Elke Power interviews Antonia Hayes
Antonia Hayes talks with Elke Power about relative truth and her debut novel, Relativity.
EP: Your debut novel, Relativity, has been likened to A Beautiful Mind and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. However, it seems likely that another comparison will be hard to avoid, and that is between Relativity and Christos Tsiolkas’ award-winning, bestselling novel The Slap. Without wanting to reveal one of the compelling central questions at the heart of Relativity, can you tell us a little about how you came up with the idea for this original story?
AH: To be honest, the characters arrived before the story. Ethan came first, and then his love of physics came second. I’ll need to make an embarrassing confession now: when I was at school, I went to Maths Camp. I was one of those weird kids with an aptitude for patterns and numbers. Later, I discovered that the language of physics was also the language of storytelling. That the laws of science – tension, friction, momentum, resonance – applied to fiction too. So before I knew exactly what Relativity was about, I knew that physics would be the novel’s backbone.
I was also a really accident-prone kid and I’ve spent a lot of time in children’s hospitals – as a patient and later as a parent – so some ideas for Relativity came from hospital wards and waiting rooms. Lots of books inspired small pieces of the story as well: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks; Arcadia by Tom Stoppard; Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park, and Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
EP: Relativity is primarily told from three perspectives, those of your main characters: Claire, professional ballet dancer and mother; Mark, physicist and father; and their young son, Ethan, a charming, quixotic boy who is incredibly gifted but also mysteriously affected by a childhood incident. How did you create such a distinctly different mindset and voice for each of these characters?
AH: My first attempt at Relativity was written entirely from Ethan’s point of view. After getting 20,000 words into that draft, I hit a wall. Telling the story from a single voice was really limiting and the more I learned about physics, the more I realised I needed to approach writing the novel from several angles.
Einstein’s theory of special relativity is about how time changes according to the speed of a moving object relative to the observer. So in other words, your experience of time can differ from someone else’s experience of the same moment. Ethan, Claire and Mark see the same event through their own individual lens, but they clash over their varying impressions of it.
For the three main characters to clash, their attitudes and personalities had to be at odds with one another. Mark’s understanding of physics meant his character was systematic and cerebral but Claire needed to be the opposite; she’s more kinetic and intuitive. Writing Ethan’s voice was probably the easiest. He’s a little like me at twelve years old: curious, fearless, impulsive and, maybe problematically, imaginative.
At the same time, I wanted to create similarities between Ethan and both his parents, and for there to be magnetism between Claire and Mark. So I juggled the disconnection between all three characters with how they’re connected as well.
EP: In a book that entwines a growing understanding of the physics of the world around us with the central characters’ changing concepts of self, it is particularly interesting that the moment we first encounter the family members is almost twelve years after the original life-changing event. What made you choose to look at the longer-term ramifications of the event when Ethan was a baby, rather than just the fallout in the years immediately afterwards?
AH: I suppose I’m curious about the way that time shifts and bends memories, and also shapes and reshapes people. Neuroscience says that when we recall a memory, we rewrite the original memory with the recollection. As we look back, the past becomes an ever-changing echo of an echo in our minds. So I didn’t want to only explore how Claire and Mark lost themselves in the immediate aftermath but how, over twelve years, they were both forced to remake their lives and find themselves again. And Ethan is in the same position as the reader: he doesn’t remember the original event so needs to untangle his parents’ versions of the past and figure out what happened himself.
EP: Finding ways to establish and accommodate reality is a major issue in your book. Were you interested in how people try, or refuse, to accommodate, terrible truths about themselves or their actions – or about those they love?
AH: As I was developing the characters, I become really interested in how our own perceptions of reality can vary so widely. Different people often have completely different memories of the same event. So the major point of conflict within Relativity revolves around how each character has their own reality – and how impossible it can be to budge from what we believe is the truth. Everyone is at the centre of their own universe but it takes empathy to change our impression of what’s true or real and make the universe realign.
EP: The friendship between Ethan and Alison is compelling. There are many kinds of love in Relativity, and several types of heartbreak. Which were the most rewarding relationships for you to write about?
AH: My favourite relationship in the novel is between Ethan and Claire. When Amy Poehler writes about her kids in Yes Please, she says, ‘The bond between mothers and sons is powerful stuff, man.’ I couldn’t agree more; that love is overwhelming. Relativity is dedicated to my son. He’s completely different to Ethan, and I’m not like Claire, but the strength and intensity of their dynamic is based on our mother–son relationship in real life.
EP: One of the strengths of your book is that despite there being multiple ideas and themes at work, the story moves at a cracking pace and keeps the reader guessing. Did you always know where the story was going?
AH: Not at all! Pacing was one of the final things that fell into place while I was redrafting and editing. Earlier versions had lots of flashbacks that didn’t really advance the plot. After writing the first draft, I needed to zoom out and try to think about Relativity as a complete picture rather than a messy cluster of scenes. It took a lot of deleting, rewriting and reshuffling to find the story’s momentum and figure out its ultimate destination.
EP: With so many elements to discuss, Relativity will become a highlight for book clubs everywhere for years to come. If you were to begin the discussion, what question would you most like to see people explore? Or, what question would you most like to hear discussed if you were a fly on the wall?
AH: Honestly, I have no idea! I’d just like people to read Relativity and take something away from it – whether readers find the story and characters confronting, comforting, challenging, problematic or enjoyable is totally up to them.
