In this post Susan Price is telling me more about her book The Ghost Drum which won the Carnegie Medal in 1987.
GM: Having been drawn to your book, The Ghost Drum, by the
fascinating imagery of the witches’ houses on chicken-legs, there’s so much
more I’d love to know about the story. The Ghost Drum precedes Philip Pullman’s
trilogy His Dark Materials by a decade yet it equals it in magic and suspension
of disbelief. How did you research it?
SP: I’ve been reading fairy-tales, folk-lore and mythology since I
was nine. My head is crammed full of images and motifs. I’d read about Lappish
witches and their drums – the Vikings were quite scared of Lappish witches!
The Ghost World books no doubt grew out of this mulch of
folk-lore, but the idea arrived in one blow. It was as if I’d been given a
postcard with a picture on it, and told – no, ordered – to ‘write about that.’ The
picture showed a snowfield below a dark sky filled with stars. In the middle
was a great Russian palace, with many towers and domes, all with those bright,
jewel-coloured tiles.
So the story arrived with its atmosphere set. It had to be in
darkness and intense cold, but splashed with colour. I knew that it was a Russia of the imagination: the Russia of
fairy-tale. I knew that the story was to have magic and witches, and was to be
as frightening as it was beautiful. I also knew that the story was to be about
someone who had been born in the room at the top of one of those domed towers,
and had never left it.
I did research it, to an extent. Suzanne Massie’s book, ‘Land of
the Firebird’ was invaluable to me. In it I found the details about the palace
windows being made of thin, painted mica. But much of the book was simply made
up, using motifs from legends and fairy-tale.
It took me something like three years to write Ghost Drum. I broke
off and wrote other things to pay the bills while I worked on it. I became so
worn out with it that I decided it was no good, and not worth wasting the
postage to submit it. I put it away in a drawer and forgot about it for months.
Then I came across it, read it, and thought it was the greatest thing written
since writing was invented.
The truth was somewhere between these two extremes! However, I
rewrote it again, submitted it, and it was accepted by Faber in the UK, and Farrar-Strauss in the US, almost by
return of post.
GM: So it started as a powerful visual image. That must be the
artist in you.
Was it difficult to write about travelling to other worlds?
SP: It was, at first. Two things helped me. One was the account of
a Viking funeral, given by an Arab trader. He said a gate was erected to
represent the entrance to the other world. A slave-girl (who was later killed
to accompany her dead master) was lifted up so she could see over the gate, and
she said she saw her master waiting for her on the other side. (She’d been
drugged.) This plain image of a gate worked for me as a passage from one world
to another. I wanted something solid and easy to imagine.
The other thing that helped me was thinking about the very vivid,
real dreams I’ve always had. I’ve never had a dream where I knew I was
dreaming. No matter how bizarre, my dreams are always 3-D solid, with full
colour and sound.
I thought of various folk-lore ideas – such as the one that says
you shouldn’t wake someone suddenly, because their soul goes wandering in other
worlds while they’re asleep, and will be lost if they’re jerked awake. And then
there’s a Bushman saying I copied out and kept in mind while working on the
Ghost World books: ‘Somewhere there is a dreamer dreaming us.’
This helped me imagine the shifting from one world to another,
because I know what dreaming is like – and if the apparently real worlds we
visit in our dreams are actually other worlds, then it’s not so strange!
GM: That explains it so well and likening it to the idea of
dreaming makes it all so convincing in your story.
Finally, I really liked the cat narrator. Was that your own
invention or does he relate to a bit of folk-lore you absorbed when you were a
child?
SP: The cat... Well, first, I love cats... And then I saw a Bilibin woodcut
called 'Sir Cat the Wise' and saw references to this cat in folk-tale.
Then I've always been interested in traditional ways of starting stories. We
have only, 'Once upon a time...' but originally there were many ways of
starting and ending a story. 'Once upon a time, when dogs drank wine, and
monkey chewed tobacca...' or 'I went to the garden to pick a bit of thyme: I've
told my tale, now thee tell thine!'
I came across a couple of traditional Russian beginnings. One I've used
elsewhere - the stone squirrel who runs up and down a tree, and for every nut
he cracks, he tells a story. (Very like Norse Myth, and, of course, the Russian
city of Kiev
was founded by Vikings.)
The other beginning was about the cat tethered to a tree, and as he walks one
way, he sings songs, etc.
I originally put this at the start of the book because I loved the image, and I
like such odd ways of starting stories. To me, it was like the painting on a
Russian lacquered box - a dream like image and intense colours.
But then I found the story becoming quite complicated, and thought it would be
useful for younger readers (or listeners) if the cat began each section,
reminding them what had happened, commenting on the action, and preparing them
for what was to come. That's as deeply as I thought about it, but apparently,
it means that the book has three narrators (?) and is quite Meta!
Years after I wrote the Ghost Drum books, the beautiful Biffo came to live with
me.
If he wasn't a Norwegian Forest Cat, then he could certainly pass for one,
and he was definitely wise. He could have walked on as the Cat Who Walks Round
the Tree without rehearsal - except that no one would ever have got him to wear
a collar and chain, not even a gold one!
GM: I love the fact that there’s a practical reason for having the
cat narrator as well as it adding a traditional resonance. And Biffo is indeed
a most beautiful, wise–looking cat.
