Q&A with Julianne Edwards, Author of Odette Rising

Can you tell us about Odette, your main character?

When we meet Odette Huré she is only twenty-one and has not left the house for ten years. She is lonely and filled with shame at what she sees as her failure to be loved.

Her mother died long ago, her father is distant and avoids her, and she can go days in the dark house without seeing anyone except the coal boy who brings her meals and lights her fire.

But Odette is not without curiosity and she reads, observes life from her window and explores her emotional world through food, ordering complicated dishes from the cook. Her eating and her stasis have caused her to grow fat, and for this she is ridiculed by the servants. And so her shame grows anew.

When her father dies suddenly, she has a choice to make and with great courage, decides to leave the house. Learning of her new responsibilities (for his fortune and stocking factory), Odette meets them in her own idiosyncratic way, an innocent abroad whose naivety moves ahead of her like a bow wave. She has no truck with notions of respectability and the misogyny she encounters, which puts her in danger. To her delight she manages to make two friends, both women who are also victims of prejudice, and it is through their reflected gaze that she learns to let go of her shame and begins to find her life.

I wanted Odette to be complicated, flawed and compelling - a character who moves readers.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you’d describe your writing style?

I am a psychotherapist and I think that dovetails with my curiosity about people. So, for me, character is all. I started with Odette and built the novel around her.

That said, a good story is always a delight. I love the storytelling of writers like Anne Patchett, Isabel Allende and Colm Toibin, in which atmosphere and plot combine for a compelling narrative.

A sense of place is also important for me, and I like to conjure rooms houses, meals… and the richness of some of the descriptions in Odette Rising comes from the joy of these imaginings.

I suppose I would say that my style is one of immersive storytelling.

Why was food something you wanted to emphasise within the story?

In my clinical practice I often work with people who have disordered eating. The importance of food to how we feel, how we experience living is of course primal. How, when, where and what we ingest could be said to describe our relationship with the world.

In her isolation, Odette’s focus on food is one way in which she can maintain a connection to the act of being alive, to the feeling that she exists. As she begins to fill herself with bigger experiences and make emotional connections, her relationship to food shifts and becomes more celebratory and affirming.

So, in the novel I wanted to think about food as both her nemesis (in that her eating fuels the prejudice she encounters) and her salvation – because it is her comfort and joy.

There is a very wide cast of characters within the book, can you tell us what inspired you to bring them all together into an unusual family?

I’m interested in identity and what that actually is.Is there an intrinsic immutable Self inside each of us or are we, more probably, an ever-shifting collage comprised of the reflections of others? I think we move through life like bats, emitting a kind of psychological sonar, waiting for what bounces back in order to locate ourselves in our own minds.

Odette has been a recluse, so she needs relationships in order to see herself. What she learns is that despite her flaws and the shocking mistakes she makes, she is likeable - loveable even. The people she gathers around her help us, the reader, to see her through their eyes and for our understanding of her to grow in concert with her own self-knowledge.

What’s your favourite quote from the book?

“Surely the greatest act of defiance would be to be happy?”

What do you want readers to take away from the story?

In the end, this is a story of the triumph of hope. Despite the limitations imposed upon her and the events that nearly destroy her, Odette finds a way forward. She does this using curiosity and courage, learning what love is and how through it, she will rise.