Henrietta Rose-Innes’ Homing Gets a Great Sendoff at the Book Lounge (With Videos)

by Amanda on Jul 20th, 2010

The launch of Homing by Henrietta Rose-Innes at the Book Lounge last week was a splendid success – for the author, whose stories span some fifteen years of her writing life – and for the short story as a genre, which rumour had it, doesn’t sell. By the end of the evening, that myth had been dispelled by Mervyn Sloman, who noted wryly that all the Lounge’s copies of Homing had sold out, long before all the customers wishing to purchase it quit arriving at the till.

When introducing the author, Sloman described the book as “an outstanding collection that showcases the immense talent of a writer at the height of her craft.” Rose-Innes was joined in discussion by Diane Awerbuck, author of Gardening by Night, who chatted about the difference between short stories and novels, amongst other things.

“It’s an ongoing discussion,” said the author. “As we all know it’s a challenge to get short stories published, in this country and everywhere. There’s hesitation on the part of publisher to take on short story collections unless they’re by very established writers. I often have this conversation with readers who say they like to read short stories.”

She said it was relatively easy to transport yourself into an elaborate imaginative universe in the space of a novel that takes you away for a few days or a week, than to be confronted by the relatively sparse fragments that comprise the short story. “I prefer to read a collection of short stories by a single writer. Generally. That’s a nice way to access a particular writer’s mental space. You feel you’re transported into somebody’s imagination. That’s my highest ambition, to create a complex imaginative universe beyond these little fragments I’m showing you.”

The stories in this collection span Rose-Innes’s entire writing career, with the earliest story dating from 1996. She said one of the pleasures of putting together the collection was being given the opportunity to revisit old stories and to rework them, “and to revisit past selves that are present in the stories now.”

Awerbuck asked, “Were any real people harmed in the making of these stories? Anyone going to read this and say, ‘Hey! Wait a minute…’?”

“Not consciously,” said Rose-Innes. “Certainly, there’s a seed in all the stories of something that happened to me, or to people I know.” She said that sometimes she writes a story that predicts something that happens later on.

Awerbuck pondered Stephen King’s notion that the really good short story was like an artefact you came across, something whole you could find and pick up. “Where do the stories come from?” she asked.

Rose-Innes, whose original training was in the field of archaeology, said, “I like the word ‘artefact’ very much. I’ve always been drawn to the object. Almost all of my stories originate with some sort of magic object, something solid you can put your hands onto. I don’t think they end up that way, but I think visually and many of my stories are shaped around a visual moment. As I write more I’m increasingly drawn to the short story. It feels natural to my temperament not to paint huge and complex canvases, but to create moments with stories as fascinating objects.”

Watch two videos of Rose-Innes at her launch (the second is a reading from the book):

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On the topic of the title, Rose-Innes said she saw a few patterns. She noted that many of the stories were about Cape Town and there was a repetitive refrain of people leaving and returning, either a location or a stage in their lives and trying to make their way back in a changed form. There was the additional imagery of birds and pigeons, which are, after all, city birds, and linked to her the beloved fantail pigeons her father kept all his life. “These creatures I associate with my father – to whom the book is dedicated,” she said. In true Book Lounge style, cut-out birds flew from the rafters on red and yellow ribbons between picture book Home-Sweet-Homes. Kudos to creative the team!

When asked if it was a relief to have the stories out of the drawer and onto the world she said, “I thought so. But then somebody asked to reprint one and I had to look at it all over again. You think you can do the final-final-final edit, but as we all know the writing is never actually complete as long as someone gives me a chance to fiddle with it some more.”

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