Canadian Writers Abroad

Debra Martens Interviews Jane Christmas

Jane Christmas has been with Canadian Writers Abroad since its beginning, but this is her first interview as Elizabeth Braithwaite, author of the novel, A Flight of Saints.
Christmas has written five memoirs, and this is her first novel. She discusses the differences between writing memoir and historical fiction, and how research and details from life can be worked into the story, among other things.

DM:  The first, and obvious question, is: Why did journalist and memoir author Jane Christmas become Elizabeth Braithwaite for her first novel, A Flight of Saints?

JC: I wanted to differentiate my fiction writing from my non-fiction writing. I’d been told by some in the publishing business that my fiction work wasn’t wanted; that publishers were only interested in my non-fiction from me, and that really pissed me off. Why can’t I switch lanes? Why can’t I challenge myself, expand my range? Once I delivered my book Open House: A Life in Thirty-two Moves — which hit bookstores the day that the Covid pandemic prompted a global shutdown (I mean, talk about timing!) and all the publicity events that were lined up to support it were cancelled, I said, Right, I’m doing fiction now.  I have quite a fan base when it comes to my non-fiction work though, and I didn’t want them to feel I was pulling a fast one by publishing a book that they might not have expected. But admittedly, the pseudonym hasn’t been ideal in terms of marketing. No one knows Elizabeth Braithwaite, though I’ve been quite upfront about it on my website, and despite what little promotion I’m capable of mustering as a self-published author, people still ask me, ‘Are you still writing?’ ‘Got anything new?’ 

That said, A Flight of Saints has been selling (albeit in dribbles), and the reviews on Amazon (the novel was published on KDP) are absolutely lovely. The novel garnered a sweet review in The Tablet, the Roman Catholic weekly, and it won an IPPY Award in the religious fiction category. So Elizabeth Braithwaite is well chuffed by what’s it’s achieved. 

DM: A journey, a quest (to the abbey of Hildegarde de Bingen), with five nuns as the main characters, who tell everyone that they are pilgrims on their way to Santiago — one can’t help notice some commonalities with your non-fiction books, What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim: A Mid-Life Misadventure on Spain’s Camino de Santiago de Compostela (Greystone Books, 2007) and And Then There Were Nuns: Adventures in a Cloistered Life (Greystone Books, 2013). Did your work on the memoirs feed into the novel?

JC: A writer’s experiences naturally infiltrate the creative output. It almost can’t be avoided. But it was certainly not intentional when I wrote A Flight of Saints. The idea for the novel came from a news story in The Guardian about a group of nuns in Europe who had fled their convent alleging overwork by their domineering mother superior. She went after them, and took them to court for breach of vows.  I was fascinated by runaway nuns, though my research showed it wasn’t an uncommon thing. Still, for nuns to escape takes some planning; I mean, they have zero resources — no money, phones, few personal connections outside the convent— and one of the foundations of their vocation is obedience, so to chuck all that in was and is quite daring. As I mused about it, almost immediately, this motley gang of five young medieval novices flew into my head, and the story just rolled from there. 

DM: For example, in the novel, they forage for food. At one point, the narrator, Lucia, crams her mouth with watercress. They steal apples…. Did you, during your Camino walks, take note of what food would be available to pilgrims who would not be eating in tavernas etc.?

JC: No, nor would it have helped if I had. What’s available to pilgrims these days doesn’t begin to compare to what was available to anyone travelling in the 12th century.  There were no cafés or fast-food places. You had what you came across in nature or begged for a meal. Tavernas were few and far between, and the young women in my story didn’t exactly have ready money on them, aside from the bag of jewels they stole, but one isn’t exactly going to rock up to an establishment and plop an amethyst on the bar and ask for food. They foraged apples and berries on the way, or they stole from farm yards and crop fields. My research unearthed places that existed or would have existed during that era. For example, The Bär Inn, which the women and the knight stagger into after they’ve crossed the Alps, was a real place in Innsbruck (or the Inn Bridge, as it was known then), and it still exists apparently. But the amenities available in the 12th century would be so meagre, and it’s up to the writer of historical fiction to show that.  A wash bowl with a strip of linen towelling and a fireplace in your room would have been the epitome of luxury.

DM: Faith. In A Flight of Saints, Lucia writes of beliefs that we might struggle with today, even an Anglican such as yourself who visits psychics. For example, there is the enchanted forest inhabited by Mathilde the hedgewitch, who seems to cast a sleep spell on the five girls. More importantly, Lucia questions her faith. She even says “I may be a bride of Christ, but I am also a handmaid of Satan.” And yet she began the escape at the behest of an angel, and she credits an angel for keeping her from falling off the path as she walks — when she turns to look at whose restraining hand touched her shoulder: “I was the last in line. Another angel?” Once she reaches Bingen, she has much work to do around the question of faith. The characters in the novel were either abandoned by their parents or had no say in whether they would become nuns, (except for Mea, who was betrayed by her family and fiancé and who sought the Abbey as a means of escape). And for them, to leave the Abbey was not simply a question of one’s service to God but it was also the framework of their days, had become their identity. Was it difficult for you to get into the heads of these medieval young women struggling with their faith? 

JC: Strangely not! This journey, like all journeys, challenged them to their core, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. They went from being cloistered, prayerful girls to being killers. What I wanted to show was the progress of maturity, which happens during a very long trek, and the lasting trauma of abuse. They had lived a rather charmed life under their superior Mother Elena, but when she was forcibly removed from the convent (which happens when you get on the wrong side of the local bishop) and replaced by cruel Mother Clothilde, their lives changed dramatically. Anyone who has lived under the whip of abuse or even the threat of it, quickly learns to adjust his/her behaviour to survival mode. They managed to escape, but they didn’t leave unscathed. Once outside the convent, they had to acquire strategies and wiles to avoid capture. But along with shedding their habits, they began to shed not necessarily their faith but their foundational routine as nuns. Gone were the seven-daily offices; the silence; the chores; the atmosphere or terror, which was replaced by a new terror of being captured. 

The spell cast by Mathilde the Hedgewitch in some sense awakens in them, certainly in Lucia, the power of independence and the transcendent world. But then, in the 12th century, the world was unapologetically that way. It was a time in which angels were frequently called upon; talismans and amulets were employed; alchemy was practiced by nuns, hedgewitches, and healers and priests. And all of it worked in concert and conjunction with God.  People spoke and lived on a higher spiritual plane than we do, and that has to be reflected in medieval writing in order to get the tone and the setting right.  

DM: What’s with the shoes? In both What the Psychic and A Flight of Saints, luxurious shoes are lovingly described. You laugh it off in What the Psychic as “I adore shoes. What woman doesn’t?” But in both books the temptation comes at a critical moment, when the narrator’s role as guide or leader is called into question. Compare your sighting of “sleek pumps in rainbow-hued silk with a pointed toe box and kitten heels” in What the Psychic to Mea’s shoes in Flight: “The soles were leather but the upper parts were green silk, the green of mossy woodlands. The elongated toe box was decorated with tiny crystals and jewels arranged in a sunburst. The heel, alder I guessed, was as long as my thumb, and scooped slightly at the sides into a refined curve, and then covered in the same silk as the rest of the shoe.” Attention to detail in fiction is one thing, but this is another level. You almost make me want to buy these — fictional? green shoes. Are you taking what could be a universal experience (all women adore shoes, except this one) to use metaphorically (the temptation? the best before the fall?)?

JC: I would LOVE a pair of shoes like these too: I’m going to be a shoe designer in my next life. In the 12th century you did not have the range of footwear that we find one hundred or two hundred years later. It was mainly leather slippers or bare feet. But among the rarified and monied classes, things were different. The fantastic shoes that Mea has, as we discover, are payment for sparing her adulterous cousin’s life. Mea needed to have something in her mysterious bundle, and what could be more enchanting and shocking to the others than an extraordinary pair of shoes. Obviously, it wasn’t going to be a religious relic — Mea isn’t the type. The shoes are unexpected, and they also draw a bit of covetousness among our novices. This is a woman’s novel — I wrote it for women: Shoes speak to women; groups of women and the challenges they offer speak to women; being herded and trolled speak to women; faith and beliefs in angels, witches, God, speak to women; being forced to be wily and fight for survival speaks to women; rape speaks to women; even having to kill speaks to women. The shoes stand in for what is so far beyond the reach materially and intellectually of these women, except Mea. And there’s that moment that, upon seeing the shoes, Lucia feels suddenly robbed of knowledge and a different kind of life, and she wants more, not necessarily shoes but more knowledge and opportunity. Ambition rises in her.

DM: Do you want to talk about that a bit more? That in What the Psychic, you the narrator are confronted by the needs of the other women in the group at a meeting and about midway through the book (or journey) you lose the group. In A Flight of Saints, Lucia struggles with her role as leader of the group, especially as she has no plan except to escape Saint Agatha’s and get to Bingen, where she hopes to be taken in by Abbess Hildegarde. Mea leads the insurrection against her, and although Fey tells Lucia that she is their leader, they do adopt Mea’s plans and later end up following the Templar, Clovis. In the novel, the group is smaller than yours was and the women are religious sisters who were already living together. Lucia resists the ministrations of the group when she needs them, but in the end comes to value them. Does the novel in part work out your mixed feelings about journeying with a group or providing leadership?

JC: It does work out those mixed feelings, now that you mention it (!), but friendship among women is and has always been a complicated, complex matter. How many of us have rubbed up against someone we did not like, or chose not to like, only for that person be an enormous and positive help later on?  A few years ago on our third Camino, I met a pilgrim who I took an instant dislike to because he treated me like the Invisible Woman. We ran into him periodically, and each time, I turned up my nose at him. One day on the trail, I was attacked by a large dog.  My husband fought off the dog, and a few pilgrims who were behind us sprang into action, one of them being this guy I’d decided not to like. He told my husband to get me to a hospital while he kept the dog at bay. About a week later, we were the only guests in a hostel, when lo and behold this guy shows up. I was delighted because I hadn’t been able to thank him for helping during the attack. He sat me down and asked to see my wound. Turns out he was a retired physiotherapist and Reiki healer. That evening, he taped up my leg in a sort of lymphatic drainage technique to bring down the swelling, and it made a huge difference to my healing. We have remained in touch ever since, and in fact he stayed with us when he visited England. It taught me a lot about my tendency for quick judgement and snap decisions. And while I’m not entirely cured — I think a fair bit of distrust and caution is a fair trait — I’m more tempered now. 

DM: The novel makes occasional use of period words, such as jargogled and tettes and the occasional capitalization of such words as Creation and Pride. Had you wished to do more? How do you strike a balance between getting the flavour or tone right without impeding the reader? How to work in the historical background without information dumping?

JC: One of the first lessons I learned about writing historical fiction was that you should never try to replicate the old style of language that we’ve surely bastardised over the centuries. Who’s to say people didn’t speak like they do today? The language of cat fights, eye rolling, secrets, lies, excessive drinking, teasing, bitch-slapping, and bullying has been going on since Jesus was in short pants. Human nature is a constant. We never change. When we cast our language onto ancient generations, we better understand their reality and, hence, ourselves.

DM: Reading What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim: A Mid-Life Misadventure on Spain’s Camino de Santiago de Compostela, I laughed aloud. It is indeed deserving of the praise “best book on the Camino”. I confess I did not find much humour, apart from the title, in A Flight of Saints, perhaps because their plight was dire, and my responses were of the more empathetic “Oh no” variety. Could you talk about the difference between writing memoir and fiction? 

JC: The humour is much more subtle in A Flight of Saints, but readers have found some of the repartee between the characters quite funny and revealing. I’d love to have these characters over for dinner. Memoir, at least the kind I write, isn’t meant to be funny though some events translate as humorous after the fact. It’s the relatability of situations that makes you laugh, in the same way some of the situations the nuns face in Saints are relatable. Humour doesn’t always have to get the laugh; it can be dark; it can make you nod your head. Even tragic situations can tickle. If a small detail is slipped in, or if the scene is cast in a certain way.  And Then There Were Nuns, my memoir about seeking a religious vocation and coming to grips with my rape, was shortlisted for the Leacock Medal for Humour. If anything changed my understanding of humour, that sure did!  

Another difference between memoir and fiction is that I took notes when I was walking the Camino (see your question below); I didn’t have notes per se for the fictional journey in A Flight of Saints. I mapped the trip out in advance using historical research and Google maps to get a sense of scenery, terrain, heights, flora and fauna, and distances between various points, so that was my template.

DM: The route that the five sisters walk in the novel is not the same as the route that you took in What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim. Have you walked this route or part of it another time?

JC: I have looked into it, but haven’t been brave enough to mention it to my husband. He’s a keen long-distance hiker, and if I said, ‘Fancy flying into northern Italy and then walking across the Alps to Bingen?’ he’d be all over it. We’ve done three Caminos — the last one was from Cadiz to Santiago de Compostela, about 1200km — and although we had beds and an abundance of cafés and restaurants along the way, I wouldn’t do it again. When I was writing the novel, I felt every inch of those young women’s steps.

DM: This is a practical question. When did you take notes during the Camino walks? That is, after reading What the Psychic, I noticed that there was no mention of you writing in a journal, for example, as each day ends in a meal and collapse into a bed. It makes the book seem almost magical. In Flight, Lucia writes with difficulty of their journey, struggling to remember while suffering the pain of some memories; for her, the writing of the journey is as hard work as the journey itself. Would you agree?

JC: I kept a diary on the first Camino (as I have done on subsequent ones) though it was a diary not a notebook. I had no intention of turning it into a book until I reached Ponferrada, about 200km from Santiago de Compostela, and thinking that if I were to write a book about the experience, I’d title it What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim. The diary was a huge help in recalling events when I was contracted to write the book.  In terms of writing about and reliving the experience, it’s true that it can be difficult. Sometimes new details emerge, or you remember the room more clearly, or how drunk everyone was. When I wrote about my rape in Nuns, the section about the actual rape was very difficult. I kept getting up from my desk, or crying, or deciding to work on another section of the book, or writing it out by hand but then deciding that the paper wasn’t white enough, or that the ink in my pen wasn’t the right colour, and so on. It took me ages to write that chapter. In Flight of Saints, it broke my heart when Lucia was raped, but I knew she would get through it because I had got through mine; she’d be stronger and more defiant, as I had become stronger and more defiant after my attack. And I hope that readers see how that experience changes her, as it changes every survivor of rape, which isn’t really talked about; it’s always about the rapist and his jail sentence, and of the survivor ‘getting on with her life.’ Rape absolutely steals something from the woman or man who is attacked, and it leaves a scar on your soul. It’s evident in Lucia at the end of the novel. It’s a worrying ending, but at the same time a reflective and forwarding-looking one. Although she and Mea are in different places in their lives, Mea is a part of it now, in a tangential way, and the two of them are quite easy and funny with one another in their teasing. It’s given me thoughts of a sequel. Hmmm! 

Jane Christmas’s five memoirs include What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim (Greystone Books, 2007), And Then There Were Nuns (Greystone Books, 2013), and Open House: A Life in Thirty-two Moves (HarperCollins, 2020), the latter two both having been shortlisted for the Leacock Medal for Humour. She is the co-author of A Journey Just Begun: The Story of an Anglican Sisterhood, and earlier this year self-published her first novel, A Flight of Saints, as Elizabeth Braithwaite. A Flight of Saints is forthcoming with Europe Books. 
Born in Toronto, she is a former journalist, and recovering house renovator. She moved to England in 2012, and lives in Norfolk. 

Further

• Visit the website of Jane Christmas to buy the novel.
• Other books available from Greystone Books.
• Interested in walking to Santiago de Compostela? Check out the Canadian Company of Pilgrims, and Austin Cooke’s review of What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim in the Anglican Journal.
• Debra Martens’s review of Open House.
• Isabel Huggan’s review of And Then There Were Nuns.
• Jane Christmas in conversation with Shelagh Rogers, CBC Radio, May 29, 2020.
• Michael Redhill on using a pseudonym, Open Book interview (September 26, 2014).