Grief and The Absurd: A Conversation with Bobby Palmer
“I essentially wanted to write this book which was an enormous contradiction: the realest, most human possible story, with the most ridiculous, cartoonish element right in the middle of it.”
Where did the initial inspiration for the story of Isaac and the Egg come from?
I essentially wanted to write this book which was an enormous contradiction: the realest, most human possible story, with the most ridiculous, cartoonish element right in the middle of it. I was hugely influenced by Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Patrick Ness’ A Monster Calls, both of which cast grief as a sinister, terrifying monster. In my story, I wanted grief to be this chaotic, comedic creature which, in its absurdity, is impossible to ignore.
Isaac and the Egg is a moving exploration of very real emotions through a wonderfully original metaphor. Could you tell us a little more about why you chose to employ the abstract figure of the egg? And does it matter to you whether readers believe the egg is real?
The pretentious answer to this is that an egg is something which becomes something else. If Isaac’s grief is an egg, it’s not something he has to vanquish – it’s something he has to nurture until he can live with it. The non-pretentious answer? I don’t know why. In my head, the egg was always just an egg.
I love that readers make their own judgements about whether the egg is real or not, in the same way that I love that everyone seems to picture it in their own specific way. I’ve found that people tend to layer their own experience onto this book, and that their “egg” is informed by that. As a writer, seeing that sort of personal interpretation is really, really special.
Similarly to our interview with Rachel Yoder’s book Nightbitch, which is also featured in this issue, many reviewers have found your book to be innately strange. Is this odd to you, given the fact that you are actually exploring a very real emotional process?
I love it! I don’t think I’d ever want to write something which isn’t innately strange, because the opposite of that is innately normal, and that’s not very exciting. The funny thing is, though, I’ve never thought of the book as a strange one. I think if I had, it wouldn’t have worked. Once you get past the fact that one of the main characters is a two-foot tall egg, this is a character study of a young man in crisis. What’s more real than that?
Your book has, quite rightly, received a lot of acclaim and positive reviews, and I just wondered how that has felt as a debut author?
It feels stranger to me than anything in the book itself. Writing a novel is a very insular process, but any debut author who says they haven’t daydreamed about this kind of thing is lying. When I wrote Isaac and the Egg, I knew it was a bit… different. So I had to hope that readers would be willing to not just look past the weirdness, but to embrace it. The fact that they are, and that they’re connecting with it in such a personal way, is like one of those daydreams come true.
Full interview is featured in our Exploration Issue.
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