A’isha Nasir is a Nigerian teenager who has been charged with adultery. Sophie MacNeil is an ambitious, though inexperienced, Canadian journalist living in Nigeria. Speechless, the new novel by StFX’s Anne Simpson, and released this week, is the story of how their lives become intertwined in a fast-paced tale of justice, witness, and courage.
“Who should tell a story? What happens when one speaks on behalf of another? At once compelling and lyrical, Speechless presents a nuanced cast of characters trying to navigate the power of their words, their responsibility for them, and how they affect others in matters of life and death,” reads a description of the book, which Ms. Simpson, an adjunct professor in the English Department at StFX, says has been 10 years in the making.
“It has been a long period of writing, revising, researching, and revising some more. I wanted to write a novel about challenges that women face, but I don’t know if I was consciously thinking about it in this way when I started. A novel grows out of questions that you hold and gradually – very gradually – you figure out the story,” she says. “You might have the characters, but you don’t know what they’ll be like in one situation or another. After making a lot of mistakes, you begin to figure it out. I work in isolation, as writers do, and so I didn’t know if I was on the right path. Occasionally, editors read it. I used their comments to make it a richer, more developed narrative. I got rid of a lot. I added a lot. You have to be willing to change a novel in radical ways. It’s just a tremendous amount of work, and you have no idea if the work is worth all the effort. Ultimately, this is a novel that I’m very glad I wrote. I believe in the story; I believe in the characters.
“Speechless is coming out in the midst of a pandemic, but even in times of tumult, we still need the imagination to make sense of complex situations. Fiction helps us understand the world. It allows us to stand back and see things whole.”
Speechless is Ms. Simpson’s third novel, following Falling (McClelland & Stewart, 2008) and Canterbury Beach (Penguin, 2001). She has published five books of poetry, of which Strange Attractor (McClelland & Stewart, 2019) is the most recent. She has been a recipient of the Griffin Poetry Prize, and her fiction has been longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
This research is, in part, made possible by the Government of Canada Research Support Fund.
