vehicle But back then it really was this, I guess, need to know. And the the bad guys amongst the spiritualistic crowd absolutely preyed upon people who were grieving because they were easy targets because how how better to get somebody's money than to say, oh, this child that you've lost, well, come here and you can talk to them again. You can see them again as um sort of a ghostly apparition. And, yeah.
00:10:31
Speaker
That opportunity for closure must be so incredibly enticing. um And yeah for these characters in that novel, so many of them are desperate to speak to the people that they've lost as well for various reasons. Yeah.
00:10:45
Speaker
you know Whether or not you think or the reader might interpret the head of the spirit circle, Caroline, to be predatory or not, um you can certainly see why these characters might be drawn into the spirit circle and why they might, you know even the sceptics like Alan, might eventually develop faith and you know believe that there is something here, even if it seems magical or strange or you know unbelievable at times.
00:11:14
Speaker
Yeah, and if if there's something that seems, you know, like proof, if suddenly there are actual phenomena happening around you, then you do start to think, well, I didn't believe in this, but...
00:11:28
Speaker
are we seeing something that actually shows that that it does exist, that that this is a thing? So, yeah. And characters like Alan who do enter the spirit circle specifically with the intention of finding finding the flaws, finding the faults, tearing it apart, as you might say.
00:11:46
Speaker
Where, you know, other characters in the spirit circle, i get the impression there was a kind of range of some of them entering that already had faith and some that might be a bit sceptical coming in.
00:11:58
Speaker
I guess this is where my my fascination with cults come into it. i I guess I came at it from the idea of what does draw people to these sorts of groups, skeptics or otherwise. what What does embroil you in something that you might – um ah outside that group might think, well, that's nonsense or I'd never fall for that. So I was really interested to see for different types of people what really would hook them in.
00:12:25
Speaker
And for some people it was absolutely a case of I want to talk to my loved ones. There are also a couple of characters who are lonely more than anything. So it's not as much about a belief in spiritualism as and need to belong and need to have that human contact. And And then Ellen's ah a bit more complicated because I think a lot of it for her is that she finds, I guess, a surrogate mother figure and that's what really draws her in more than the spirits and everything that she wants to please Carolyn.
00:13:02
Speaker
yeah Yeah, and a real sense of family that she begins to experience through her involvement in the spirit circle that yeah to a degree was lacking in her own family too. think we'll touch more on that in the spoiler section a little bit. I can certainly see why you know she would be drawn in by the other women in the group who are kind and caring and loving and welcoming towards her and other characters as well.
00:13:30
Speaker
Yeah, a family environment that she didn't necessarily have and I think that's the same of a couple of the other characters as well, that they're they're lacking that family, whether through loss or through situations. i mean, one person has children but they're on the other side of Australia. That's one of the big things i was looking at is what what does draw us to these types of religious communities. I think we all have a capacity if they hit the right buttons for us.
00:13:59
Speaker
Yeah, I have to say, it i think at one point, i could really relate to Ellen because I was going into the plot quite skeptical of Caroline and her ability. And then as Ellen was getting more and more intrigued, I was also getting more and more intrigued. And then at one point, I was like, hang on a minute, we've been here for months.
00:14:18
Speaker
You said that you were leaving after a day. Ellen, what's going on? ah Exactly, exactly. and I mean, I have to say that As I was writing it, my impressions of what was going on changed as well, and my impressions of Carolyn changed as I wrote her because that's I guess the sort of writer I am. I have a vague idea but then I let ah let the story play as it was. sorry I think I was a bit with Ellen to that extent. It's like, wait a second, this isn't why you're meant to be here. What's what's happening now?
00:14:48
Speaker
And ah in terms of the characters as well, you've got quite the fight the cast of characters in this novel, um including characters who are representing marginalised and underrepresented identities and lived experiences.
00:15:01
Speaker
including queer characters. You know, the novel features a queer romance quite at its centre and also a character who, what we interpreted at least to be written as neurodivergent. Can you tell us about how you incorporated or ah approached incorporating these characters considering the time period that the novel is set in?
00:15:20
Speaker
Yeah, well, absolutely. um Grace is 100% written as neurodivergent. I wrote her as autistic. I'm autistic myself. And I think the key thing with her is, of course, you can't say that because it wasn't a diagnosis. there was That wasn't the terminology.
00:15:37
Speaker
But certainly people with those traits that now would be diagnosed as autistic absolutely existed at that time. Mm-hmm. Even with my my research for my PhD, the case books, you know, you can find people that, you know, you don't want to diagnose just from notes, but you think, oh,
00:15:57
Speaker
think you're pretty neurodivergent. I'm seeing some quite familiar traits there. For that, it was a fairly, I guess, natural thing for me. I mean, that said, I have had a few people say that the protagonists of my previous novel that they read as autistic, and that wasn't intentional. But the problem is, given that I'm autistic, I think a lot of my characters do tend to seem a little neurodivergent. So I think, but Grace from absolutely from the start, it was, no, I intend her to be autistic, but obviously you cannot say that.
00:16:34
Speaker
And then again, queer characters, we, We know that certainly there's been queer people all throughout history. ah Again, a terminology is not necessarily there. A lot of the terms that we use these days really weren't at all being used at that point. A lot of them, there were other terms or generally less nice terms like invert and things like that were coming about.
00:16:55
Speaker
But a lot of that, the sexology, the rise of sexology was... Post my period, that was you know this ah the spirit circle was set 1888, and a lot of the sexology was the 1890s onwards. So again, you just you're caught with people that have always been there, but there's no terminology. There's no way of talking about it.
00:17:17
Speaker
And in one sense, that's freeing because you don't have to do the same thing. kind of cliched coming out story that you feel like, you know, otherwise you have. But in another sense, it's that, well, how do I talk about this when the character is going to see it so differently to a modern person and feel differently about it and not necessarily...
00:17:39
Speaker
consider it. I mean, these days, if you, you know, you just say, well, I'm a lesbian or whatever, but back then they wouldn't necessarily see that. It's not necessarily part of their identity in the same way that it would be these days.
00:17:50
Speaker
So it's a bit of a complicated process. It's fun to try and deal with I have to say that I am probably a little bit optimistic in how I deal with queer relationships because I like a happy ending.
00:18:04
Speaker
So I try not to be too anachronistic, but, you know, I think very optimistic is probably the best way of describing how accepting the people are around Ellen.
00:18:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that was something I mentioned to Elise, actually, after I finished reading that I thought it was quite refreshing that there's no hate on the page like Ellen's quite aware of that she's different but she's not she doesn't experience well apart from Harriet sort of saying you know I don't just love you that way she doesn't experience rejection or homophobia which is like it's quite lovely you know we don't need to see that in every book about queer characters Exactly. Yeah.
00:18:44
Speaker
And acknowledging that she's not, I suppose, open and and out in a modern sense as well. But it was, yeah, I i completely agree with you. was nice to see her wrangling with her um sexuality and, but still having that happy ending, even if she can't be, you know, out in the the modern sense of the word.
00:19:04
Speaker
Yeah. I hope that makes sense. No, no, it makes sense. And I mean, you know, we... I don't want to write about homophobia. That goes back to me sort of saying we can talk about the real world, but it's too real if I get too close to it. I want to i much prefer to deal with, um I guess, like love rather than hate and acceptance rather than rejection and things like that. So obviously it's limited if you're looking at it in a historical period, but it's important for me to write queer characters who...
00:19:37
Speaker
aren't just queer, that it's just that that is a part of their personality. It's a part of the story, but it's not really about them being queer. And so, yeah, starting to deal with homophobia and everything, it it just starts to be about their queerness.
00:19:53
Speaker
I also feel like we have a lot of representation of homophobia on the page and on screen as well. So, yeah, we've we've read those stories. I'm here for stories focused on love rather than experiences of hate.
00:20:06
Speaker
Yeah, especially with the world as it is right now. I think we have so much hate. Let's just escape it when we get to read fiction. Absolutely. Lovely. There's nothing wrong with being a bit and anachronistic sometimes as well.
00:20:17
Speaker
Yeah. yeah um Anyway, there this is the question that we ask all of our interviewees. Do you have any book or author recommendations that you would like to share with our listeners?
00:20:28
Speaker
I have so many. Well, one of my favourite authors is Emma Donoghue, which I think a lot of people know her from Room. That was her really big one that exploded, but I love her historical fiction.
00:20:41
Speaker
And last year, my my first five-star book and my last five-star book of the year were both by her. And that's Learned by Heart, which was her fictionalisation of Anne Lister, who is a very famous historical lesbian, also um Gentleman Jack. There was a fairly recent um British TV series about her.
00:21:04
Speaker
So that was sort of in a school and Lister at school. So if you like boarding schools and you like historical lesbians, that's amazing. And then ah the at the end of the year, my last favourite book I read for the year was Haven, which is completely different from anything else she's ever written. was doing a lot of reading about religious communities last year, not intentionally, but I think that's just the place that my head was in.
00:21:28
Speaker
And Haven is actually about three monks going off to a sort of a deserted little rocky island um in Ireland and forming, I guess, a very small community there. And that's and that was...
00:21:42
Speaker
completely unexpected because it started off like a little adventure tale and turned out to be such a an amazing commentary on um religion and religious obsession and everything like that so I guess author is Emma Donoghue but um her two I think that's the most recent and the third most recent of her books and yeah so learned by heart and haven Wonderful. Thank you. Well, I've read Room, but I haven't checked out any of the other works by Emma Donoghue, so now I'll have to add those to my TBR.
00:22:14
Speaker
Yeah, definitely her historical fiction is amazing. Brilliant. yeah Okay, well, I think it's time that we dive into spoilers. So, listeners, if you haven't gone and read The Spirit Circle, now is your time to pause the episode, do so, and come back because we're going to dive into a few things that happen in around the second half of the book, plus some big picture spoilers as well, I suppose. Yeah.
00:22:38
Speaker
So first of all, there are times throughout the novel where we were wondering if the church actually is, or at least was veering towards becoming a cult, as we touched on earlier. However, there is, of course, something lovely about the women forming a community in their times of grief and finding that sense of family.
00:22:56
Speaker
Can you talk a little bit more about that dynamic? So, you know, the balance between cult and healthy family, where do you where do you think the spirit circle fits in there? I think it wavers a little bit. I think that there are times that it's actually quite healthy and times when it's very unhealthy.
00:23:13
Speaker
ah Initially, it was planned to be more unhealthy than it actually turned out because I just seem to have a fascination with carcinoma. ensemble casts of women who are ah very supportive and really positive influences on each other. But, of course, there are these cultish elements as well. And I think the big thing is that they that the group does isolate its members from the outside world. the idea is that they all come and live together in this East Melbourne mansion and that it also really does try to sever outside relationships a lot of the time.
00:23:54
Speaker
Not always explicitly, but I mean, the the book starts because Harriet has just broken off her engagement to Ellen's brother. So right from the beginning, you think, okay, so this is very much a red flag that this religious group is actually...
00:24:10
Speaker
cutting people off from their outside loved ones. So that is definitely a bad thing that they do and that's an ongoing thing. ah So yeah, I think that's the biggest red flag about the group. You know, that's always a bit of a red flag for an abusive relationship in any sense, whether it be romantic, whether it be friendship, whether it be religious.
00:24:32
Speaker
But at the same time, it is actually a genuinely supportive group of people who are truly friends with each other. And if we we can get really spoilery because this is the spoiler section, and I think that that is shown by the fact that at the end, even when it's over, they still maintain these friendship bonds. Even once the reason for them being friends goes, a lot of them still are actually friends interested in each other, spending time with each other, attending each other's weddings.
00:25:02
Speaker
We're going to spoil it right to the end. yes sorry Last few pages, let's see. So, yeah, I think that it is. at I think that's really what I wanted to try and do is because if it's so obviously bad, i mean, you know, there's fun in that, but at the same time, there's no nuance. And it's much more interesting to me to play with, well, something can be both good and bad at the same time.
00:25:25
Speaker
It makes me think of, ah I don't know if either of you have ever listened to Sounds Like a Cult, which is Amanda Montel's podcast, but in that they talk about sort of modern day cults and cultish things. And they always rate the cults that they talk about as somewhere on the spectrum between live your life, watch your back and get the fuck out. And I feel like the spirit circle is somewhere in the middle there. Maybe it's a watch your back. Yeah, I think definitely more of the watch your back than anything else. Because it also, I think, depends on the characters, because Ellen wasn't about to cut off her brother.
00:25:59
Speaker
So I think that also if you're a bit more strong-willed, maybe it's not quite as dangerous as it is for some other characters. But yeah, watch your back, definitely. Yeah. What you said about it, it could be both good and bad. I could see that in the character.
00:26:14
Speaker
Sorry, I forgot her name. the the what The woman who is half Chinese. Yeah, Frances. And i can see how it's so appealing for like Margaret and the other women to say, no, don't respond to your aunt. Like she disowned your mom. Like what if she's just going to reject you?
00:26:32
Speaker
And I guess being... I could see how that would feel like, well, why would I risk this again if when I already have this family who's looking after me and clearly accepts me for who I am? Exactly, yeah.
00:26:44
Speaker
Then we find out at the end that the aunt actually was trying to make amends. Yeah, that's my optimism possibly again. i mean, that always it's that that comes out always in the, I want the happy ending for everybody. But yeah, exactly. it's um It's a lot easier to persuade someone that outside influences are negative if they have that history ah because she she's known only rejection from her mother's family.
00:27:10
Speaker
We can look at it as a red flag, but it can also be a green flag that these people are acting like friends and trying to protect her in this situation because it has been a ah bad thing for her in the past and you know that she she does have an inheritance now that it is a risk and everything like that.
00:27:27
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. We sort of alluded before that some of the characters have experienced this with complex grief. And in Ellen's case, that's very much true. We learned that she had a little sister who died when Ellen was 12 and she was supposed to be watching Bella, the little sister.
00:27:46
Speaker
Though, of course, there's a lot of, you know, can a 12 year old be given this responsibility really? But she carries that guilt with her. Can you talk a bit more about how that guilt shaped Ellen?
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think that really, yes, because we can look at that and go, well, can a 12-year-old? And I think that most adults, and I even think of that in a way Ellen understands on one level that really she isn't responsible. But these things that really affect us as kids, these things that we believe as kids, they're so hard to let go of whatever they are, these just these huge beliefs.
00:28:24
Speaker
So for her, as a 12-year-old, she thought that she was responsible. She killed her sister, essentially. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much her her brother says she didn't. It doesn't matter how much her best friend says she didn't. Even if her parents said that, you know, it wasn't her fault, that's just so ingrained in her because of the age that it happened at. And I just think that we we have these these beliefs and I think around that sort of you know puberty age in particular seems to be a really vulnerable time to pick up these horrible beliefs about ourselves that, um well, your psychologist, this is basically, you know, this is this is your day job, is trying to um get people to release these these these ways of thinking that that don't serve us at all well, but they're just hard to get rid of.
00:29:16
Speaker
So i think that, you know, for me, so much of that does come from the age that she was when it happened. And think for her it's a little less about grief for Bella, although of course there is that.
00:29:30
Speaker
I think it's more about grief for her parents, grief for her family, grief for the the life that she might have had because for her the loss of her sister is only – heart of it, the bigger loss really is that she loses her parents too. Even though they're still alive, she she loses their affection because they basically turn off. And at 12, she becomes ah basically a mother to her younger brother, Will, as well. So ah it's all very complex. I'm always quite interested in delving into these
00:30:02
Speaker
sort of childhood hurts that stick with us and shape us. And I think it's hard for her to let go partially because it's just such a huge part of her.
00:30:14
Speaker
she's She's spent, um what, 18 years seeing herself as the reason her sister is dead. And if she lets go of that, who is she? it's it it really it's become a part of her identity, I think.
00:30:27
Speaker
And, of course, her parents are reinforcing that, perhaps not intentionally, but with the the coldness and the distance in their relationship. you know We see them interacting throughout the book and it's certainly not an easy, loving relationship that they have. can see why that would be reinforced into adulthood if her parents are unable to let that go um as well.
00:30:47
Speaker
Yeah, and I think... um Unfortunately, that just sometimes does happen. People, they they lose a child and ah unfortunately their other children lose them, if not in quite an extreme way. It does always change the family dynamic once that happens. It's hard not to blame yourself when it feels like you you're being punished, think, especially at 12.
00:31:12
Speaker
You don't have an adult way of looking at that. You just know that suddenly your parents don't seem to love you anymore. And so we can certainly see why Ellen might be unintentionally seeing Carolyn as a bit of a ah mother figure as as the novel progresses.
00:31:29
Speaker
We did want to talk a bit about Carolyn in general, so we'll circle back to the relationship relationship between Carolyn and Ellen. Towards the end of the book, Grace shares more of her and car Carolyn's backstory.
00:31:42
Speaker
yeah We understand that Carolyn has, at least to some degree, been putting on the face of being a medium, that there has been some trickery involved and so on. And Grace says at one point that Carolyn has difficulty separating dreams from reality.
00:31:58
Speaker
Can you tell us about how Carolyn sees herself and understands her own abilities? I think that that changed for her. I think that initially, so I'm saying I think, because for me, it was really important ah with this book was I didn't 100% want to know myself exactly what was going on at every point. I wanted there always to be something a little bit up in the air. And if I knew 100%, I didn't think that that was going to come out.
00:32:28
Speaker
entirely. So a lot of these, I feel like, well, these are my my opinions rather than this is necessarily what happened. But the idea was that really she started with the mediumship as a way of surviving.
00:32:41
Speaker
I do think that she has some kind of ability and whether you believe that that's actual some kind of clairvoyant ability, or she's just one of these people who is amazing at reading other people, but she has some way of understanding people that I think has served her. So she is able to do some things that we can't all do.
00:33:02
Speaker
I really should be saying this more like as an authority, but yeah, characters, they do what they want. um So I believe that she actually really began to believe in her own abilities quite deeply. And I think that she is somebody who quite like Ellen was really drawn to this idea of being special, this idea that could she'd come from a a background, she um you know she'd been working class, she had immigrated to Australia after having a child out of wedlock.
00:33:37
Speaker
So she'd gone from this a poor existence where she was shamed by society to an existence where she was perceived as middle class and special. and so I feel like that's such a drawcard for her and a reason for her to two believe in these abilities.
00:33:56
Speaker
so um I think, again, it's that idea of even if you don't necessarily in the first place, if other people believe that you have these abilities, that can become quite seductive. And certainly once she gets into Melbourne and she has Margaret actively promoting her as you know this amazing medium,
00:34:18
Speaker
And she starts, I guess, things start happening that she is not doing herself. And so I think at that point, certainly she starts thinking, wow, okay, great. I'm actually, I'm pretty good at this. This is, I'm pretty special. So I think that by that point, she really is believing in herself.
00:34:38
Speaker
it's part of me that's just tempted to make you as an author just give us clearly like what is the absolute truth of these characters? But I know that's not a very nice thing to do and also not how authors necessarily think about their own worlds.
00:34:51
Speaker
So I will not do that. But as a reader, I was certainly curious about that. so i'm I'm not going to push that point upon you, but... Gosh, I was so curious. And, know, you certainly left room open in the reader's mind to to think about that and think about the different possibilities of how much does she believe, how much is their ability What exactly is Margaret doing? How did Margaret do all these trickeries? Like how did the table hover? How did the bell ring? All of that stuff.
00:35:16
Speaker
But I think that's important to leave some of that ambiguous. So I'm just going to stop there. Yeah, well, i that that was my intention, that there's some things that Margaret absolutely did.
00:35:27
Speaker
But there are other things that in my mind Margaret possibly didn't do. And I wanted that to always be a case of... Okay, so some of it was definitely trickery. the The really fancy phenomena was absolutely trickery. But was there something going on? Is there something below that stuff that actually was real, was happening? And i i really didn't want to come down on one side or ah another. And I think it comes down to what the reader believes. If the reader believes that this is possible, then they can say, oh, well, some of it was wrong, but some of it was real.
00:36:02
Speaker
if they think it's all complete codswallop, well, yeah, they'll be like, oh, well, it was all faked. It may not have all been Margaret, but it was all faked. You know what I find fascinating is that even Elise and I had different perspective on this.
00:36:16
Speaker
Yeah, that I was like, ooh, I think some of it is real. And I think Elise, you were more like, no, that's all, it's trickery. Yeah. We completely interpreted the ending differently and we were chatting about it. And um I put it down to the fact that i've read I finished reading the book quite late at night, at like midnight on a weekday.
00:36:32
Speaker
And then I messaged Priscilla the next morning and she's like, this is not what happened. So maybe we're both correct. but I think sorry But also I was going to say, you know, I'm, I come from a culture where Christianity and spiritualism kind of can coexist. So I think maybe in my mind, it's entirely possible that some people can talk to spirits, even if it's not in like, you know, complete sentences, I suppose.
00:37:01
Speaker
Yeah, and I think, look, I'm very, I guess I'm very open to a lot of things. I think that there are things that I can't necessarily explain. I guess I have that ambivalence myself towards these things. So I don't want to say there's definitely no one can talk to spirits because just because I can't, that doesn't mean there isn't somebody out there who can. So um I think, yeah. Whereas having consumed a lot of cult-related movies and TV shows recently, as well as having watched things about how like mediums fit full people and all the tricks they use, I'm the type of person that will watch those behind-the-scenes magic shows to try to figure out how the magician did it. So that's probably the bias that I'm bringing towards my interpretation of the story.
00:37:45
Speaker
And that, I mean, that comes from way back in spiritualist times because um Houdini was one of the you number one people who were against spiritualism because he he was basically the magician saying, it's all magical tricks, let me show you. So Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle, so Sherlock Holmes versus the magician pretty much, they that they had a real...
00:38:08
Speaker
interesting back and forth because Conan Doyle believed and Houdini very much didn't. So he was kind of like the pen and teller of the 19th century. But on the other hand, i've I've also seen examples, and this is probably from like A Current Affair or something trashy that I watched many years ago, but I remember watching a segment where they had a fake medium sort of do the reading and, you know, say like, oh, it's, you know, your granduncle John who passed away or the the way that they approached that and just speaking to somebody who had lost someone.
00:38:42
Speaker
And at the end, the fake medium said, like, this is how I did this and this is how I used my tricks to make it seem like this you were, you know, communicating with someone who'd passed.
00:38:52
Speaker
And the person was like, I still think you did it. Like, I still believe that you were actually talking to someone because that was too uncanny. So even when people know that there's fakery involved, it can still be very powerful.
00:39:05
Speaker
um Just like there are real benefits to placebo effects sometimes. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking of when you're saying that, that, you know, you can know that you're being given a placebo and it can still work. And I think that's just so fascinating. It's the mind is...
00:39:21
Speaker
pretty incredible when it comes to things like that. and And some of it is just wanting to believe too. Because, I mean, there are there are some great 19th century books that are, you know, confessions of a medium that do tell all the tricks that people use.
00:39:35
Speaker
And some of them you think, well, why why were people believing in this? I mean, the key thing, you know, in the later stage was there was a cabinet, which was usually fabric, that the medium would go into and then a ghost would come out.
00:39:51
Speaker
while the mid media And you think, well, surely it's really obvious that this is the medium. I mean, people believed And I think it really just does come down to they wanted to believe it. They wanted so desperately to believe it, to think that they're seeing...
00:40:07
Speaker
an actual spirit form that they're happy to put aside the idea of like, well, isn't this a little bit fishy that she left and then the spirit came out? And I think it's the same thing as, you know, you're saying that the person could say, no, I made this all up. And they're like, no, I want to believe this so much that I actually think that something is still there.
00:40:28
Speaker
It's fascinating, isn't it? It is. That's why I had to write a book about it. Amazing. Yeah, that's interesting. I think I was also interested in Caroline as a maternal figure because as we've touched on, she becomes that for Ellen, but she ah actually does have a daughter in Grace and they that they have quite an interesting relationship in my perspective in that sense.
00:40:52
Speaker
At times, Grace seems to be the parent in that relationship. Would you mind talking a bit more about that sort of comparison between the two relationships? Yeah, I agree that definitely Grace is the carer of that relationship, which means that it is quite interesting, really, that Carolyn is able to be, i suppose, the carer for it Ellen.
00:41:16
Speaker
And I think it partially just comes down to the fact that um Grace has been there and had seen her mother at her most vulnerable. And there is that deep love because for a while it was just the two of them. And so there is that relationship forged from that. Certainly as the book goes on, you start to see a little bit of ambivalence from Grace in that she is very protective of her mother, very caring towards her mother, but also not necessarily approving of her mother and her mother's actions. And of all the people in the house, she is the one person that absolutely 100% does not believe in any of what's going on.
00:42:00
Speaker
um largely because she was there at the beginning. She knows the truth of Carolyn's past and her own past because that's the thing. This is her past, not just Carolyn's. i I suppose if i if the book could have been twice as long, it might have been really interesting to see how that continues on this idea.
00:42:19
Speaker
if we go on beyond the ending, if if we have Ellen and Grace and Carolyn all living together, how those sorts of relationships change once you know that you've got sort of this i guess surrogate mother whose daughter is almost her surrogate mother and it gets really tangled, but that's what families are. Families are really complex and complicated and you know that you can be both carer and carey at the same time.
00:42:51
Speaker
And I suppose it was also, i think this is deviating slightly, but Grace is so protective of Caroline, i assume, because she can not only be thrown in jail, but also in an asylum.
00:43:02
Speaker
Would that be correct? Yeah, at that time, if you talk about spiritualism, that's the risk. oh Not spiritualism as such because it was super mainstream. Like mainstream as in our second prime minister was, I think, the president of the Victorian Spiritualist Society at one point. Queen Victoria was into it. So it had a mainstream aspect, but if you got too into it... Certainly there's a lot of patients who were in asylums where spiritualism is given as the cause of the illness.
00:43:35
Speaker
So I think there's this idea that it could actually, i guess, spark something that might already have been within you, that you can get too involved into it. So I don't think it was so very much her spiritualism that she was worried about the fact that Carolyn is a little bit not 100% in touch with reality at times.
00:43:55
Speaker
And I actually don't think, you know, as as somebody who has been reading so much about asylums for seven odd years now, I actually don't think Carolyn would have been put in an asylum personally, but that doesn't mean that Grace wouldn't be terrified that that might happen.
00:44:12
Speaker
happen because there was such a fear in society of ah unjust confinement, especially for women. And that was, you know, but with sensation novels, it was all through that. And Grace is a big reader. So she would have read all of these novels and also the newspapers because that's people being put in an asylum because they clearly needed to be is not good news, but people being locked away for nefarious purposes is excellent news. That sells newspapers.
00:44:44
Speaker
So I think it's less that she really would have been and more that there was a genuine fear that she would have been.
00:44:54
Speaker
I think we might leave it there for today. So thank you so much, Tara, for joining us. um It was such a fascinating chat and, yeah, really loved hearing more about the Spirit Circle. Thank you. I've loved having the chat and loved being here.
00:45:08
Speaker
And that wraps up our interview. So a huge thank you to Tara for joining us. And as usual, our detailed show notes are available on novelfeelings.com, including Tara's social media handles and book recommendations.
00:45:21
Speaker
The Spirit Circle is out now through text publishing. And that wraps us up for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you like us, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:45:34
Speaker
You can find us online in lots of places, including Instagram, YouTube, and the Storygraph through Novel underscore Feelings, or search Novel Feelings Community on Facebook to join the conversation.
00:45:46
Speaker
If we have entertained you or taught you something, please consider buying us a coffee to show your thanks. Link in the show notes. All proceeds go towards making the show stronger and more sustainable. Thank you all for listening today. We'll see you next time.
00:45:59
Speaker
Bye. Bye. Our podcast was recorded on Wurundjeri land, which is home to both of us in Naam, Melbourne. We also acknowledge the role of storytelling in First Nations communities.
00:46:11
Speaker
Always was. Always will be. Aboriginal land.