Nice Girl, Grisly Topics.

Mid-way through Camilla Gibb's latest novel, The Petty Details of So-and-so's Life (Doubleday Canada 2002), the protagonist Emma is warned, “You're not going to find happiness or meaning. It's in the details. The petty details of … life, and how you make them all add up.”

Gibb didn't start out with this philosophy.

“I used to listen to people in elevators talking about what they watched on TV the night before,” she recalls, over coffee on a brisk fall morning at the International Writers Festival in Vancouver. “I couldn't believe that that was it�"that was life. I thought, ‘There has to be some bigger piece or meaning.’”

But then again, she didn't start out as a writer, either.

Gibb arrived on the literary scene in 1999 with her debut novel, Mouthing the Words, about a young girl who fights back against her abusive father. In Canada, Mouthing the Words had an initial press run of 1,500. When it was picked up by Random House in Britain, Gibb was told that the novel would sell worldwide. And sell it did. It has been published in 14 countries, in 11 different languages. It won the City of Toronto Book Award and placed Gibb on Britain's Orange Futures list of major talent to watch.

“It's such a Canadian story,” says Gibb. “We're so modest. It takes an outsider to tell us we're good.”

The success of her debut made it possible for Gibb to make the transition into full-time writer. At the time, Gibb was ensconced in academia, with a Ph.D. in anthropology from Oxford and a post-doctorate position in Toronto.

“But I knew in my heart that I couldn't teach anthropology, that I wanted to write.”

Although she no longer teaches anthropology, the study of human behaviour still fascinates her. “I was touring in Japan,” she explains, “and someone asked me why such a pretty girl was writing about such grisly topics … I've always been drawn to the dark side. It's just more interesting.”

Like Mouthing, The Petty Details of So-and-so's Life takes the reader into difficult childhoods. But what tragedy there may be is averted as we are shown their world through the children's playful imaginings and secret language. Emma and Blue, sister and brother, are more or less orphaned by their parents at a young age. As they struggle into adulthood, they eventually, and most unconventionally, come to terms with the past.

While Emma runs away, Blue is committed to finding the family he never had. Of the two, Blue is the more interesting character. Gibb seamlessly moves him from a helpless child into a rough-andtumble man you would cross the street to avoid. Despite this, he holds onto his childhood naivete and his intense need for his father's approval. He searches out his father with a desperation that ultimately leads to the novel's startling and unsettling conclusion.

“Blue was the harder character to write,” Gibb explains. “He is incredibly boyish in the way that he didn't use language to communicate. So it was hard to show who he was.”

The magic of Gibb's novel lies in how she is able to translate the confusion of childhood into the bold uncertainty of adulthood. The characters go forward with absolute confidence in their actions, as offbeat as they are. It is this mixture of foolishness and grace that marks Gibb's characters and novel as unique.

“I think that's something everyone has to do: come to terms with your family. It's part of becoming who you are.”

With the past in order, the future looks promising for Gibb. Her first novel is being developed into a film script. The Petty Details has been received with critics' praise and readers' enthusiasm. And she is working on her third novel, Sweetness in the Belly, about an Irish family travelling across North Africa, arriving in Ethiopia in 1974, the year Emperor Haile Selassie is overthrown. “It involves politics and power, mysticism and religion,” she says of her current project.

Meanwhile, the details of Gibb's life have come full circle. “One day I realized I was one of those people in the elevator, talking about last night's TV. That's when I knew there was no big meaning or key. Happiness-it really is in the details.”

Author Camilla Gibb's ‘petty details’ come full circle. Photo by Maria Stanborough.

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By Maria Stanborough, Maria Stanborough is a writer and lighting technician living in Vancouver.