BOOKS | The Sweet Edge, by Alison Pick, is a book that would probably appeal to almost anybody – if only they knew it existed.

The Sweet Edge, 2005

It’s the first prose offering from celebrated Canadian poet Alison Pick. She was the 2002 winner of the Bronwen Wallace Award for most promising unpublished writer under 35 in Canada. And her first book, Question and Answer, was short-listed for the Gerald Lampert Award.

Though The Sweet Edge, is a departure from the genre she’s used to, Pick’s obviously one of those annoying people who’s extremely good at more than one thing.

The book is about a young couple who have just split up.

They are spending their summers in drastically different environments. Adam – a pompous, handsome 20-something, and the dumper – is off to the Arctic for a solo canoe trip, and Ellen – his shy and devastated former partner – is stuck in Toronto, working at an art gallery. The book alternates between each character’s voice, giving them their own distinctive chapters. This is precisely what makes it so widely appealing.

Most novelists who attempt to speak from multiple psyches fail.

Characters often end up sounding too much alike, or the author sympathizes so much with one character, the other becomes a device. Pick doesn’t fall into these traps. Both Adam and Ellen are fully realized and unique. Best of all, it’s impossible to predict how their stories will end. Pick also refuses to choose a side in their conflict, which is novel in a novel.

The Sweet Edge is at once both male, and female, both urban and wild. While its characters are young, Pick’s style of writing – particularly in a literary world so dominated by “chick and dick lit” (i.e. romantic fluff about girls in NYC, and adventure/mysteries about boys conquering the wild and/or the mob) – is mature, complex, and ultimately refreshing.

I caught up with Alison Pick by email on August 24, 2005. Here’s what she had to say about her debut novel, the places it explores, and writing two perspectives.

Jen Selk: Are you equally enamoured of both places featured in the book (Toronto and the Arctic)? Have you travelled or lived in both places?

Author, Alison Pick.

Alison Pick: I’ve just returned from a 55 day canoe trip in the Arctic, so at the moment I’d have to say I’m more enamoured of the far north. We travelled down the Back River in Nunavut, named after George Back, who was one of Franklin’s lieutenants – saw 30 arctic wolves, tons of muskox, and a herd of ten thousand caribou. On July the 18^th we encountered a lake that was still completely frozen, and we had to pull our canoes and gear 10 kms over the ice.

The tundra is so desolate and at the same time so stunningly beautiful. The Sweet Edge is partially based on another trip I did up there in the summer of 1997, and the trip this summer definitely rekindled my passion for remote canoe tripping. That said, I do love Toronto a whole lot as well. I’m pretty thrilled to be back in the land of beer and bathtubs and fresh tomatoes.

Tell me a little about writing from two different perspectives. What’s easy about it? What’s hard?

Writing from both Adam and Ellen’s perspectives allowed me to show parts of each of them to the reader that they weren’t aware of themselves.

You can see Adam’s assholeness more clearly through Ellen’s eyes, and her insecurity through his; you can also see the things that make them loveable and real. The challenge in writing from two different points of view is to make sure they are discrete and easily distinguished from each other; to make sure the overall narrative voice remains steady while the two characters’ voices are unique.

Do you think the novel is more sympathetic to Adam or Ellen? Maybe neither? It read as very neutral to me, which felt unusual.

I’m so close to the novel at this point that it’s impossible for me to say whose perspective is more sympathetic. Both characters are equally naive at the beginning of the book, although in different ways.

Ellen is afraid of the city, of other people (women, specifically), and moves slowly toward autonomy from Adam. Adam’s trajectory is one of independence to dependence, toward an understanding of the ways in which people need each other to survive. Adam is more of an asshole, certainly, but his neuroses are also more overt, and people have said that this makes him easy to relate to…

How did prose writing compare to poetry? Do you think poetry was good preparation for writing this book or was it hard to work in another format?

Writing prose was a lot like learning a new language for me. I initially approached it in the way that I approach poetry, feeling my way intuitively and viscerally through the piece. Didn’t work. There was plot to be reckoned with, and character development, and setting – a whole different set of considerations. For that reason, some writers think you can only work effectively in one genre, but I disagree. The attention to word choice, rhythm, and imagery required in poetry can inform narrative on a number of levels, in the same way that the narrative line required in fiction can help shape a certain kind of poem.

You mentioned that the book is partially based on a 1997 trip you took. Any other real-life connections?

Any time a writer creates characters those characters are influenced by the writers’ own life experience. That said, people are quick to assume that fiction is thinly-veiled autobiography, that a characters’ thoughts and ideas mirror exactly those of the author, or that the author is trying to “say something” through a characters’ thoughts or actions. In reality, or in my reality, at least, characters take on lives of their own and do things entirely different from what I might have intended.

A version of this piece about The Sweet Edge published in Dose on August 29, 2005. See clipping below, as well as an update from 2018.

Published in Dose, August 29, 2005.

2018: Writing about The Sweet Edge is one of the few things I did at Dose that I’m proud of.

Author, Alison Pick.

I really loved The Sweet Edge. I pitched the idea of writing about it, pursuing the interview despite little interest from higher ups. I still recommend this beautiful book to lots of young people (most recently, to my sweet and youthful brother-in-law). And I’ve reread it myself several times over the years.

Pick has come a long way since this book came out. I would say it’s definitely a text best suited to younger readers, but it remains a lovely book, regardless. It never got the attention it deserved.

Unlike some of the other authors I dealt with during my time at Dose, Alison Pick is a legit nice person and an excellent writer. She’s gone on to publish four more acclaimed books since we did this interview. These include the poetry collection The Dream World, from 2008; novels Far to Go and Strangers With the Same Dream from 2010 and 2017, respectively; and the memoir, Between Gods, 2014. Check her out. She’s great.