Walk in a park becomes a source of inspiration
When her dog seemed to smell trouble in a pond, Susan Glickman’s new novel began to take form
For a writer whose main interest is how unexpected events can change the course of someone’s life, a chance incident in Wychwood Park was serendipity.
Susan Glickman was taking a stroll in the pastoral enclave in midtown Toronto when her usually calm canine began barking excitedly, then ran toward the pond at the bottom of the road. As Glickman chased after him, the unbidden image of a body in the shallows of the pond flickered through her mind. Long after this incident, thoughts about how finding a murdered corpse in that serene landscape might affect someone like herself kept rolling through her mind. She turned to writing to seek the answers to her questions. The work evolved into Safe As Houses, a murder mystery, Glickman’s first foray into this genre.
“Terrible things happen to people that’s not their fault — illness, poverty, natural disasters, acts of violence . . . It’s a matter of luck, not deserving good or bad.” It’s a theme she has explored through poetry and fiction ( The Storyteller; The Violin Lover) because it “demands looking closely at the nuances and contexts of people’s lives.”
Safe As Houses’ central character is Liz Ryerson, a bookstore owner who lives and works in Toronto’s Hillcrest Village, near Wychwood. In the midst of sorting out a number of stormy changes in her life, Liz finds comfort in the belief that her beloved neighbourhood is safe and stable until the day she encounters a corpse while walking her dog.
Though a murder mystery, this is not simply a “who done it.” Glickman seeks to investigate why the crime happened. “The story delves into the psychology of the victim and of the person who discovered the victim’s body.” She structured the book on the parallel narratives of these two characters.
Glickman adds that the novel is “about the things I love. I’ve always wished for a bookstore in the neighbourhood, so I created a main character who owns the shop I dream of.” She expressed her affection for dogs by featuring one in the story. Quotes from books and references to titles ( The Odyssey, for example) show her love of literature.
Her favourite coffee shop appears in the book as Gateau Basque. She’s lived in Hillcrest Village for more than 30 years. Her children grew up here; the shop owners know her and “give bits of food to my dog when we pass by.” She concedes the community has changed. “It’s become more gentrified, there are many young families and residents are generally second generation Canadians. But, there is still a village feeling here.”
At the close of Safe As Houses, Liz Ryerson, her family and friends move on with their lives though Liz is left with a number of unsolved mysteries.
Why do people develop as they did despite their opposite intentions? Why do seemingly disparate people become intertwined? Why did one person’s life end brutally? Glickman’s view: “Life is unpredictable.”