Interview: Isabel Haarhus talks about Feral and other stories
Feral and other stories is an electrifying debut from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland writer Isabel Haarhaus. These vivid and beautifully written stories explore desire, exclusion, loneliness and friendship, often from the viewpoint of girls, women or migrants – outsiders by virtue of circumstance or temperament – who yearn, with passionate and dangerous intensity, to belong.
Congratulations on the publication of your first book! What drew you to short story writing?
I have always loved reading short stories, starting with fairy tales as a child and then moving on to Roald Dahl and then into adult short fiction: Janet Frame, Katherine Mansfield, Frank Sargeson, Chekhov, Charlotte Grimshaw, Tracey Slaughter, Carys Davis, Lucia Berlin, Alice Munro, Ottessa Moshfegh, New Yorker shorts stories, and the list goes on. It’s such a potent form, like poetry, and I have so many ideas on the go at once that it works for me to be working on several short pieces rather than committing to one idea. Plus, Aotearoa has a rich history of short story writing, so I am in excellent company.
What do you enjoy most about the writing process?
I am always collecting ideas and observations and then make connections between them to build them into a story. Getting the first draft down is the hardest part and then it’s going over and over and over it – similar to working in an orchard, moving up and down the rows – and tending to each word, then each sentence, paragraph and section. I love working with the materiality of language and enjoy all of it and just wish I had more time to do it!
Several of your stories are set in rural Aotearoa and convey a sense of freedom and wildness that feels very real. Are these stories based on your personal experience?
The first part of my childhood was in a village in Holland in which there were small farms and stables, so even there we were connected to animals and seasons. Then we moved to Kutarere, near Ōpōtiki, which is a very beautiful part of the country. Most striking for me as a child were the long, wild beach; the creeks and river we followed across remote farms for whole days; and the long gravel roads we wandered along to get places. I’m pretty sure we did everything in bare feet. To make some of the stories I drew on the freedom and expansiveness of that particular setting, and also on the foreboding loneliness of places like that. You could get lost or stuck or hurt, not knowing if and when you’d be found.
Other stories in Feral concern young women taking risks, at cross roads in their lives or at particular ‘coming of age’ moments. Why did you write these stories?
Thresholds and transitions and transgressions are what make a life. Pushing boundaries and taking risks come with danger, of course, but it’s also where the energy and revelations are, where things happen. Looking back, one might be shocked or ashamed at the risks one took and the luck one must have had to survive. I’m interested in the ways in which exploration can in a flash tip into danger; or, how in our longing for a particular sort of experience we might become careless and freefall.
What interests you about exploring the visible and invisible ways patriarchy shapes women’s lives?
Girls and women are by necessity trained and skilled from a young age to navigate patriarchal society and the misogyny that underscores it. I think we do it through masking and affecting a sort of ruthless insouciance, but also, sadly, sometimes by internalising the misogyny and neglecting each other and ourselves. Some of my stories look our predatory patriarchal culture square in the face, cultivating a flippant narrative voice in so doing, to enact the posturing that girls and women master in an attempt at safe passage. This aspect of the collection may be confronting and difficult for the reader. I don’t intend to offer answers, only write from what I know and see and hear.
The characters in Feral are richly descriptive, as is the feeling of time and place in the protagonists’ lives. Are there particular writers that inspired you to write in this way?
Yes, I do love vivid settings—place and time and their cultural cadence. I use colloquialism, music, clothes, food and attitudes to build the setting. Elena Ferrenta’s Nepalese novels are rich models in their evocation of two girls growing into women and making respective lives in a very specific time and place. Elizabeth Strout’s novels have made a particular part of American culture entirely vivid to readers, just as Ottessa Mosfegh’s and Lucia Berlin’s stories reveal a grittier side of America, picking up from writers like Charles Bukowski and Raymond Carver. As I was coming of age and making sense of my ‘setting’, Aotearoa, my understanding of the history of New Zealand’s Pākehā culture came mostly from reading Mansfield, Sargeson and Frame, while Jacquie Sturm and Patricia Grace offered glimpses into Te ao Māori. Reading is how I try to understand the world, so when I’m writing, I focus on bringing to life the time and place – and their values – through which the characters move.
You work full time as a teacher. Where do you find the time to write?
Yes, it’s not easy! Happily I am an English teacher so my job involves reading and I always read a lot for pleasure too – fiction, poetry, non-fiction – and keep several journals. Then in the weekends and holidays I chip away at it, going through my notes and putting it all together. When my children were I younger, I was lucky that my writer friends, Bronwyn Lloyd and Jack Ross, opened up a bach in their garden for writers. So that is where I went for several days each holiday to draft. More recently I have a room of my own at home in which to work. Once I’m at my desk, I set myself strict word counts and deadlines and have no trouble staying there. I love it.
What are you working on now?
As usual, I have several stories on the go and a couple of them are quite long. I’m working towards a novella, another form I love, so am re-reading some classic novellas, to refamiliarize myself with the shape of the longer short story. Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, Claire Keegan’s novellas, Tracey Slaughter’s The Longest Drink in Town, and Katherine Mansfield’s longer stories are each a Master Class in the novella. I am very much enjoying working on a new book.
Otago University Press
