No Relation (2014)
Behind the Novel: 2
This week, I thought I’d take a closer look at my fourth novel, No Relation, and share its roots and connections to my own life. (Some of the photos illustrating this week’s newsletter were used in an earlier post, but I think they make sense here, too.)
The Storyline
My fourth novel, No Relation, was published in 2014. The central pillar of the story are the trials and tribulations of the narrator, a middle-aged advertising copywriter and aspiring novelist living in New York who bears the burden of a very famous name, Earnest Hemmingway—at least it sounds like a very famous name. Note that both the narrator’s given name and surname are spelled differently from those of the famous writer, Ernest Hemingway. So Hem, as our narrator is known, is constantly forced to explain his famous name, almost always invoking the phrase, “no relation,” hence the title of the novel. I won’t give away too much here, but the story opens with Hem having a very, very bad day. In one 24-hour period, he loses his ad agency job, his wallet, and his live-in girlfriend. An auspicious beginning to be sure. Compounding this bad day are other problems. He’s suffering from writers block as he tries to pen his first novel. He believes it’s the ghost of Ernest Hemingway in his head haunting and blocking his writing. Also, he’s at odds with his father over the longstanding family tradition that will see his father pass leadership of the family underwear business in Chicago—The Hemmingwear Company—over to Hem in the very near future. Of course, Hem wants no part of it. He just wants to write the next great novel. In his mind, his younger sister is much better suited to take over the company.
However, this very bad day, and the extra time now on his hands—given that he’s newly unemployed—serves as a catalyst. Hem is moved to action to try to confront the challenges of life with a famous name. Through an ad he places in the New York Times, he forms a self-help group for other New Yorkers who also live with famous names. They meet at the Manhattan YMCA, and even enter a team in the softball league in Central Park. They call their group and their team, NameFame.
The NameFame support group includes people like:
Mario Andretti, a young guy who has failed his drivers test five times.
James Moriarty, a Columbia Math prof who loves the Sherlock Holmes stories.
Marie Antoinette who runs a bakery-café called, yes, Let Them Eat Cake.
Mahatma Gandhi, a lovely guy with a very, very short temper.
Diana Ross who works at the NYPD and actually sings very well but suffers with severe stage fright.
There are several others in the group including John Dillinger, Julia Roberts, Clark Kent, Jackie Kennedy, Peter Parker, and Jesse Owens, all with their own challenges.
When Hem describes his writers block issue, and what he thinks is causing it, a few in the group want to help and propose the Ernest Hemingway Exorcism World Tour. The idea is that Hem will travel to some of the places in the world that were part of Hemingway’s life, like Toronto, Paris, Pamplona, Key West, and Ketchum, Idaho—to confront the writer’s spirit on his own turf, as it were. It’s a madcap tour of Hemingway hotspots.
There’s also a love story developing and a case of corporate espionage threatening the future of the family business. Okay, enough about the story. Where did it come from?
Where did the story come from?
The roots of this story go back to the late ‘80s when one of my clients was engaged in a labour dispute (I spent 34 years as a public affairs/communications consultant in the agency world). One day, I had a meeting in a tall glass tower in downtown Toronto with a leading labour lawyer. His name was Brian Mulroney. No, not the guy who was Prime Minister at the time and approaching the nadir of his public popularity, this was just another guy who happened to be one of Canada’s top labour lawyers.
I remember thinking to myself, this poor guy! He can’t go to a conference, or on vacation or to a neighbourhood barbecue without hearing jokes and gibes about his famous (or infamous) name. That idea lodged in my brainpan and emerged nearly 25 years later in this novel, No Relation.
I decided that the “living with a famous name” premise might be a little thin to sustain an entire novel, so I built in the love story and the dramatic family succession saga and corporate espionage angles to fill out the story.
Why Choose Ernest Hemingway?
I suppose I could have chosen another famous writer’s name to give my narrator. William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald? But in my mind, Hemingway, above all the rest, stands in the public’s consciousness as the quintessential writer. As well, I have a longstanding fascination with Ernest Hemingway, particularly his years in Paris in the 1920s. I have dozens of books about the expat writers who flocked to Paris a century ago and changed the literary landscape.
To be clear, despite my interest in Hemingway, I neither like his spare, barren, declarative prose, nor him. To me, English is such a rich language that I want to splash around in it when I write. As I may have said before, I hail from the “why use six words when twelve will do” school of writing. Furthermore, having read many of the Hemingway biographies, I’ve come to believe he was a self-centred, egomaniacal, narcissist who treated those around him horribly—even those who helped and loved him. He also suffered with mental illness which, when combined with multiple head injuries and decades of alcoholism, contributed to his death by his own hand. Yet, I remain fascinated by him as a literary titan who indisputably reshaped literature with his, then, revolutionary style. That’s why I gave my narrator the name Earnest Hemmingway.
As for Paris, my wife, Nancy Naylor, and I visit the City of Light as often as we can . I love wandering around the Latin Quarter to the very cafés in which Hemingway wrote. Most of them are still there, including Les Deux Magots where I actually wrote a scene in No Relation that takes place in that very café.
When it Hit Bookstores
After I podcast the novel, chapter-by-chapter (still available on iTunes for free), the novel was released in May of 2014 and immediately landed on the bestsellers list. In fact it was #2 on the Globe list and eventually hit #1 on the Canadian Booksellers Association bestsellers list.
The novel was also well-supported by bookstores. Here’s the window display at Book City on the Danforth in Toronto. Book City has always been very good to me.
I did many events to promote the novel, including a wonderful on-stage interview with then Canada AM cohost—and now federal Cabinet Minister—Marci Ien, at the main branch of the Toronto Public Library. You can watch the interview below:
No Relation was also featured in Canadian Living magazine in August 2014.
My Leacock Shock: Round 2
Any look back at No Relation would not be complete without at least touching on the Leacock Medal. Much to my surprise, No Relation won the 2015 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, my second win. I was bowled over and oh so grateful.
A Feature Film? Close But No Cigar
For several years, No Relation was optioned for film by the same team that produced the six-part TV miniseries based on my first novel, The Best Laid Plans. It came very close in 2019 to being developed as a feature film by CBC. We were up against one other proposal and ended up falling just a little bit short. So close, yet so far!
I still believe the novel would make a great film. But I’ve already had my fair share of good luck on the film/TV front so you won’t hear me complaining.
A New Cover
A year or so after No Relation was launched, a new edition of the novel hit bookstores. I must confess that I prefer the original cover art, but it is kind of neat to have a novel in circulation with two different covers. Here’s the second edition cover:
The Taiwan Edition of No Relation?
Yes, it’s true. I have very few foreign publishing deals. Most of my novels are really only available in Canada, though my stalwart agent, Beverley Slopen continues to hammer away at foreign publishers in the hopes of reaching beyond our borders. But it happened for No Relation. I don’t really know why, but the novel was translated and published in Taiwan. I have a few copies of the Taiwanese edition and it’s very strange to hold it in my hands and flip through the pages.
Hope you enjoyed this look behind my fourth novel, No Relation. I was very happy with how the novel was received.
Stay tuned for more tales from one writer’s life and please subscribe if you haven’t already so you won’t miss future posts. Many thanks.
Terry, I just finished reading No Relation on the weekend, and my outbursts of laughter and guffawing (is that a word) compelled my wife to pick it up and read it immediately! Now she is laughing her head off, as well!
Can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it. You have a way of rendering the most inane concepts into stunningly believable plots. I ate it up!!!
For the record, I even sat through your 1-hour interview with Marci, and I loved how you revisited your own writing throughout the interview in a way that one can easily sense the joy you feel in the craft.
I don’t need to say “keep writing, Terry” because I know it is your raison d’être, but I’ll say it, anyway!
Keep writing, Terry!
Paul
Great minds really do think alike -- I have that same Eiffel Tower and a similar Underwood on the shelves in my Zoom room...
Loving these recounts of how the books came about! Every novel has a story behind it...!
I especially love the fact that you wrote the Les Deux Magots scene *in* Les Deux Magots (though I can't imagine it was quiet... lol) I've done similar things, but nobody else seems to have the same appreciation for it!
~Graham