Most people, myself included, know Janice Galloway as a writer. An award winning writer at that. But Galloway likes surprises, and she is full of them.
The Scottish author won the 1990 MIND Book of the Year Award for her first novel, The Trick is to Keep Breathing,, also shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. In 1994, her novel Foreign Parts won the McVities Prize. Recently, she collaborated with composer Sally Beamish to produce the libretto for a full-length opera, Monster, based on the life of Mary Shelley. When I ask her how she made the step from writing to music, I soon realise it was actually the other way round.
Born in 1956 in Ayreshire, Scotland, Galloway’s first realised passion was in fact music, inspired by a secondary school music teacher who she has dedicated her latest novel to, Clara.
‘My interest in music came from Ken,’ Galloway explains, in a deliciously lilting Scottish accent.
‘He focused me on Benjamin Britten. I guess Ken recognised I was interested in what was verbal as well. He particularly chose Britten to focus on because it was strange, because it was striking, because it was a very judicious mixture of words and music. The words were meant to be more important than the music, not less.’
Galloway went on to study music at Glasgow University. An experience, she says, that did little to nurture her interest in music because it was largely theoretical.
‘It wasn’t a very happy time because what I’d been used to was making music, I liked the company! Having lost that, I became more and more interested in words.’
But Galloway’s background in music prepared her well for her collaborations with Beamish, who was also initially unaware of Galloway’s talents outside literature. She was able to bring an understanding of the intricacies of composing lyrics for opera, right down to the use of vowels versus how high Beamish would be singing, that an untrained singer/writer wouldn’t necessarily grasp.
Looking at Galloway’s most recent works, it is clear that music has been a huge influence on her life. Clara is a fictionalised account of the life of Clara Schumann, wife of composer Robert and a celebrated musician herself.
The opera Monster marked a return to working with music for Galloway, but the subject highlights another fascination of Galloway’s: the talented female artist whose life was steeped in tragedy. Both Clara and Mary were married to famous men with mental illnesses.
Monster is based on the life of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. The libretto Galloway wrote stemmed from the preface Shelley wrote for her first novel, written when she was just 17, explaining in her own words how she came to write about a monster.
The daughter of two of the most famous writers of their time, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, tragedy struck early on in Mary Shelley’s life. Her mother died ten days after she was born, Mary’s own firstborn died several days after birth and of all the four children she bore, only one survived. Her partner, the famous poet Percy Shelley, who was initially thought to have been the ‘real’ author of Frankenstein, drowned just eight years after they met and eloped.
But the Scottish landscape and scenery were as much an influence on her work as the constant shroud of death.
‘Mary’s whole life seems to have been embroiled in terrifying weather which is a focal point of Frankenstein. And dead people, her life was completely steeped in dead people.
‘It becomes terrifyingly clear when you look at her life why she would fantasize about bringing people back to life,’ Galloway says.
What fascinates Galloway, in her own work and the work of others, is the ability to make something out of nothing. This is what these women created, Galloway says, but they also showed an innate creativity which is perhaps unique to women.
‘They also created the work of art most women work on throughout their lives, the creation of a good family, a good marriage. They looked after men who were in dire mental states. They acted out of love. I think it’s part of our instinct, to look up on loving someone as an extremely creative art, as something to perfect and get better at,’ Galloway enthuses.
‘Their menfolk were strange and difficult through no fault of their own. Therefore they had to be creative in nurturing and cherishing these men who themselves were creative people. They saw themselves as looking after their menfolk not only for the men’s sake, but for art’s sake, if you like,’
Galloway is writing in an era where Scottish writers are suddenly receiving recognition, a topic which has not gone unnoticed by the press, (they’ve always been there, Galloway notes, just unable to make a decent living out of writing until now). Rather than go down this well-travelled path, we discuss instead the diversity of writing styles, an evolution in literature not just confined to Scotland.
Galloway’s first novel was written in bits and pieces; she was experiencing intense nightmares at the time and writing was a way to try to get her thoughts in order.
‘I just wrote stuff and realised it all kind of fit together somehow,’ Galloway says.
‘Then I realised how literature has been academicised, that there’s certainly more than one way to write a novel. The perennial draw to literature is the same thing that drives you to the problem page. How do people deal with shit?’
In the case of Clara, of Mary, even Galloway and hundreds of artists present and past, it’s through their art.
Janice Galloway is appearing at the Gothenburg International Book Fair on Friday, September 20, and will give a seminar on writing Opera with Sally Beamish.
For further info see www.scotlandinsweden.com
