Genesis

An Interview with author
Sabina Murray on
A Carnivore's Inquiry

Editor’s Note: Sabina Murray has published 2 novels, Slow Burn and The Caprices (2003 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction). Her childhood was spent in the Philippines and in Australia. She teaches at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. A noted critic describes her as having invented a new genre: the “ironic Gothic”. A Carnivore’s Inquiry went paperback a year after its initial publication.

 

OOV: What is the genesis of that storyline?

SABINA MURRAY: I have always wondered at the fascination that people have with cannibalism, also the fact that cannibalism is a universal taboo. No culture embraces it, although in some it has been determined (but perhaps not proved) that there is a certain historical ritual significance.

This made me want to read up on the subject, that and the fact that cannibalism acts as a metaphor for the success of certain people depending on the demise of others.

OOV: How does the beginning premise come to you? Based on what?

Sabina Murray photo by Marion Ettinger

SABINA MURRAY: There really isn't a point at which I know the premise of writing. Rather, I think of the character and then its process of molding and winnowing, and at the end of the book you stand and see what you've accomplished. And then I think, "So that's the premise."

OOV: How long did it take for you to draft the novel?

SABINA MURRAY: I worked on and off, but mostly off, on Carnivore for about eight years. In that time I published another book, wrote a screenplay, and worked on other stuff, but it was always in the back of my mind that I would one day go back and finish it. I still find it hard to believe that the book is completed and published.

OOV: Katherine, the 23-year-old narrator, seems
to offer her life so early in the novel and just as
quickly shuts down:

Beginning is always hard, especially when one’s story is not yet over. I am an only child. From my mother I inherited my dark eyes and my darker sense of humor. From my father an ability to bring things to a significant conclusion and the black Lexus S.U.V. It’s a gorgeous car with a fantastic stereo, but it makes me feel as if I’m in a fast-moving coffin.

We are all hurtling into the future like so many unwilling comets. Sometimes I feel the need to stop, to look back before moving on. The snow is hissing in the wind and almost seems to be whispering in the wind—Katherine, Katherine—as if there is something great in store for me, but down the highway I see nothing but a nation plunged in darkness.

She is highly complex: attractive, witty, charismatic, unnerving, haunting. How did you create her character?

SABINA MURRAY: Katherine is a young woman who looks like a victim but turns out to be a predator. She's young so that she doesn't appear pathetic, since that kind of behavior, moving from man to man and having no sense of purpose, aren't quite as acceptable in older people. You want people to be surprised by the capabilities of your characters, and Katherine is someone that I thought of as being surprising.

OOV: Why does art, particularly of Goya and Gericault, figure so much in her observations?

SABINA MURRAY: I wanted to show that cannibalism is ubiquitous in all the arts—literature, opera, painting—and Goya and Gericault offer easily recognized examples of how cannibalism is rife in representation and that, in many ways, despite our ability to be horrified, we see examples of cannibalism constantly.

OOV: How important is family in the development of Katherine?

SABINA MURRAY: That's a very Filipino question. The absence of family in Katherine's day to day functioning makes it seem that things aren't all right with her. I think there's a certain amount of guilt, perhaps unearned, that Katherine feels about her mother that informs her decisions.

OOV: How much of your memories about growing up in Manila influenced your writing?

SABINA MURRAY: I was just in Manila in January to bring in the New Year and attend some weddings, so I do have many memories of growing up in Manila, but I still have an ongoing involvement with the place. Manila has a very gothic sensibility. There are many ghosts that appear to my family (and that are my family) and I think growing up this way—with an extreme tolerance for the possibility that what you're looking at isn't all that's there—has definitely shaped the way I think and create. Also, Filipinos are very religious and capable of faith in a way I don't see in my current community (Amherst, Massachusetts) and this underscored a lot of my comfort with writing about the unbelieved: I don't need concrete proof to think there's something there.

OOV: Do you have an audience profile?

SABINA MURRAY: I don't really. But maybe I do. Carnivore's Inquiry was not supposed to be a thriller, and when people write (even some reviewers) that they figured out who it was before the end, I know that they don't have the patience for what I'm doing. Carnivore is not a "who done it." The cannibal is even suggested by the title. It's more of a "why she did it." So perhaps a more patient, sensitive reader who's willing to see what the book is really about.

OOV: What authors have influenced your style?

SABINA MURRAY: Stylistically, I would say I owe something to Angela Carter. But I also very much enjoy the work of Andrea Barrett, who is a thinking woman not frightened of passing on some real information in her fiction. And I like Joseph Conrad who, even though his descriptions of Africans and Asians are a bit cross-eyed, gives a view of colonialism that is constantly relevant.

A Carnivore's Inquiry ©2004 by Sabina Murray. Excerpts reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Press.