Flesh Wounds
by Mick Cochrane
List Price: $15.95
Pages: 274
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0140277226
Publisher: Penguin USA
Q: What inspired you to write this story, in particular, about the subject of incest?
A: I think the real subject of Flesh Wounds is family. It's about the injuries we suffer in families, injuries that may scar but not kill us -- Flesh Wounds -- and it's about the strength and comfort and healing we find in families. (I don't think of Flesh Wounds as about incest any more than I think of Ordinary People as being about boating accidents or suicide.) Hal's arrest is a precipitating event; it shakes things up; it makes it so things will never be the same again. For that reason, I think, it's a good beginning for a novel. It takes several hundred pages to record the tremors.
Q: Next to Hal, Phyllis could be considered one of the more reprehensible characters in the story, yet she seems to redeem herself in your eyes and even emerges as one of the most likable in the story. Explain why you constructed it in this way. Should the reader forgive her?
A: I don't know whether or not a reader should forgive Phyllis. I'd like a reader to understand her; I'd like a reader to believe in her; I'd like a reader to find her convincing and memorable. Of course Phyllis is a deeply flawed character. She's guilty of a great many sins of omission and commission, of misplaced loyalty, of a kind of paralyzing cowardice. At the same time, I think, she demonstrates a capacity for self-honesty and for change. Unlike Hal, she comes to think of herself as responsible for her own life. For her to sift through the stuff of her life and let it all go, once and for all, might be considered an act of quiet courage. I like her because she has a sense of humor; she can laugh at herself.
Q: You only briefly touch upon Geoff, yet it seems he is a very troubled and dangerous character. What did you imagine was happening/had happened in his life?
A: Geoff is troubled and dangerous. He is very much Hal's son, devoted to objects and surfaces, a man who does his damage in the dark. I didn't include an elaborate psychological history for him, in part because I'm suspicious of neat explanations of why people do what they do, in part because I don't think a reader needs it. I wanted a reader to feel his menace, the way Ellie and Calvin do -- glimpse it out of the corner of their eye -- the way we meet and respond to people we see every day.
Q: You write very convincingly from several different points of view, especially women's (of all ages). How do you account for these voices? Are the characters based on people you know?
A: To tell this story the right way, I knew I needed to do justice to more than one perspective. I am fascinated by competing family stories, by the way one person's version is never identical to his or her siblings' or parents'. I especially like narratives that seem to acknowledge that we are all puzzles to each other and puzzled by each other, that our knowledge is always incomplete.
When writing from the point of view of my women characters -- Phyllis or Ellie or Maureen or Becky -- I don't recall thinking of them so much as women as particular people. I never thought of them as members of a group or examples of a type. I thought about what each of them knew and didn't know, what they loved and what they feared. I thought about their dreams and what they ate. The kinds of words they used, what made them laugh. I imagined them in particular surroundings -- shopping for a baby shower gift, attending a furniture restoration class -- and tried my best to evoke the world as they experienced it, both the concrete world's sights and sounds and smells -- and their responses to it. I imagined what it was like to be someone else and wrote it down. That's what novelists do.
Q: Though inherently tragic, the ending of Flesh Wounds feels somewhat uplifting. How do you think each of the principal characters has made peace with his or her struggles?
A: I'm not convinced the novel is tragic. Hal is left defiant and unrepentant, cowering alone behind the door in his suburban hell, but he's no tragic hero. And at Embers, for example, there is a kind of unlikely coming together, a late-night communion -- pancakes and milk shakes that seems more the stuff of comedy than tragedy. Like life, it's a complicated mix -- sorrowful and funny, sad and joyous.
Ellie does achieve a kind of peace through work and faith, through her oddball prayers, through imagination and the love of her family. And after gaining a visceral understanding of his father and -- literally throwing him off, Calvin finds some sense of spiritual connectedness with his newborn daughter at the Good Shepherd Church. But most people never make peace with their struggles, not completely. Becky, for example, is scarred but resilient -- she has a long road ahead of her. So does Maureen for that matter, so do Dylan and Earl Bass.
Q: This story is very moving and emotional. Were there times when you got too involved and had to put it down because it overwhelmed you?
A: If a writer is deeply moved by something he or she has written, I think they should probably keep quiet about it. I will say that I never forgot that I was writing a novel; most of my emotions in regard to its composition were writerly -- the daily blend of curiosity and bewilderment and surprise. Writing the novel didn't feel overwhelming; it felt like intensely interesting and immensely satisfying work. And while I may never have laughed out loud, parts of the book did strike me -- and still do -- as funny.
Q: How do you feel about the comparison people are making to other books, in particular, to Ordinary People?
A: Naturally I'm flattered. Judith Guest showed that it's possible to make memorable and moving fictions by writing compassionately and accurately about everyday dramas. To be mentioned alongside her is high praise.
Q: What are you working on now? How does it relate to/differ from what you did in Flesh Wounds?
A: I'm writing a second novel about another -- different -- Midwestern family. Beyond that, I don't feel ready yet to compare and contrast.
© Copyright 2012 by Mick Cochrane. Reprinted with permission by Penguin USA. All rights reserved.
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