Exclusive interview with author Mary-Rose MacColl about her novel set in a hospital in WWI France
Rating: 3 Stars
by Gabrielle Pantera
“I was in the wrong aisle of a university library because I’d transposed two digits in a call number when I came upon a book, Women of Royaumont: A Scottish Women’s Hospital on the Western Front,” says In Falling Snow author Mary-Rose MacColl. “I sat down and started reading Eileen Crofton’s history of the sixteen women who took a hospital to France from England in 1914. Their story really intrigued me. The hospital, in Royaumont Abbey, was staffed entirely by women. Oh, I thought to myself, wouldn’t this make a great setting for a novel? And how come no one’s ever heard this story?”
In Falling Snow takes us back and forth through the life of Iris Crane as she moves from wartime to marriage, motherhood, then onto being a widow and grandmother. What she remembers brings her joy and immense pain. This novel will may make you cry, so have some tissues handy. I do wish the story didn’t hop around so much though – in particular the character of Iris’ granddaughter Grace seems so well developed, that it distracts from the story of Iris herself.
When we first meet Iris she is 81, and in failing health. She receives an invitation to a ceremony honoring Les Dames Ecossais de Royaumont (The Scottish Ladies of Royaumont) the hospital in which she worked during the Great War. We see her travel to France at 21, following her brother from Australia to front lines in Europe determined to get him home. Instead she stays in France and becomes a nurse at the field hospital on the outskirts of Paris in an old abbey. The staff is entirely women. The ceremony marks first time Iris has returned in 60 years. Grace, Iris’ granddaughter is asked by Iris to do something for her as her last wish.
“I found out that not only is Royaumont, the abbey which was made into a hospital, a real place that still exists, it’s a cultural centre for France where I was able to spend two weeks researching the novel,” says MacColl. “It really is extraordinary what they achieved, establishing a first-class hospital in a rundown abbey at a time when women weren’t allowed even to vote. When they arrived, there was no power, no heating, junk in all the rooms and within two months, they had a working hospital.”
“I write by hand, filling notebook after notebook with little scenes and character sketches until I feel ready to pull the novel together. For In Falling Snow, I did most of this work on a long residency at the Banff Centre in Canada,” says MacColl.
“I’m a write first, ask questions later kind of writer,” says MacColl. “Having said that, I read everything I could about Royaumont as a hospital, the published books, accounts from the women who worked there. I read other war novels and memoirs of war, as well as diaries of nurses, doctors and soldiers. Visiting Royaumont abbey as a guest of Fondation Royaumont was really helpful. I also had access to the Royaumont archives, which are held in several UK libraries.”
MacColl has written three novels and one non-fiction book, The Birth Wars, about the state of maternity care in Australia. MacColl was runner-up in the 1995 Australian Vogel Literary Award for her first novel No Safe Place. The Birth Wars was shortlisted for a Walkley Award and two Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. MacCol won the Griffith Review Novella competition last year.
MacColl is currently working on a novel set in the U.S., Canada and Australia in the 1920s about sea swimmers. “I am just loving the characters already,” says MacColl. “And another novel, about a woman who disappears from her life, which is more gentle. I love both.”
MacColl travels between Brisbane, Australia and Banff, Canada. She was born in Australia.
In Falling Snow by MaryRose MacColl. Trade Paperback: 464 pages Publisher: Penguin Books (August 27, 2013). Language: English ISBN: 9780143123927 $ 12.17
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