The part of Tasmania I grew up in was awash with Anglo-Celtic names, all Campbells and Smiths and Davies and Inglis and Williams and Jacksons and Johnston/Johnson/Johnstones. But sprinkled amongst these were visionary names like Truchanas and Dombrovskis. And there was a girl at school called Amelija Tašk?nas which I thought was the best name I’d ever heard but she hated it as it drew attention to her and she opted for the innocuous Milly, although thoroughly modern. How times have ch-ch-ch-ch-changed. But these names spiced my imagination, shouting the exotic.
It was years later I learnt they were from the Baltics; Lithuanian and Latvian. And then I worked with an Estonian, which completed the trilogy. In the 1980s, pre the fall of the wall, his family would visit Estonia and return with stories of life there, the lack of food beyond carbohydrates, the Estonians had been pushed from the best land.
The post-WWII diaspora from the Baltics was clearly immense. So it was with great interest I came to Lauren Chater’s novel, The Lace Weaver, set just after the 1940 Russian occupation. So I thought we should get together with Lauren and knit one, pearl two, always keeping the tension even on the wool, and see about the weaving of this novel.
What was the first whiff you had of The Lace Weaver?
It was a bookish whiff, so according to a recent ABC article it was a mixture of vinyl acetate ethylene, hydrogen peroxide and alkyl ketene dimer. This compound had a name: Knitted Estonian Lace by Nancy Bush. I found it while I was shelving books in my local library and like all good library employees I waited until my shift was over until I cracked the spine (lies). It was fascinating; a book about the handicraft of knitted lace shawls as well as a history of the small Baltic country of Estonia. The thing that really interested me was a paragraph about the women who had continued to knit under Soviet occupation. That set off a chain of research and before I knew it, I’d booked my ticket to Estonia to undertake more.
Given the novel is ostensibly told through two, alternating, first-person POVs, I wonder what decisions brought you to this structure? Did you consider others? For example, a strong male voice?
When I initially conceived the idea of The Lace Weaver, I imagined telling it from only one character’s POV. She’d be a young Estonian, a master knitter, trained by her grandmother who had passed on. I wanted to explore the way the shawls could be a voice for women who were oppressed. But this other voice kept interrupting and that voice was Lydia’s. I resisted as long as possible but eventually I just let her have her way. Having a Russian voice in the mix (or half-Russian) was a way hopefully to balance Katarina’s stubbornness. Also because the story is told through first person, it can sometimes feel as though there is only one ‘truth’ – the Estonian truth – whereas with the addition of Lydia, there’s a suggestion (I hope) that many of the Russian people were just as traumatised and oppressed in their own way as the Estonians, even though technically they were the ‘victors’.
Was it hard to establish and maintain the symphony of voices?
Kati’s voice came to me as soon as I started writing; some sections of those earlier chapters haven’t changed at all since the first time I wrote them. Lydia’s was less clear but I knew from the beginning I wanted her to have a powerful father. During my research, I came across a biography of Stalin’s Daughter by Rosemary Stanton. Although I couldn’t use Svetlana as a real character, I based much of Lydia’s background and history on real events that happened to her. Svetlana did have a secret boyfriend (he was Jewish) when she was sixteen. Stalin found them out and had him sent to a gulag. But he was a wealthy film director so he went to an upmarket gulag with better accommodation. As to the question of maintaining the symphony of voices… I would say many writers struggle in that middle section of novel-writing where they feel overwhelmed and exhausted by the sheer difficulty of the task. As your connection to the characters strengthens, you become so invested in the story that the real world starts to feel less real and the fictional world of the novel becomes all-encompassing. Then you get your second wind as you start to reach the end of the novel and it’s fantastic, such a relief, like pulling yourself out of the ocean after a really long swim. Any kind of sustained writing is a challenge.
Did you travel to Estonia and Russia?
I travelled to Estonia and Russia in 2015. It was strange and wonderful to traverse the streets I had imagined my character’s walking along. I hired a guide which was fortuitous in many ways; he was able to get us into places that were inaccessible to normal tour-groups. He took us into the forest near Viljandi to meet with a ranger whose father had been part of the Forest Brothers resistance movement. We were picking spiders out of our hair for hours afterwards. They crawl up under your scalp and stick there like burrs. But at least we got to have a warm shower and sleep in a soft bed. Hard to imagine how difficult it must have been for those men and women who lived in the forest as outlaws, unable to return to their homes at the risk of being shot by the Russian KGB.
There’s an amazing array of daily-life detail in a number of settings? How did you uncover these? For example, the wheels of frozen milk preserved for winter. That was a doozie.
I read lots and lots of biographies and memoirs from Estonian people in order to try and create that authentic atmosphere. I also interviewed quite a few Estonians; my husband still says he’ll never forgive me for dragging him to an Estonian retirement village on our wedding anniversary to interview an elderly lady about her life. He got to eat freshly smoked trout for lunch though, so I don’t know what he’s complaining about. People were generally very generous about sharing their stories even though it was obviously painful for them to talk about the deportations and life under the Soviets. It was important for me to get little details right if possible. I didn’t just want to tell a story; I wanted people to understand how fascinating the Estonian culture is and to want to learn more about it.
Do you speak Estonian or Russian? How did you overcome this to read primary sources? 
I don’t speak either language, so I had to get some help translating songs and stories. The Estonian archives in Surry Hills (Sydney) were extremely helpful in that regard. They’re a treasure-trove of information and they work so hard, connecting people to their relatives, sourcing materials for films and putting together exhibitions. I also had some help from a lovely Estonian editor who checked my work for me before it went to print.
How hard was it to “get into character”? Twice. Given the often hostile response to writers crossing the boundaries of race, religion and gender, you have done this twice. Was that scary to do?
By the time I reached the halfway mark of the writing, I could certainly ‘hear’ my characters a lot more clearly than I initially did. This made for a lot of rewriting in the first part once I’d started editing. I didn’t try to plan too much either; I let the story follow my characters rather than dictating to them what needed to happen. This goes against the grain for lots of writers. Many authors want to be in control of the story and I think that’s fine. I personally love not knowing. It’s part of the adventure of writing, the process of discovery. Was it scary to write from the POV of a character from a different culture? It was a little scary, yes, but I tried to do it with empathy and compassion. I did as much research as I could to ensure what I was writing was accurate as possible and that any anachronisms were intentional. I also tried not to be too swayed by first-person accounts, to look deeper beneath the fear and emotion of what the subjects remembered to try to understand the complexities around the issues of Soviet occupation. There’s a danger when using someone’s memoirs or memories to create fiction that people will always make themselves the hero and they will remember some things as they wished they had been, not as they perhaps truly were. I wanted to come to my own conclusions about why the Germans were considered saviours and what drove Estonians to stay or leave during that difficult time where loyalties were not so clear cut.
Are you a knitter?
Confession: I’m a bad knitter. I (hope) I’m a better writer than a knitter. I think they are similar though; both require discipline and dedication. Both are a labour of love and require years of patience and practice. It’s on my to-do list and if anyone would like to take pity on me and give me some help, it would be gratefully received! I did do a lot of research into knitting whilst writing the book and visited the knitting museum in Haapsalu, where part of the book is set.
Having just spent another week restructuring the opening of my Work-In-Progress, Bread – A Romance, I realise, again, how hard openings are to get right. In 2015 you won the Historical Novel Society Australasia First Pitch competition, where the opening of The Lace Maker was read aloud. This winning section bears little in common with the published opening of the novel. Could you tell us some of the points that led you to these changes? For example, the evolution of Elina’s Prologue.
When I entered my manuscript into the First Pitch comp, I hadn’t actually completed it. I think I did about two months more work on it before a friend suggested to me that I should explore the conflict between the Russians AND the Nazi’s in Estonia during the 1940’s. The original manuscript was set during the cold war, post 1945, and the scene you’re referring to featured Kati and her brother Jakob fighting about the use of wool. At that stage, her parents were long gone – deported with thousands of others. I thought about what my friend said and it made sense to reorganise the story and fit in into that earlier time period so that’s what I did. Then when I had completed the manuscript and sent it off to my publisher, they came back with a suggestion about including a prologue which would introduce Kati’s grandmother to the reader and also provide a bit of Estonian history. In many writing courses, tutors will tell you not to include prologues so I hadn’t thought about it until my editor suggested it. But now I think it fits in quite nicely and it’s the circle of life.
Princess Amberlina was TERRIBLY upset there was no major role for a Labrador in The Lace Weaver. Will there be a significant canine in your next work-in-progress? Tell us about that too, what you are working on.
Sadly, I couldn’t work any Labradors into The Lace Weaver. There’s a wolf though, so maybe six degrees of canine separation there? I’m currently working on my second novel which is set in the 17th Century. It’s a retelling of Gulliver’s Travels told from the perspective of his long-suffering wife, Mary Burton. She has just a few lines in the original text and I’m expanding them to give her her own world and her own voice. There are echoes of the Illiad in Gulliver’s Travels so I’m trying to work those in, as well as giving her her own career (women must have done something while their menfolk were at sea) as a midwife. Again, I’d like it to say something about the nature of women’s work and the demands of domesticity and quiet rebellion. Whether it achieves those ambitious heights remains to be seen. Just for you, I’ll try to slip in a dog called Princess. Keep an eye out.
Princess Amberlina is on all four paws waiting. Thanks for the chitty-chat. Your answers have been refreshing and insightful. The Lace Weaver combines so many lovely threads.