Abdou book makes St. Albert first stop

For Angie Abdou, coming back to St. Albert is going to be a breeze.

The British Columbia-based writer is set to launch her upcoming book tour and the first stop is this city.

“Everybody starts their tour in St. Albert, right?” she speculated, tongue in cheek.

While she remembers fondly the warm reception that she received here in 2011 when she was promoting The Canterbury Trails, the author of Anything Boys Can Do, The Bone Cage and now Between is making the premiere as a favour of sorts to Peter Bailey, the library’s director.

The two, as it turns out, are old friends and Abdou even went to school with his wife and the event’s host, Dr. Anne Bailey who now works as a writer and communications specialist at the University of Alberta.

The arm-twisting didn’t take much effort.

“He asked me pretty early on if I could get to St. Albert. I’m flying out of Calgary to Toronto on the 15th. I just looped in a little Alberta tour around Peter’s request beforehand,” she admitted, adding that her last appearance left a strong impression.

Not only was that event the first after hours wine reception at the venue but Dr. Bailey is a great interviewer, she said, offering oodles of praise.

“It was wonderful! She’s a great interviewer, a very careful, intelligent reader.”

“We joked last time that I’d always dreamed of being interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel [the celebrated CBC book reporter on her show Writers & Company] and Anne always said that she’d always dreamed of being Eleanor Wachtel. It’s very validating to have someone read the book so carefully and ask really insightful, probing questions.”

At that time, The Bone Cage was being defended on CBC’s Canada Reads, and soon became the MacEwan Book of the Year. It also made it to Canadian Literature's All-Time Top Ten List of Best Canadian Sport Literature and is now being taught in university-level literature courses in Canada and the United States.

The Canterbury Trail became a finalist for the Banff Mountain Book of the Year, and won the Independent Publishers’ 2012 IPPY gold medal for Canada West.

Between focuses on two main characters. Vero is a working mother with two young kids who, Abdou explains, is overextended, “not really coping very well” and on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Then there’s Ligaya, a Filipino woman trying to make her way to Canada via Hong Kong. Life for her is tough but in different ways as she struggles through some arduous working conditions. The two are on a collision course as the reader compares and contrasts the clash of the classes and cultures through the author’s astute satirical pen.

Abdou describes the atmosphere of her third novel as one beset with dysfunction and not even the reader gets an easy ride.

“The story ends up being a back and forth between these two points of view. It’s a satirical look at contemporary life to the extent that we’re all overextended because Vero is not coping and she recognizes she’s not coping. At the same time, there’s liberal guilt involved in essentially taking advantage of this Third World woman’s plight in order to make her First World life even easier.”

It’s no coincidence that Abdou brought these characters and situations to light. She admitted that her inspiration always springs forth from her real life experiences. She too had a live-in Filipino housekeeper for a few years. It always makes good fodder for fiction because it adds “authenticity and vivid detail.” In her words, it also makes for good therapy.

“Even though I write fiction, it’s very often close to home and originates from my own unease, something that troubles me. It’s my way of figuring out the world around me, giving it order and structure.”

“I tend to write close to my own experience and then veer wildly away from that, obviously. Things go in a direction in this book that they never would have gone in my own life. I would hate for people to think it was autobiographical but it starts off with that. It’s very therapeutic. I go with that saying that an unexamined life is not worth living. My way of exploring life is through fiction, whether it’s my own [life] or other’s.”

The tour takes her to Camrose, Edmonton and Calgary before heading east to Toronto and other Ontario stops before the jump back to British Columbia, hitting Vancouver on the 24th and a “hometown launch” in Fernie two days later.

She is looking forward to the event as a kind of gift to herself for all of the hard work that she put into Between.

“Writing is such a solitary activity. That part of going out on the road and connecting with readers and getting response – even when they’re not totally positive – it’s rewarding just to have that feedback and not to feel like I’m talking to myself, all alone. Someone said ‘These book tours … they’re not the punishment. They’re the reward.’ I think of that. It’s the reward. I get to come out and celebrate the book with each community.”

She also likes to pick communities that she has a personal connection to so that she has at least a few friendly faces in the audience and so “it feels like a bit of a party.”

Library director Peter Bailey said that he is excited to have his old friend back in town and for such an auspicious occasion.

“Angie has built up quite a following here since her last visit, and with the success of her previous two novels, I know this is going to be a popular Friday night event. Great conversation, lots of fun, and a wine reception – the fall season will be off to a good start.”