Today we talk about Passage to Yarmouth, a book by Anthony Caine published with our publishing house Europe Books.
Europe Books had the pleasure of interviewing the author Anthony Caine to get to know him better, what was the moment that prompted him to the writing of his book Passage to Yarmouth, as well as how he chose its title.
Below you can find our interview. Take a seat and enjoy your reading!!!
- What was the moment that prompted you to the writing of your book?
In the summer of 2022, when visiting a family member who had chosen to live a very different life “off-grid” within austere, less-conquered nature, I was struck by the question: do these physical differences in our respective domiciles impact how we view ourselves, our personal identities, and the values we try to protect. Do these differences cause us to change our view of each other? Of course, the differences do affect us, but to what extent? How deeply? To what extent are these domestic conditions more influential than values cultivated in common during our family upbringing? How strongly is a person’s personal identity anchored to our family history, our family story? The relationship between our family story and our domestic circumstances is mired in dynamic tension. Do family story and domestic circumstances continually influence one another? The relationship is not static. And to what extent will the growing prevalence of Artifical Intelligence impact future family stories? It took me more than a year to come to terms with these questions before I first put pen to paper.
- What characteristics your audience should have to appreciate your book?
Every person has a family story that unpins his or her identity. Good or bad, the family story is an important reference point, somehow linked to our personal views of self-worth, self-loathing, and/or self-denial. We protect this family story. Periodically, we may amend it, rewrite parts we are less happy with. We often revisit it. It stabilises us, revalidates us, protects us. In this sense, Passage to Yarmouth is a novel that any introspective person might appreciate. Passage to Yarmouth at its simplest level, is a story about what it is to be a family, what binds the family together, and what may cause the sense of family to dissolve. This is, I believe, a subject close to the heart of everyone.
- How would you describe your writing style?
Simple, direct, fast moving. The text trimmed of its fat.
- How did you choose the title of your book?
The novel has a number of themes running in parallel. On its basic level, it follows Maddie, the family’s 90 year-old matriarch and her children as they travel on her birthday excursion from Mystic, Connecticut to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. The reader follows the way in which Maddie’s 5 daughters confront each other and their different personal interpretations of a presumably common (?) family story … and how these confrontations challenge each daughter’s sense of identity. So, the novel is about personal transformations. The novel is also about redemption: Seth and Epiphany Marners’ eventual acknowledgement and acceptance, first by Maddie and then her daughters. About Maddie coming to understand how her life’s work will be remembered. Along the way, the Dowager-Kenyon Family story is clarified for posterity. Clarification is more important than accuracy. All of these transformations: they are Passages unveiled as the family travels to Yarmouth…
- Are you working on a new writing project you can tell us about?
I feel inspired and compelled to write only when I am struggling with a personal issue that runs deeply within me and that somehow needs to get out. The action within my novels is thereby of an interpersonal nature. The novels are not social or political commentary. Their themes are contemporary and may indeed be universal. From 2020 through 2022, I authored an anthology of 20 sequential short stories that track a personal transformation of my own. These days, I am working to find a publisher for this anthology. I consider it to my best literary work to date. Along with this, I have a number of deeply felt questions, drawn from observations, related to specific, notable past experiences (similar to those described in paragraph 1, above)- They have not yet found their way to form a new concrete storyline. Their time will eventually come.
Europe Books thanks the author Anthony Caine once again for taking the time and answering our questions. We are really pleased to have walked alongside him on the editorial path that led to the publication of his book Passage to Yarmouth. We wish him the best of luck for his book and for his future works.
To you, my dear reader, may this novel allow you to reflect on the meaning and sense of “family” to which we belong or the one we have built or we are building because family is an important value for our lives!
So, my dear reader, all I have to say is to enjoy your reading!
Your Editor!