An Interview with Sarah Harley
by Andrew Miller, Mud Season Review, Creative Nonfiction Editor
Virginia Woolf obviously inspires you. What about her stream-of-consciousness style particularly lends itself to the issues you dealt with in “The Atlantic Hotel?”
I do love the work of Virginia Woolf and the lens through which she sees the world, especially the idea of the multiplicity of selfhood. Her writing meditates a lot on the idea that alternate selves make up who we are. Her stream-of-consciousness style naturally lends itself to the emergence of different voices that express our experiences and perceptions of life. I am interested in trying to capture the experience of thinking through loss, grief, abandonment.
As your older sister grew, she adopted your mother’s “resignation and remoteness.” You imply that she did so more than you, the younger sister. Why?
I think I meant to imply that my older sister began to feel out of reach as she grew older. She was my anchor as a child so my attachment to her became insecure as she grew older. I think resignation and remoteness are both a result of growing up in a state of survival.
As a child, you had a keen eye for the village, the boats, shells, and other things you saw while staying at the hotel. Was your perception heightened because of the trauma you were experiencing?
Thank you. Yes. My memories of certain places feel especially vivid, which I attribute to a type of time-traveling I was probably doing as a small child. I think I escaped to the safety of inanimate objects, the beauty of the natural world around me.
How much did being by the Atlantic Ocean mitigate the effects of your parents’ deteriorating relationship—both to you and to them?
I don’t think the visits to the sea had much of a restorative effect on my parents’ marriage. If anything, spending more time together seemed to worsen their conflicts. In a sense, the hotel became a stage where they enacted resentments toward each other. Some of the worst episodes were there. For me, being close to the sea felt life-sustaining, an escape from the hotel room at night. I still remember walking along the beach with my sister each morning, an alternate reality to the one we left behind.
The last scene, in which you imagined returning to the hotel, appeared to be cathartic for you. Why?
I believe that parts of self may become lost or perhaps abandoned in places where trauma happens. As I wrote it, the last scene did flow in a healing way. Also, my grief for my mother was complex and delayed. The final scene is both forgiveness and reconciliation.
What message do you hope MSR readers get from “The Atlantic Hotel?”
I hope MSR readers can sense that we can revisit places in the past to find healing in the present, with an understanding that, as Woolf put it, “life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo.”
“Small” and “blue” appear often in your essay. How do they reflect your experience at the hotel?
That’s so interesting! I know that I felt small when I was there, as if my existence wasn’t very important. Blue comes through a lot in my writing, significant for its depth and qualities as a colour. I am working on an essay called “Back to Blue” which explores this obsession at length!
What other authors, besides Virginia Woolfe, inspire you and why?
Besides Virginia Woolf, I have been inspired by the work of Marguerite Duras – French novelist, essayist, and filmmaker. I fell in love with her work in university, entranced by the settings and ethereal worlds of her books. I also find inspiration in the work of Sylvia Plath and lately the poetry of Mary Oliver.
