MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In the opening pages of Emma Knight's debut novel, she describes a typical student breakfast at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Scrambled eggs, too puffy to be true, she writes, also, baked beans with a faint aftertaste of ash, pliable triangles of potato bread, and something darkly sausage-like. Well, I had to smile reading this, having been a student at a British university myself back in the '90s. Along with breakfast, Knight's novel takes on subjects of motherhood and female friendship and first love. The novel is "The Life Cycle Of The Common Octopus." Emma Knight, welcome.
EMMA KNIGHT: Thank you for having me. It's a joy to be here.
KELLY: And I have to congratulate you on the alarmingly accurate description of the darkly sausage-like food (laughter) as you're describing the cafeteria offerings for students in Britain. Is this a delight you experienced firsthand?
KNIGHT: It absolutely is, although, my favorite was the porridge.
KELLY: Oh, which they do quite well.
KNIGHT: Extremely well.
KELLY: All right. So tell us about your protagonist. Her name is Pen, and she has just arrived as a student in Edinburgh.
KNIGHT: Yes. So Pen is an overachieving, 18-year-old late-bloomer from Toronto. Her real name is Penelope, but she goes by the on-the-nose, on purpose nickname, Pen. She aspires to be a magazine writer. And she doesn't really believe in marriage, so she's cut off the elope.
KELLY: (Laughter) Oh, I didn't even catch that as I was reading, but that's great. Yeah. Go on.
KNIGHT: So she, throughout her childhood, could sense that her parents were hiding something from her. And at age 18, she decides that she's going to find out what.
KELLY: Yeah.
KNIGHT: She goes to the University of Edinburgh, in part, to get far away from where she grew up and have adventures, but also because she wants to find an estranged friend of her father's.
KELLY: This is a man named Lord Lennox.
KNIGHT: Yeah.
KELLY: And he is also an elusive Scottish writer of mysteries. Tell us more about him and his family, who we get to know quite well.
KNIGHT: Yes, so Elliot Lennox has been dubbed the peerless peer by the press. And he is a well-known author of detective fiction whose series of novels have been gripping the world for over a decade by the time Pen tracks him down. And he is one of those fortunate people who found the right job for his talents. He grew up in a beautiful, crumbling castle on the east coast of Scotland. And he is extremely welcoming toward Pen, to a degree that surprises her. He invites her to spend the weekend. She writes him a letter through his literary agent, not even really expecting a response. And he writes back, inviting her to come on the train and spend the weekend.
So she does, and she meets his seemingly perfect family - his captivating wife, Christina, and his son, Sasha (ph). She keeps tugging at the thread of this family secret that she knows exists, but she doesn't know too much about it. And he does just about anything to make her feel welcome, except for answering her direct questions.
KELLY: She does do a lot of growing up in that one year. You write one beautiful scene between her and her father, who has shown up out of nowhere. He decides he's going to appear and take her out to dinner. And you describe him, among other things, as knowing how to wield silence. And you write that Pen, in contrast, was too young still to know how not to fill the silence. Tell me what you're playing with there.
KNIGHT: This is definitely something I'm still learning.
KELLY: Yeah.
KNIGHT: Part of it is about this sort of - the dramatic irony that exists when one gets a bit older and is able to look back on one's younger self and see all of the knowledge gaps that are glaring. Pen, the child, is with her father. And Pen, the adult, is observing the questions that young Pen has for her father that he can't quite answer. The older narrator views with a lot more empathy and understanding of the position that he's in.
KELLY: You also bring so much laughter and joy, just pure joy to the scenes of what it's like to be 18 years old, 19 years old, out in the world for the first time. There's so much banter and silliness and flirting. That must have been just a total delight to write.
KNIGHT: I had way too much fun writing the reeling ball.
KELLY: Give us a taste of that one.
KNIGHT: Well, there's a character called Fergus Scarlett Moore. He was actually the first character who came to me. He sort of strode into my brain, wearing trousers the color of smoked trout and a melancholy frown and started heckling Pen. There's a lot happening at the reeling ball, but one of the things that's happening is a kind of mating dance between Fergus and Pen - the characters not knowing exactly what it is they want.
KELLY: There's something Jane Austen about what you're describing there.
KNIGHT: Oh, that's very kind of you. I love Jane Austen.
KELLY: (Laughter).
KNIGHT: I love Jane Austen. I mean, Evelyn Waugh writes funny college scenes very well, and young people thinking that they're sophisticated.
KELLY: Yeah.
KNIGHT: I mean, Jilly Cooper - Jilly Cooper does such a great job of writing about the mating dance with a sense of humor.
KELLY: Yeah. Well, and there's something so perfect and obvious about writing about an actual dance as the mating dance is taking place in between the steps. It all comes together. Alert listeners may be wondering what on Earth an octopus has to do with any of this. So explain your title, "The Life Cycle Of The Common Octopus."
KNIGHT: So I don't want to give too much away, but I can say that the octopus in this novel is a metaphor for a kind of Loch Ness Monster that I tortured myself with in early motherhood. And I don't think I'm the only one. This concept of the perfectly self-sacrificing mother for whom independent life and ambition cease to exist. Now, the octopus in real life is famous for spending a large portion of her life brooding over her eggs. So this creature works very hard to make it to adulthood in a difficult world and then, after mating, stops eating and begins to waste away while taking care of her eggs. And this beautiful brooding process is quite tragic. It is something that we as humans should not aspire to. Our children need us to be our authentic selves. They need us to continue living and to show them what it is to be a truthful person in this world.
KELLY: I think you just ventured toward answering what was going to be my last question, which is the question that Pen poses to herself. Does a mother have to choose between being selfish and being eaten alive?
KNIGHT: (Laughter) Oh, goodness. It's a daily question, isn't it?
KELLY: Yeah.
KNIGHT: No. No.
KELLY: (Laughter).
KNIGHT: A mother just has to carry on being herself.
KELLY: That is Emma Knight, very much herself, talking about her debut novel, "The Life Cycle Of The Common Octopus." This was a delight. Thank you.
KNIGHT: Thank you so much, Mary Louise.
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