The following article appeared in the “Community” section of the January 5/07 issue of The South Delta Leader (http://www.southdeltaleader.com), following an interview that took place in late December:
Identity Born
by Chris Bryan
Jan 05 2007
Life in a suburb can be idyllic, but it can also promote a feeling of isolation.
It’s those two dynamics that play a role in Vancouver writer Heather Burt’s debut novel, Adam’s Peak, which hit bookstore shelves last month.
“People often have mixed feelings about their place of origin,” said Burt, who grew up in west Montreal and Tsawwassen. “There are positive features of the whole suburban scene that come through in the novel, but also criticisms.”
Adam’s Peak centres on two families who live in homes on opposite sides of the street, but for all the contact they have they could just as easily be living on opposites sides of the globe.
On a stifling August day, six-year-old Clare Fraser and seven-year-old Rudy Vantwest make eye contact across their street. For an instant they are connected, then each turns away—Clare to the shelter of the garden sprinkler, Rudy to the excitement of his brother’s impending birth. Twenty-five years later, Clare and Rudy, strangers living continents apart, fixtures of each other’s memories and imaginations, are connected again. Overturning the guarded, insular lives they both lead, two events—one an accident, the other an act of terror—transform them both and bind the Vantwest and Fraser families irrevocably.
Burt says Adam’s Peak has been more than 10 years in the making.
Its genesis, surprisingly enough, came during her participation in the Anvil Press Three-Day Novel Contest in the mid-1990s.
“I wrote 30 pages of garbage, which I did submit,” Burt says, laughing. But she held on to the idea of a story revolving around two characters in two families living across the street with no contact.
“That was the germ of the thing,” she says.
Five years were spent “mucking around” with the draft and the last few years, she says, “had a much clearer sense and were more focused.”
Helpful along the way was her work completing a master’s thesis on the idea of identity.
“There’s a lot of identity politics that I find frustrating these days,” says Burt, who now teaches creative writing at Langara College.
One school of thought suggests we are shaped by the culture in which we were born, such as with the assumption that to be Québecois is to be a certain type of person—a sentiment Burt says feeds nationalism. Another school is based on the modern idea that identity is created from within, that we determine who we are.
Burt believes in a third philosophy—discussed in Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s writings on identity and self.
“Our identities are shaped through our relationships with the significant people in our lives,” Burt says. “The people in close proximity. Not just our family and our friends.”
These competing notions of identity have play in Burt’s book.
“I let them battle around a bit in the novel,” she says.
Throw in the cross-cultural divide—the Vantwests are of Sri Lankan origin and the Frasers are Scottish—and an act of terrorism and you’ve got some weighty themes.
But like all strong novels, Burt’s leads with what she hopes people will find a compelling story.
“We’ll see to what degree I’ve succeeded, but I’ve tried to tackle some significant stuff.”
Her next novel is already in the works. Burt is spending five weeks in a Costa Rica artists’ colony this month, where she plans to set to work in earnest.
Adam’s Peak, published by Dundurn Press, is available at Chapters and most independent bookstores. Visit (http://www.heatherburt.ca) for more information.
Copyright © 2007 South Delta Leader