BEFORE THE WIND
Lots of buzz about book
TORONTO “I always have trouble trying to explain my books — especially in the early stages when they’re just inside my head.”
There’s a note of apology in Jim Lynch’s voice. So he seems pleased but also a little perplexed when he’s reminded that his new novel, Before the Wind, is one of the spring publishing season’s most eagerly awaited books.
Lynch, a novelist critics have compared with John Steinbeck and Ken Kesey, seems determined to be low key about such hoopla. Still, he concedes this is the one he’s been preparing to write all his life.
But what is it about? One suggests to its reticent 54-year-old author that Before the Wind is a meditation on the glories of sailing, with digressions on physicist Albert Einstein; that it offers a laser-sharp scrutiny of a loving but dysfunctional family; that it is an ode to the wind gods; that it is permeated with a sense of saltwater adventure that reaches its climax with the prestigious Swiftsure International Yacht Race out of Victoria, B.C.
Lynch thinks all this over, nods his head, but still tries to put into his own words what was on his mind when he wrote this book.
“First and foremost, I set out to try to capture the feeling and thrill and the danger and the serenity of sailing,” he says.
“That was something that was a big part of my upbringing — so when I think of sailing, I also think of family. But I also think of the science of it, the physics of it, so when my research revealed the fact that Einstein sailed, that fascinated me.”
Lynch enjoys the risk of jumbling together disparate ingredients: “What I always like to do with my novels is to see how many interesting digressions and themes I can juggle together without collapse.”
He’s also driven by a pervasive curiosity, stemming from his earlier career as a journalist in the Pacific Northwest.
That helps explain why his novels keep treading new ground. Readers fresh to his work may have trouble believing that this slight but wiry dreamer who celebrates the glories of sailing in his latest book is also responsible for 2012’s Truth Like the Sun, an engrossing political thriller.
“Yeah, they are kind of all over the place,” he concedes in an interview in the office of his publisher, Knopf Canada.
“I try to write about whatever fascinates me at the time, because if I don’t it will kind of die after the fourth rewrite.”
The passion to write about sailing stems from his own life, growing up in a family that spent as much time on sailboats as in the home. As a teenager in Washington state, Jim Lynch would dream he would one day write a book set in the “water wonderland” of Puget Sound. But the real impetus for Before the Wind came in 2009 when Lynch and his family were sailing in Canadian waters. “That’s when I decided to quit worrying and embrace the challenge of immersing readers in the addictive thrill of flying along in a boat powered by an invisible force where water, wind, and sky collide,” he wrote in a note to his publishers.
Lynch and his family live in Olympia, Wash., and the nearby Canadian border seems a natural presence in their lives. Indeed, its proximity sparked a critically acclaimed 2009 novel, Border Songs, which examines the unique culture of people living in this area.
“Growing up, we would always sail into Canada,” he remembers. “That was the promised land in the summer. I’ve had an ongoing fascination with life on both sides of the border.”
In a way, Border Songs was his “shorthand version” of the way the border works. “I’m always impressed by how intensely Canadians observe the United States and how so many Americans forget Canada exists.”
So it was important to him that Before the Wind be highlighted by the Swiftsure race in and out of Victoria, a Vancouver Island city that to him represents another fascinating aspect of Canada’s varied West Coast culture.
But as always, he wanted to ensure a human dimension — especially with this, his most personal book.
“I feel that all my books, even though they seem different, deal with the sad and comic wonderment of life.”
The first-person narrator of Before the Wind is Joshua Johannssen, who has lived with sailboats all his 31 years amidst an atmosphere of family turbulence.
He has a grandfather who designs them, a driven and often maddening father who has built and raced them, and a mother who plays her own quirky role in the household’s sailing universe. There are also Josh’s two rebellious siblings, who have fled the family discord.
But when Josh’s dad becomes obsessed with restoring a decrepit old boat built years before, an astonishing family reconciliation takes place — and with it, the decision to sail in Swiftsure.
An old sailing boat also became Lynch’s real-life venue as he struggled to complete this novel.
“I came across a design I’d had a crush on as a teenager back in 1977 when it came out. It was nearly 40 years old but it was in nice shape and dropped down to somewhere near my price range. I used it as my writing office for a year to write the final draft of the book. I just hunkered down there with a laptop and a heater and the rain coming down on the roof — and no Wi-Fi. It finally gave me the peace and focus to finish the thing.
“It was at this beat-up marina in downtown Olympia. I would climb on board and go below. It was wonderfully uninterruptible. I even turned off my phone.”
First and foremost, I set out to try to capture the feeling and thrill and the danger and the serenity of sailing.