Twists and turns
Debut suspense novelist Megan Collins appears Tuesday at Sun
Megan Collins isn’t trying to sound aloof or haughty when she explains why she doesn’t particularly worry whether readers might anticipate any or all the many narrative spins in her debut mystery, “The Winter Sister.”
In fact, the soft-spoken and polite Connecticut native is merely a realist. Hailing from Bolton, Collins lives with her husband in West Hartford and teaches creative writing at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. She’s also managing editor of the literary journal 3Elements Review, and her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
There are plenty of twists in “The Winter Sister,” and Collins should be proud. But she’s also a bit ambivalent about the whole idea of the Big Reveal.
Thanks to filmmakers like M. Night Shyamalan and novelists like Lionel Shriver and Harlan Coben and the deluge of stylists who’ve followed, the “plot twist” has become an almost de rigueur formula — so much so, it might be said, consumers start any thriller novel or movie conditioned to immediately try to figure out which character or subplot might be part of the almost obligatory shock
“It’s true. The market is so saturated with psychological suspense that everyone is expecting the big thing around the corner they didn’t see coming,” Collins says. “(The situation) has created an expectation that’s almost impossible to live up to. For me, it doesn’t really bother me if readers see the twists coming — and some readers so far have been surprised and some haven’t — because what’s interesting to me, then, is how the characters
cope with these situations.”
Collins will discuss and sign copies of “The Winter Sister” Tuesday as part of the “Delicious Discussions” series in the Michael Jordan Steakhouse at Mohegan Sun.
In the novel, 18-year-old Persephone O'Leary is strangled on a snowy night in the fictional small Connecticut town where she lives with her younger half-sister, Sylvie — the story's narrator — and their mother, Annie. The main suspects are Persephone's boyfriend Ben Emory and, separately, an eccentric classmate/stalker, but police can't find evidence to indict either. It's also true the Emorys are the region's most powerful family while the O'Learys are from the wrong side of the tracks.
As the years go by and the murder is never solved, Annie descends into alcoholism and shuts her surviving daughter out; Sylvie flounders professionally as a tattoo artist in Providence. Only when Annie gets seriously ill does Sylvie return home to care for her, an awkward situation compounded when one of the hospital nurses is Ben, who maintains with credibility his innocence.
Some novelists start writing with only a minimal narrative sketch in mind, so plot twists might occur spontaneously — shocking them as much as they will the reader. Collins, though, is one of those meticulous outliners so she knew ahead of time who killed Persephone. That doesn't mean the characters aren't capable, as the manuscript evolves, of astonishing the writer.
“I'm definitely a big planner,” Collins says. “I can't go into a draft without knowing all the major points — this was here and that happened when. But with each chapter, more details about the characters and their motivations emerge. I can do all the plotting I want, but not until I sit down to write do they come into their own. And you never know what they might do.”
But in “The Winter Sister,” Collins doesn't adhere to other formulaic tropes. One major character, for example, stays on the fringe of the action for virtually the whole book.
“(The character) was always on the periphery, and there was one scene where I tried to write him in,” Collins says. “I wanted to be able to show Sylvie react, but I couldn't get it to work. In the end, I don't think he was supposed to be outside; his is a presence over the town and, by extension, Sylvie.”
There's also Annie, whose descent into alcoholism and isolation are emotionally scarring for Sylvie. A lot of readers — indeed, a lot of editors and agents — might anticipate some sort of closure or acceptance, and this isn't necessarily the case. It's a situation that fascinated Collins.
“A lot of the critiques I've gotten centered on Annie,” Collins says. “‘I hated the mother.' ‘She was awful.' ‘She's not in any way a good mother.' Well, to me, Annie is someone so lost in her grief and problems that she's unable to perform her responsibilities as a mother. The reality is that we have expectations that moms are supposed to meet but they're humans, too. And I'm grateful to readers that DO understand that Annie needs to be dark and abrasive.”
Though “The Winter Sister” was her first published book, she'd written two previous novels without success. “My agent shopped them around and there was some positive feedback,” Collins says, “but it never worked out. This business can be a brutal emotional rollercoaster. But writing has always been a joy.”
She's under contract for and at work on a second suspense novel, scheduled for publication in 2020. In her spare time, she likes to read psychological suspense novels.
“I used to worry about reading other books (because of what might subconsciously creep into her brain),” she says. “But I've decided that, now that I'm writing psychological suspense, I'm hungry to read what's going on the genre. I like to be surprised.”