One of the closest relationships Steven Price ever had was with a woman whom he never met.
And now he never will.
The Victoria writer is the author of By Gaslight, a new 731-page novel about a 19th-century detective and a master thief. Long-listed last week for a Scotiabank Giller Prize, the book has triggered buzz in the international literary scene since 2014. That’s when Price, a relative unknown, signed a major book deal with McClelland & Stewart, as well as publishers in Britain, the U.S. and other countries.
Soft-spoken and modest, Price (who’s married to Giller winner Esi Edugyan) gives much credit for the novel’s shaping to his editor, McClelland & Stewart publisher Ellen Seligman. A legend in the book world, Seligman collaborated with many of Canada’s famous writers such as Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, Rohinton Mistry and Patrick Lane.
This week, Price described the 13-month editing process he underwent with Seligman. It was astounding in its thoroughness and scope. Over the telephone, the pair parsed each line of By Gaslight — she in Toronto, he in his basement study.
“Talking on the phone five to six hours a day was normal, sometimes five days a week,” Price said. “Through that, this crazy intimacy emerges.”
Some suggestions were major. For instance, Seligman had him slice 35,000 words from the novel and instructed him to add another 70,000 — a “pretty intense amount,” the writer said.
Price said none of his writer friends ever had someone edit a novel the way Seligman did. In particular, she had a singular ability to get so deeply under the skins of his characters, she could tell Price whether they were behaving in a “true” manner.
“I’ve never experienced anything like it,” said Price, whose debut novel, Into That Darkness, was published in 2011.
Sadly, Seligman died last March, before he got the chance to meet her. “It just felt like … devastating,” he said.
It’s possible one of her legacies will be having helped Price vault into the ranks of those who have won the Giller, a career-forging prize. Seligman had a reputation as an editor’s editor; the books she has worked on have won six Gillers, 23 Governor General’s Literary Awards and four Man Booker Prizes.
Published last month, By Gaslight has already scored a bouquet of laudatory reviews from the country’s largest newspapers. The novel pivots on two larger-than-life characters. One is William Pinkerton, son of the man who founded the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency. Pinkerton is hunting a spookily elusive criminal named Edward Shade. The other character is Adam Foole, a lifetime thief visiting London to seek a lover he hasn’t seen for a decade.
A sprawling, Dickensian book replete with poetic descriptions, By Gaslight takes us to South Africa’s diamond mines, the dark, cobbled streets of London and the gruesome battlefields of the American Civil War.
In the world of By Gaslight, black-and-white characters do not exist. Foole is a good-hearted villain with a complex moral code, a characteristic shared by “good guy” detective Pinkerton. The notion of wrongdoers who switch sides and vice versa has long appealed to Price, who attended the University of Victoria and took a graduate writing degree at the University of Virginia.
One inspiration for By Gaslight is a (perhaps apocryphal) story about his great-grandfather. Albert Price founded Price’s Alarms on Fort Street, today the oldest security company in Canada. He was a Londoner, trained as a gunsmith, who immigrated to Vancouver Island in 1889.
Price says no one in his family seemed to know why Albert Price left his home for the remote wilds of British Columbia. Then one day, Albert Price’s son, a former recluse known as “Uncle Bud” provided a partial explanation.
“He said Albert Price had gotten into some kind of trouble [in London] and he’d come out,” Price said.
The story was related in a family living room by Uncle Bud, by then old and frail. Albert Price’s only other son was deceased, so there was no one else to verify or contradict the tale.
“But he must have done something,” said Price.
The writer was impressed not only by the rascal-makes-good yarn, but also by Uncle Bud, an oddball who had once homesteaded in a remote corner of B.C. “He had this beautiful exuberance in his eyes. He was this impish sort of character.”
In writing By Gaslight, Price was also inspired by a biography of William Pinkerton. His father, Allan Pinkerton, was a detective who formed the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. William, who with his brother took over the agency after his father’s death, was a complex individual. Ostensibly on the right side of the law, he also enjoyed drinking with crooks in the underworld saloons of Chicago.
“The ends justified the means for him. He was violent and strong and big and dark and brooding. He would break the rules constantly and drive his father crazy,” Price said.
Price started work on By Gaslight near the end of 2012. The fact that he was able to write such a long and complex novel is made more impressive by the fact he and his wife shared the duties of raising two youngsters during its creation. His son was a newborn when the year-long editing process started. The couple also have a five-year-old girl.
Price and Edugyan have an “open-door policy” with their children. This means they’ll drop whatever they’re doing if their offspring demand attention.
“Sometimes, I’d stop writing in mid-sentence. And then you go off and deal with your kids,” Price said with a smile.
The widespread notice By Gaslight has so far received is a first for Price. His previous credits include a pair of poetry books; his novel Into That Darkness garnered modest sales and little media attention. Price describes himself as a writer “with no reputation” prior to the new novel’s publication.
“We had no idea whether By Gaslight would be published,” he said. “It was clear to us nobody was interested in the book because of the reputation of the author. There was some astonishment on our end. But also, great relief.”
Steven Price will participate in a panel discussion, Beyond Genre, at the Victoria Festival of Authors on Sept. 24. This event also features Brian Brett, Steven Heighton, Betsy Warland and Arleen Paré. For more information see victoriafestivalofauthors.ca.
