Mudflowers: a book about actual love

While scanning the bookshelves in Ottawa my eyes fell upon an intriguing title: Mudflowers, so I flipped it over to see what it was all about. There was so much: real love, life transitions, Newfoundlanders in Toronto, grief. I picked up a copy and read it within three days. 

I got in contact with author Aley Waterman for a chat and we navigated the many avenues of Mudflowers. 

Moving away from short stories and into a longer piece, Aley was lucky to work with Sheila Heti as a mentor. Sheila’s novel How Should a Person Be? helped Aley realize she wanted to look at creating something bigger than she had been.

“It felt like a book that asks a lot of questions and doesn’t necessarily have all the answers to those questions. That blew open the idea of what it is like to write a longer piece because before that I thought you needed to possess a lot of wisdom and worldly knowledge to write a book. I think Sheila does, but when I read that book, it prompted me to want to write something inquisitive,” said the author. “Sheila gave me some constructive criticism and said there has to be some stakes, it couldn’t just be friends hanging out. I wanted to write something about flaws but the characters are well intended.”

Mudflowers unravels people’s good intentions—all the characters have moments of misunderstanding, when their actions didn’t reflect their motives. It’s easy for humans to guess what others mean, or criticize without discussion and Aley puts that idea on the table, exposing the truth. We have a tendency to guess what people meant and we have a hesitancy to offer grace. 

“I wanted to write something with a lot of conflict, where someone is having a rough time, but they aren’t a victim and they are rolling through it and how that perspective might unfold.”

In another light, the storyline dabbles with alternative family structures, at the time of writing Aley’s friends were discussing new ways to have children and relationships outside of the nuclear, heteronormative dynamic. Aley also avoids general assumptions about couples and takes a look at sexuality and gender in a very diverse and fluid manner, but it’s certainly not forced. It’s exploratory in an ideal way,  where sexuality isn’t assumed to be straight and couples aren’t assumed to be monogamous and it feels right. 

The main character in Mudflowers, Sophie, is not Aley, though the character  possesses some parts of the author and other people she loves. But Aley learned about herself and Sophie as she was writing.  Throughout the novel Sophie is growing and transitioning into a new person who is learning to feel out her grief, look to her past and revisit old experiences and feel new love and pain. 

“If it’s a coming of age narrative, you have to sort of start the character somewhere before they understand what they grow to learn. If you are the one writing it, you may have learned what they need to understand as it’s going. Some people would say Sophie is nothing like me and maybe perhaps she has some traits that are similar to a past version of me,” said the author. “I think you move the characters through experience. I don’t know where to leave who she is and who I am but there are confusing combinations of facets there.”

Sophie has a non-traditional intimate relationship without a title with her long time friend Alex. The two have a long history with a lot of moving parts that are connected by a genuine source of care and love. 

“I wanted to bring readers back to their formative years to show how that could happen. How it’s inevitable, but difficult. They have been so tethered since they were so young and they are in each other’s lives but it can be confusing.”

The way Alex and Sophie play out changes when they meet Maggie.

“She represents newness and this intense love that doesn’t pan out in a linear way. I wanted to explore Sophie through these two characters,” said Aley. “But she is also going through grief and trying to figure out how to love these two people and how to be there for them without expecting the same thing. I wanted her to be challenged by an ego dip.”

A true read on the need to grow in order to love properly, and to completely disengage with your ego in order to help those you care about, Sophie’s transition is built out perfectly. 

For a new read on real life and real love, check out Mudflowers.