Our Power Q & A guest today is Carmela Circelli—a Toronto psychotherapist and philosophy professor at York University, and also the author of the novel, Love and Rain (Guernica Editions, 2023). Love and Rain is a stunning story that explores the human cost of political ideology against the backdrop of the FLQ movement in Quebec and the Red Brigades in Italy. Carmela's work resounds with the depth and immediacy of the human psyche, and shows, with painful clarity, how we flail and suffer in times of civil unrest.
Our question for Carmela is about this book’s irrepressible moodiness: of theme and language.
Q: We love what a deeply moody story this is: how the narration echos the internal unrest of the characters. Was this style something you consciously thought about while writing, or was it an unconscious response to the themes you were addressing?
The equally moody and goregous cover of Love and Rain, by Carmela Circelli.
Q: Numerous people have made the comment that they like the moodiness of Love and Rain. I find this very interesting, as it is not at all something I consciously strove for, or was even aware of till people started mentioning it. One thing I was aware of, is that I wanted to focus on the weather, that I wanted to address environmental concerns without being explicit about it. So I did set some of the scenes against the backdrop of extreme weather events. But I did not consider that, in some cases, this actually correlated with the internal, emotional states of the characters.
A couple of things come to mind, that might have unconsciously contributed to the 'moodiness' of the book. One has to do with the reason why I write, which is mainly to process big emotions that I have nowhere else to put. Of course, thoughts come into it too. But despite having a philosophical background, it's feeling and not thinking that compels me to write or makes writing something I cannot seem to live without.
When I first decided to write a novel, I was afraid that my philosophical studies would interfere with my ability to construct narrative, that I would fall into being abstract and dry, and be unable to create a sensuous, living world. But now, I think that maybe, even my philosophical interests may have unconsciously contributed to the 'moodiness' of the book. That is because Existential Phenomenology, which was my main area of study, is very much concerned with prioritizing and describing 'experience' of which mood and feeling are a central part. In the context of philosophy, I have written quite a bit about the importance of mood, about how moods are not just random states that interfere with the clarity of thought, but are in fact revelatory, and can tell us important truths about our existence. And now that I think about it, the chapter on Mara is a kind of explicit expression of that belief on the value of moods, and the importance of sometimes, just letting them be, rather than muting them with medications.
But no, none of this was conscious. I was just trying to tell a story and out it came, in a moody way.
Author Carmela Circelli.
More about Carmela Circelli:
Carmela Circelli was born in Southern Italy and grew up in Montreal. She has been teaching on contract for the Philosophy Department at York University for 30 years, and also works as a psychotherapist in private practice in Toronto. In 2014, Quattro Books published her philosophical memoir Sweet Nothing: An Elemental case for Taking out Time. Love and Rain is her debut novel.
More about Love and Rain:
Love and Rain is a novel that explores the nature of love, its pain, and the near impossibility of its enduring happiness. Moving back in space and time from Rome to Montreal in the sixties and seventies, it also traces the individual rebellion and social revolution that marked the FLQ movement in Quebec and the Red Brigades in Italy in the late 1970s. The power of love, music and politics intertwine in a tale that spells the mysterious alchemy of fate and chance.