Coach House Books asks Sean Dixon a few things about The Girls Who Saw Everything

CH: Why The Epic of Gilgamesh? What about it intrigues you?

SD: I read it for the first time while sitting with my dying mother. Gilgamesh’s grief at the death of his friend and his own futile attempt to escape death for himself – these two ideas were more simply and clearly expressed, as I read them, than I’d ever known in any other work of literature. The fact that this clarity was coming from a four thousand year old narrative filled me, as I sat on my mother’s couch, with awe. It’s a rare experience. And a common one, I gather, among readers of this work.

CH: The Lacuna Cabal holds a certain reverence for books. Do you share this with them? Is that why you wanted to write a book about books?

SD: I do have a big messy library, as does my father, and I did spend a lot of my childhood staring at his books and trying to figure out which one of them to read. But I wouldn’t call it reverence. More like solace.

CH: Which character do you most closely relate to?

SD: Du’s weakness of character, Coby’s social incompetence, Runner’s obsessiveness and failing body, Neil’s helplessness. Romy’s taste for trash. Aline’s desire for androgyny. Emmy’s alienation. Priya’s history of bad lyrics, Missy’s loneliness, Anna’s self-involvement. The immigration officer’s capacity for sympathy. Salam’s concern that he won’t be able to fulfill the task given to him.

CH: Why Montreal?

SD: They put the century-old Christ Church Cathedral up on massive stilts, and nobody even noticed. It has both a mountain and a river. You can get bagels in the middle of the night. But also, as my wife says, it’s small enough to hold you in a kind of embrace. I love to walk there. I went to school in Montreal. The novel is about youth. Montreal was the city of my later youth.

CH: The fitzbot, an experiment in artificial intelligence, becomes more human through the book, and in the end is quite a sympathetic and admirable character. Are you commenting on our relationship with technology?

SD: I’m not sure it does become more human. It just evolves slightly: develops from having a literal sense of what a shadow is to a metaphoric one. And then it seeks it out, just as it was meant to. For shelter.