To coincide with the release of the American edition of her first novel Strange Nervous Laughter author Bridget McNulty has embarked on a blog tour. Book Patrol is pleased to be a part of the event and has invited McNulty to share an excerpt and her thoughts and hopes for the book.
“Set against a sweltering South African summer, McNulty’s heady debut twines her characters’ unusual circumstances as they construct and destruct the joy and displeasure of love’s erratic consequences” – from the review in Booklist, the magazine of the ALA.
The book is also as much a testament to place as it is to the vagaries of love. The city of Durban, South Africa, the backdrop for the novel, figures as prominently as the six “rather quirky” characters.
From Strange Nervous Laughter:
“After a few moments the panic subsided. The smell of not-so-fresh fish and sun-ripened meat hit Pravesh across the face. He hardly noticed. Men with Polaroid cameras mimed taking his photograph, shouting, ‘Passport photo! Passport photo!’ Women with babies strapped on their backs displayed their tables full of underpants, safety pins and hopes while children with torn pieces of cardboard and stray dogs played make-believe with the breeze.The children were the only ones to stare openly. Dazed, Pravesh randomly chose a direction and stumbled down the street, bumping into people and being pushed off the pavement into the open gutter, which was swimming in a murky film of liquid. The heat that lay like a blanket over the city wrapped him up, and he broke into a feverish sweat. Mini-bus taxis hooted at him, drivers cursed from still-moving cars, and one or two people on bicycles rode over his toes. Nobody seemed to notice him, too intent on running the red robots that confronted them at every turn.”
McNulty says:
“I grew up in Durban South Africa, and I’ve always thought of myself as a Durbanite, through and through. Durban is a difficult city to get into – Johannesburg is the business capital of South Africa, Cape Town is the cultural capital, and Durban is kind of the forgotten cousin. It’s the odd one out. But once you get under its skin, Durban is an addictive city… warm and muggy and ripe, like a mango in mid-summer.
The problem with knowing a city inside out is that there’s a heavy responsibility to do it justice. All the places, the colours, the people, the smells of Durban were so deeply ingrained in me that I didn’t want to paint a half-hearted picture of them. I wanted Strange Nervous Laughter to be saturated in. And I think it is… Overseas friends tell me it made them homesick. I take that as the highest compliment.
Now, though, Strange Nervous Laughter has grown wings and is being released in the USA today! The 12th of May 2009. Oh happy day!) And I have to wonder if that essence will translate into the hearts and minds of American readers… If you have no direct relationship to a place, can you be transported there? I hope so.
And, if my reading history is anything to go by, I believe so. I’ve never been to but many of the Indian novels I read make me feel as if I’ve walked down her colourful streets in a sari, sipping on a lassi. So my hopes are that once readers have finished Strange Nervous Laughter, once they’ve put the book down and walked away from it, their minds will be filled with sense memories from the city that I love… They’ll be able to feel the crackling of electricity in the air as the oppressive heat of the day explodes into a violent thunderstorm at sunset. They’ll be able to taste a curry roti from Grey Street, and hear the mynah birds’ raucous song at the end of each day. They’ll feel the salty sea water against their skin, sense the chaos just behind the order of Victoria Street Market, and feel, even if only for a moment, the deliciousness of a night so balmy it seems the stars have come out to serenade you. That’s my hope for Strange Nervous Laughter. To capture just a little of the essence of Durban.”
Cover of the first edition released in South Africa in 2007
Visit Bridget McNulty’s website which features her blog and podcasts introducing the six characters in the novel.
Watch the book trailer.