The Long Delirious Burning Blue

‘I have been asleep for forty years. This is what I need: this fear, this risk, this wind rocking my wings. This is what I have been missing. This is what it means to be alive – up here, on the edge of death.’

Cat Munro’s safe, carefully-controlled world as a corporate lawyer in Phoenix is disintegrating, and she is diagnosed with panic disorder just before her fortieth birthday. In a last-ditch attempt to regain control of her life, she faces up to her greatest fear of all: she decides to learn to fly. As she struggles to let go of old memories and the anxieties that have always held her back, Cat faces a choice: should she try to piece her old life back together again, or should she give in to the increasingly urgent compulsion to throw it all away?

Several thousand miles away in Scotland, Cat’s mother Laura faces retirement and a growing sense of failure and futility. Alone for the first time in her life, she is forced to face the memories of her violent and abusive marriage, the alcoholism that followed, and her resulting fragile relationship with Cat. But then she joins the local storytelling circle. And as she becomes attuned to the mythical, watery landscape around her, she begins to reconstruct the story of her own life ...

From the excoriating heat of the Arizona desert to the misty flow of a north-west Highland sea-loch, Sharon Blackie’s first novel presents us with landscape in all its transformative power. An honest and moving exploration of the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, The Long Delirious Burning Blue is above all a story of courage, endurance and redemption.

Praise for The Long Delirious Burning Blue:

‘It is that rarity, a first novel that smacks of not merely confidence, but authority, a sense that the story is true and clearly envisioned, with the technique to make it seem seamless, dynamic and written with verve and a care for the English language … The ending is powerful (reminiscent of The English Patient), filmic, and achieving the kind of symmetry that novels often aspire to, but rarely reach.’ Tom Adair, The Scotsman

'Hugely potent. A tribute to the art of storytelling that is itself an affecting and inspiring story.'
The Independent on Sunday

'[A] cleverly woven presentation of how violence and lies within a family work down the generations, cultivating abuse, addictions, and careers that are essentially displacement activities.'
Scottish Review of Books

‘Sharon Blackie writes with a real sense of truth and emotional depth about relationships between individuals, and between individuals and their environment. Her characters are figures in a landscape brought vividly, vibrantly to life.’ Nicholas Royle

‘An inspirational literary début; empathetic and mature. Sharon Blackie vividly conveys the protagonist’s struggle to overcome her fear of flight to crack open the limitations imposed on her, not just by others but by the memory of others.’ Margaret Graham

For a review of The Long Delirious Burning Blue on the Lizzy Siddal book blog, please click here: http://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2008/02/14/the-long-delirious-burning-blue-sharon-blackie/

For a review on the Vulpes Libris blog, please click on http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2008/03/07/the-long-delirious-burning-blue-by-sharon-blackie/

Recommended read by Vulpes Libris blogger Moira Briggs on The Book Depository website: 'A simply superb debut novel, beautifully and intelligently written with a terrific sense of place and a clutch of engaging, believable characters.' http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/listarticle.php?type=blogarticle

About Sharon Blackie

Sharon Blackie’s roots are in the north-east of England and in Edinburgh, though she has travelled all over the world and lived in France, Ireland and America. She is now firmly attached to a lochside croft in the north-west Highlands of Scotland, where she lives with her husband, David Knowles, and a growing collection of livestock. Originally trained as a neuroscientist, she has worked in a variety of corporate consultancy roles, practiced as a psychologist, after completing an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, she set up Two Ravens Press with her husband, David Knowles, in 2006. In 2008 she was selected as a 'woman of achievement' to attend the prestigious Woman of the Year lunch in London. She is also a member of the board for HI-Arts, the arts and cultural development agency for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Sharon is currently the recipient of a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary to work on her second novel.

Once upon a time in the great American south-west Sharon struggled to obtain a pilot’s licence to overcome a fear of flying – an experience which led to the conception of The Long Delirious Burning Blue.

Sharon has had work published in magazines as diverse as Waterlog and Country Smallholding. She is co-editor of Riptide: New Writing from the Highlands and Islands (Two Ravens Press, 2007) and editor of Cleave: New Writing by Women in Scotland (Two Ravens Press, 2008). She is translator from the French of renowned Franco-American author Raymond Federman's memoir of and tribute to his friend, Samuel Beckett: The Sam Book (Two Ravens Press, 2008). The Long Delirious Burning Blue is her first novel.

See the author's website at www.sharonblackie.com

Sharon blogs with husband and fellow-writer David Knowles on writing and on life on the croft,
at Tales from Green Willow Croft.

To see Sharon's Top Ten books on The Book Depository website, click here:
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/viewblogarticle.php?id=941

An Interview with Sharon Blackie

When did you first begin writing, and what inspired you to do so? Have any specific books/authors served as inspiration for you?

I read books from as early as I can remember, and ended up with ‘A’ levels in French and English literature, but it took me years to figure out that people ‘like me’ could write! It also took till I was 40 before I was really convinced I had anything interesting or especially different to say. To me, writing is something that you do once you have a real need to, and not before: it’s not about ‘wanting to be a writer,’ it’s about needing to write, and needing to write a specific thing that tugs at you and haunts your dreams and won't let you go until you do something with it. So then I decided I should have a bit of craftsmanship to go with the need, and registered for an online MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Inspiration – so many! Camus was the first author who really made an impression on me, when we read L'Etranger during ‘A’ level French literature. We studied DH Lawrence in English lit at the same time (The Rainbow) and both were a real revelation after years of Jane Austen and Milton. Other later literary influences included Doris Lessing and Margaret Atwood. Now I look for literature that surprises me – that does something different, that isn’t too tied to conventional structure or conventional language or conventional style. But always, it’s been about ideas and language in literature. I love language that’s poetic, full of imagery. Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient is, to me, one of the most beautiful novels ever written. And Nikki Gemmell’s stunning Lovesong, Shiver and Cleave.

Can you tell us something about the inspiration behind The Long Delirious Burning Blue? And about what you were trying to achieve, what ideas you were trying to convey?

I lived in America for five years, around the turn of the Millennium. It was a restless period: I’d just gone through a divorce, and was seriously disillusioned with my corporate job and the whole lifestyle thing that went with it. In many ways it was a classic mid-life crisis. And in classic mid-life-crisis style, I needed to do something drastic to work my way out of it. I decided to learn to fly. Sounds like a great idea – unless, like me, you have a fear of flying ... Well, let’s just say, eventually, that it worked. It worked so well that I left my job, left America, came back to Scotland, took an MA in Creative Writing, wrote a novel, and decided to set up a publishing company! But there’s more to Blue than just flying. It deals predominantly with the difficult relationship between a mother and a daughter – a breach that stems from the mother’s alcoholism when the daughter was a child. What caused the mother’s alcoholism? Domestic violence. And so, although this is a novel that ultimately, I hope, is uplifting – a story of courage, of learning to fly – it focuses on a number of issues that touch so many women today.

One of the key things I was trying to do in the novel was make the point that we all have the ability to reassess and retell the story of our life – maybe, ultimately, even to transform it entirely. You can interpret the same facts in a bunch of different ways. You can decide that your story is one of fear and failure and misery – or, at any point in your life, you can say – I don’t like this story. The next chapter will be different. And then the negative backstory becomes instead a story of growth, of learning to overcome obstacles. I drew on my own training as a therapist, and my specialisation in storytelling and ‘narrative therapy’ – the use of stories and creative writing in health and therapy settings. Story and myth are very important parts of the novel, as they’re very important to me and to my own life. That, and the landscapes where I’ve spent lots of time – landscapes that have affected me deeply; landscapes that are themselves filled with myth and story. Landscapes where the novel is set: the excoriating heat of the Arizona desert and, in contrast, the misty sea-lochs of the north-west Highland coast where I now live.

How and when do you write?

I find it near impossible to write if I don’t have a whole whack of time ahead of me. I’m very bad at squeezing it in when my head is full of other things. When I’m writing properly it normally comes early in the morning. Early mornings are when I take the dog for a long walk along the lochside at the bottom of our croft. There are birds there, and seals, and not very much else except rock and water. I’m not always consciously ‘writing’ inside my head when I’m down there, but something is happening – as evidenced by the number of times I’ve gone down there with a plot or structural problem and by the time I come back up and sit down again at the computer, it’s solved!

What do you enjoy reading? What are you reading that you can recommend at the moment?

Right now it’s hard to find time to read because I spend so much time editing other people’s manuscripts! But one of my favourite authors is Janette Turner Hospital, and every so often I re-read her novels, which I first discovered in Australia about twenty years ago. Other favourites: Thomas Hardy, Alice Thomas Ellis, Helen Dunmore, John Fowles, AS Byatt ... Michael Ondaatje's poetry – in fact, anything Ondaatje has ever written! Recently read David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten and loved it, also Alan Warner's Morvern Callar. Thomas Glavinic's stunning Night Work is probably the best and most thought-provoking book I've read in a long time, along with Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I find myself so often getting so bored by contemporary British novels – what I want to read is anything that still has the power to surprise and the courage to make interesting use of language rather than that flat pared-down style that seems so beloved of the critics these days. And so often it seems that people write for the critics or the market, rather than for the sake of the writing.

An extract from The Long Delirious Burning Blue

‘The past clings to you, like a skin.’

That’s what you told me, in that last letter you wrote. You remember: the one that arrived just before the news came. The news that forced me into this final pilgrimage across the ocean, from the deserts of Arizona to this water-logged land where you chose to make your home. Where you came with my father as a newly-married woman, ablaze with your hopes and your dreams.

But I have my own take on skins. It’s a simple one: they’re there to be shed. Like the desert rattlesnake, which sheds its skin two or three times a year. To enable it to grow; to remove parasites. It’s a process of renewal, you see. It rubs its nose along the ground until it pushes the skin up over its head – and then it just crawls right on out of it. And leaves it there: a ghostly, inside-out skin. There are millions of them, all over the desert.

A sea of shed skins.

It’s just like your selkies, don’t you see? – your mythical seal-women. Shrugging off their skin for one night each month, they become another creature entirely. Seal becomes woman; woman becomes seal.

You and your fairy stories.

The truth is that we humans are so much less efficient. We shed our skins piece by piece, flake by flake. Slowly, over time; slowly enough that we never even notice that it’s happening. Did you know that we shed and re-grow the outer cells of our skin every twenty-seven days? I’m talking facts now – did you notice? I’ve always been more comfortable with facts. And I did some research, after that last letter you sent: by the age of seventy an average person will have lost one hundred and five pounds of skin. Seas and seas of shed skin.

‘Golf Delta Charlie, cleared for takeoff.’

The voice in my ear startles me. The sounds and smells of the cockpit leap back into my consciousness; once again I’m aware of your presence beside me. You’re unusually silent. Are you ready to go? I can’t see your face but I can picture it clearly – that same old small smile, one thin dark eyebrow tilted in amusement. Judging me. Testing. Come on, Cat – jump. Let’s see what you’re made of. Look – the other children can do it. Why can’t you? But you needn’t worry, Mother – I’m really not going to lose my nerve.

‘Cleared for takeoff, Golf Delta Charlie.’ My voice cracks and my mouth is dry, but this time it’s not from fear. I know you don’t quite believe it yet, but I’ve mostly dealt with the fear.

A firm push of the throttle and the engine begins to roar. We’re moving forward quite slowly now; we cross the line at the beginning of the runway and we are in a place of transition. But once we reach takeoff speed, throttle fully open – once I pull the yoke towards me and lift up the nose – well, then we’re committed. There is no turning back: we are quite out of choices. We move on and move upwards – or we crash, and the chances are that we die.

And there it goes again: that same old flutter in my stomach as the small Cessna lifts herself gently from the runway. Yes, we’re leaving the ground now – and do you see how it is? How all that’s familiar – all that’s known and understood – falls away there beneath as we hurl ourselves recklessly into this clear blue void. The earth recasts itself beneath us, it pitches and lists as we bank to the south and turn out of the airport traffic pattern. But it’s no longer the earth that concerns us here: it’s the cold crisp blue of the sky. We’ve transformed ourselves now: we’re creatures of air, and we’ll swoop and we’ll wheel and we’ll soar.

‘Golf Delta Charlie, clearing the zone en route.’

‘Golf Delta Charlie, roger. Have a good flight.’

Communication ends with a decisive click. We’re on our own now; we’re heading out west and there’s no-one out there to talk to even if we wanted to.

We were on our own for so long, you and I. You and me against the world, you used to sing. In the days before it became you and me against each other. And so here we are again – here, just the two of us; so very tightly strapped into the confined world of this tiny cockpit. Together again – now, when I finally get to show you that I’ve learned how to fly.

***

Such a perfect day. Do you see the firth down there below us? The water strangely becalmed after the night’s wind and rain; sea in the distance merging with sky. Everything so very still. And you – you’re so quiet over there; you seem quite relaxed. It’s a morning worth relaxing into: on a blue-sky day like this you can see clear into forever. The mountains shimmer in the morning sun, hovering in the distance like a mirage. Currents of air rush by, tumbling around the propeller, slipping under and over the wings, constantly shifting, ever-changing. For a little while longer there’s nothing to be done; nothing that will stop me from basking in the healing solitude of these high places.

You always loved planes, didn’t you? Sunday afternoons watching the old war movies on TV – The Battle of Britain; The Dambusters. They were your heroes, you always said. Pilots! Think how much courage they must have, Cat. To hover all the way up there, in those tiny, flimsy machines. Can you imagine how much courage it must take to fly like that? Taking their lives into their own hands?

So does it make you happy now, to be flying with me? Did I finally make you happy? I never was too skilled at that. Perhaps a better daughter might have succeeded, but I never could seem to do enough for you. So many ways I found to disappoint you. For heaven’s sake, Cat – smile, can’t you? Oh, Cat – don’t you have any emotions at all? Why won’t you play, like normal children? And sometimes I would think about the children you lost – all those babies that never were born. And find myself wondering if, somewhere among those lost children, there might have been the daughter you wanted.

I know what you’re thinking – that I’m talking crazy. But you were the crazy one; I was the rock. You – ah, but you had no fear. You threw back your head and your red shoes glittered and you laughed and you swung and you danced. You danced, and it seemed that you would never stop. You’re so wooden, Cat. Relax, why can’t you? Just close your eyes and let go.

Let go. Time after time, you said it. You said it that day when you were teaching me to swim: when I slipped off the platform and gashed my face on the side of the diving board. But I wouldn’t cry. Not once. Not once on the journey to the hospital; not once as the doctor put the stitches into my cheek. Let go, you said, your face flushed and hectic, eyes brimming with anger. For God’s sake, Cat – just let go now, and cry.

But I knew what happened when you let go.

The past clings to you, like a skin.
The trick is to learn how to shed it.