Author Q&A with Jaime Gill

Jaime Gill is a British exile living and working in Cambodia. His short stories have been published by Litro, The Phare, Fiction Attic, Exposition Review, Literally Stories, Voidspace, and more. Several have won or been finalists for awards including the Bridport Prize, The Masters Review Prize, the Exeter Short Story Competition, Flash405, The Bath Short Story Award and Plaza Prizes. He consults for non-profits across South East Asia while working haphazardly on a novel, script, and far too many stories. He can be found at www.jaimegill.com, www.twitter.com/jaimegill , or https://www.instagram.com/mrjaimegill.

Tell us about yourself.

Probably the most interesting thing about me is that I’ve lived for the last eight years in Cambodia, a thrilling place to be as a writer because it’s a country still in the throes of enormous change and rebirth after a very traumatic recent history. I ended up here after finishing a year travelling from England to Australia without flying – my life’s big, eye-opening adventure. It’s also a wonderful base to explore South East Asia in all its wild variety. When not travelling, my day-to-day life is quite boring. I gave up alcohol and other intoxicants twelve years ago – after fifteen very hedonistic and increasingly harrowing years in London – so most of my socialising now revolves around occasional board games and a kickboxing club. Otherwise, I’m usually to be found alone in my apartment overlooking the mighty Mekong, tapping away at a laptop, with occasional breaks to read books or rewatch “Beef” or “The OA”. Oh, and I’m gay, though that’s less interesting than it used to be.

How long has it been since you’ve been home to the United Kingdom? How has being exiled changed your view on your homeland?

I should stress that my exile is voluntary and not legally mandated. Most of my friends and family are still in the UK, so I go back every year to tour the country and catch up – the last trip was in May. My views on the UK probably haven’t been shaped by my decision to leave so much as the other way round. I was increasingly depressed by the UK backsliding into mean-mindedness, xenophobia and bitter dreams of past glories. I was then thrilled to discover Asia, where countries are so relentlessly future-focused. The UK has finally voted for a more progressive Government so I feel slightly more optimistic about its future, and do believe most Britons are fundamentally decent. Sadly, recent disgusting outbreaks of violence by the hard right mean my optimism remains tentative. The big difference in living 10,000 kilometres away (apart from now thinking in kilometres) is perspective: the UK seems much smaller when you live very close to China, and witness the enormous geopolitical battles being waged over the future of South East Asia. Also, I’ve realised too late that sunscreen really is important. I should have listened to Baz Luhrmann. 

Has this influenced your writing? 

Travelling around Asia has massively influenced my writing. It’s given me a much fuller sense of just how diverse this world is – culturally, socially and economically – and sharpened my sense of injustice over how precarious life is for people born by chance into the world’s poorer nations. These are themes I try to explore in my more outward-looking writing. I sometimes even risk writing from Cambodian perspectives, though not without a lot of help from local friends acting as informal sensitivity readers. However, when I’m writing my more character-driven stories, I often find myself reaching back into the past and British settings. Things To Talk To Jim About is set in the North-East of England where I grew up, because I most understand family dynamics in that setting (though thankfully not a family like this one). But I still had to enlist a sensitivity reader because I was worried I had forgotten the area I grew up in! I sent the story to my cousin and asked her if I was committing any cultural violations. She gave me the all clear, phew.

Things to Talk to Jim About is a powerful story about facing your personal truth. Do you think our narrator will ever be able to confide his deepest secret to Jim? Why or why not?

I find questions like this so interesting. Often people who read my stories want me to explain things that aren’t on the page, and I usually don’t know the answer. To make a story work I try and immerse myself fully in the character and understand everything about their personal history up to that point, but if my character doesn’t know something at the time I write the story then I often don’t know either, just as I can never guess the futures of real people I know. Life is too chaotic to predict. But I’d like to think that, yes, my narrator could one day tell his deepest secret to Jim, but it’s going to take him a lot of time. I’d imagine that once his mother is dead, he will subconsciously hope his history will die with her. With no family members to remind him of his childhood, he will hope the pain of it fades. But it won’t, and he may eventually realise that though he believes he is protecting himself by keeping his secrets, he is in fact poisoning himself. At that point he might finally keep his promise to Jim and tell him everything. The optimist in me hopes so. Don’t ask the pessimist.

Based on the mother’s insistent questions, it seemed like she already knew or suspected the dark secrets of her family. Why do you think it was so important for the narrator to protect his mother from the disturbing truth?

My favourite scene in “Psycho” (one of my favourite scenes ever in fact) is the heartbreaking one where Norman Bates and Marion Crane become friends, and Norman says “I think we’re all in our own private traps.” I think this is pretty close to a universal truth. My narrator has created a truly terrible trap for himself. While I don’t think he is very troubled by the fact he murdered his father, I think he is tormented by the fact his sister subsequently took her own life. The only thing he can do to absolve his guilt is to at least protect his mother from the truth and to “be the monster.” In order for this psychological safety mechanism to work, he has to regard her as blameless. The reader may think differently, and I won’t argue, but I do think it is possible for people – including the mother – to be oblivious to terrible things happening in their own family. That is why the mother’s questions create a panic reaction in the narrator during the story. They threaten to upend his understanding of the world and (maybe) break open the trap that he is in. And the thing about being trapped for a very long time is that you grow to not just tolerate but even love your trap. Birds that have been caged for a long time will often not fly away when released, they’ll perch near their own prison – it’s called “caged bird syndrome,” and it’s something I write about often.

The narrator’s shame regarding his own abuse is heartbreaking. What do you think could finally help him overcome the shame of his abuse and his regret for his perception of failing his sister? 

This is where my inner pessimist is quite stubborn. I don’t think he will ever be able to fully overcome either his shame or his regret. They are so deeply ingrained they are practically molecular now, and there is a point at which damage can’t be fully repaired or healed. What he might be able to do is learn to accept and acknowledge these feelings and place them in a more forgiving perspective. But that will indeed require him to talk to Jim, so let’s hope he does.

How has writing helped you to tackle the darkest parts of humanity, such as sexual abuse?

For me this question suggests another one – why do I want to tackle these subjects? Why does anyone? I’m often puzzled by how often my stories go to these bleak places, as I don’t think I am a particularly miserable or gloomy person. In fact, when this story idea first came to me (and it arrived fully formed, as close to a lightning bolt of inspiration as I’ve had in my writing life) I resisted writing it, until my friend Charlie told me that I had to. But I suppose the answer is something to do with empathy. When we look at the world, it’s possible to think that there are a lot of truly awful people around us – monsters everywhere. But these people don’t think of themselves as monsters, and I don’t think many of them are either. People who end up damaging other people are usually damaged themselves. I think if we want to understand our own species, we need to try and understand everyone, including the people we would like to pretend aren’t human – the abusers, the murderers, the hate-mongers. My narrator acts in ways that I personally despise and shrink from, not least in his use of casual violence to exorcise his own demons before the final act of violence against his father. And I don’t excuse them. But I do understand them, a little, and I got to that place by writing about them. If there’s one thing that would make this world better, it would be more empathy, and I think generating empathy is probably the most useful job a writer can do.

What do you hope your readers take from Things to Talk to Jim About?

I hope that it might make readers think about the hidden stories that we all carry around in ourselves. When someone behaves in a terrible way to us, it’s probably not because they woke up that day and decided to make you miserable – there is history at work, and they may be their own biggest victim. On a more prosaic level, this is a story about a life prisoner and I would ask the reader to consider whether he really deserves to lose his freedom for most of his life as a result of actions taken when young as a result of growing up in a terrible situation. I’d like to see the whole world move away from a criminal justice system focused on punishment and retribution towards one focused on rehabilitation. That applies doubly to any countries which have retained capital punishment, which I regard as pure barbarism.

Do you primarily write fiction? What other forms of expression have you dabbled in?

At last, an easy question! I’m horribly clumsy and have terrible eye-hand coordination so music, dancing, painting, etc, are all out. Many art and music teachers have confirmed this. I have a horrible voice but will howl along at karaoke if you let me, maybe taking on Madonna, Blur, or Frank Ocean. I have worked on a few short films, but primarily as a writer. Writing is pretty much the only thing I have ever been any good at, and I want to spend as much time as I can for as long as I have left getting better at it.

As Juliana Lamy said about your writing, “This stunning story is a brief masterclass in pacing and natural characterization.” Do you have any craft book suggestions for writers trying to fine-tune those skills?

It’s such a lovely comment by Juliana and I am so grateful to her for appreciating this story. For a craft book on pacing, I’d recommend “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain” by George Saunders. He examines a series of exquisite Russian short stories and explores why they work and how. His metaphor of the writer and reader as being like a motorcycle and a sidecar – where a successful journey can only be achieved when both stay very close together – is a brilliant one to consider when thinking about pacing. Character is harder, and I don’t know if a craft book can help enormously. It would be better to spend a lot of time trying to understand the people you know and meet, and reading as many novels and stories as you can to see the way they translate the mysteries of human character into signals on a page. John Irving, David Mitchell, Edith Wharton, Junot Diaz, Elizabeth Strout – they’re all great places to start. Or you can shortcut everything I just said and watch “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” in its entirety three times. That’s a character masterclass.

What do I think of when you hear “The Good Life?”

The idea of the good life makes me think of a lyric from my favourite song, Joni Mitchell’s Amelia: “People will tell you where they’ve gone, they’ll tell you where to go/ But til you get there yourself you’ll never really know/ Where some have found their paradise others just come to harm.” The good life looks very different for every person, basically (and obviously). My own good life is built on personal freedom (something that shouldn’t be taken for granted in a world where so many people have limited freedom for political, social or economic reasons), good friends, discovering beautiful art, and writing anything I am proud of. And now, of course, the words good life will make me think of the wonderful magazine who saw value in a story of mine I loved and gave it such a wonderful home.

---

Jaime’s stunning fiction story, Things To Talk To Jim About, is featured in Issue #16 of The Good Life Review ~ The HoneyBee Prize Edition.

Thank you, Jaime, for being a part of our growing literary community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We appreciate your thoughtful answers and wisdom, and we wish you the best!