INTERVIEW: Jesse Blackadder, author of 'Chasing the Light'

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What was the first flash of inspiration for 'Chasing the Light'?



My Antarctic obsession began with an old black and white photograph of two women sitting on the deck of a ship on the way to Antarctica. One of them, Ingrid Christensen, gazed into the camera enigmatically. When I learned she was the first woman known to have seen Antarctica, I wanted to know more.

One problem – there was little more to be found. I discovered that Ingrid, a 38-year-old Norwegian, left her six children behind and travelled to Antarctica by ship four times with her husband Lars in the 1930s as part of his whaling fleet, taking a female friend or two on each trip. But the question of her ever making a landing seemed to be unanswered, and history books cite another Norwegian woman as the first to land on Antarctica. None of Ingrid’s own words have survived, if they were ever written down in the first place. This intrigued me.



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You travelled to Antarctica to research the book. That must have been amazing! Can you tell me all about it?




I went the first time as a tourist, on a 10 day cruise from Argentina to the Antarctic Peninsula. It’s a very dramatic and beautiful place, with lots of wildlife, and that’s where most tourists go because the sea crossing is short – just two days. The second time I went as the Antarctic Arts Fellow, with the Australian Antarctic Division’s ship Aurora Australis. That’s a two-week crossing each way to a very remote part of Antarctica – and it happens to be the part of the continent where Ingrid Christensen visited. In fact I went to “Ingrid Christensen Land”, as it’s now known. Going as part of a working ship was completely different and the landscape at the other end was different too – less picturesque in some ways, but very dramatic and with its own incredible beauty. I had five days on the continent, including three days staying out in huts and travelling across the sea ice in a Hagglunds all terrain vehicle. I can truly say I will never forget it. Antarctica is beyond all the superlatives. I’d go back in a moment.



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I particularly loved the characters of the three women at the heart of this novel. They were each so different, and yet so strong and full of life. Can you please tell me how you came to create them?




Lillemor and Mathilde almost created themselves – somehow from the little scraps of history that survived they emerged in my imagination almost fully formed. The main character, Ingrid, was harder. What was it that drove her to go to Antarctica four times? There wasn’t a simple answer to that question, and I puzzled over it, revisited it and imagined it over and over again as I was writing. I had to balance my own desires for her as a character – that she was brave, intrepid and adventurous – with historical realities – that she was extremely wealthy and possibly quite spoilt. In the end I had to let the imagined character take over – this is a novel after all, not a history, though it is deeply informed by history.






Lillemor, who tricked her way on board the ship, and uses her charm and vivacity to always get her own way, was actually my favourite character. Was she yours?




Good spotting! Yes she was my favourite. The glimpses of the real woman that echoed down from history were fascinating. Living in London in the 1920s and 30s, doing charity work in the slums during the great depression, marrying a diplomat who divorced his wife and left his children to be with her, travelling twice to Antarctica, keeping a diary (which is now lost) and taking photographs that ended up being published – she was fascinating. I could let her be competitive, canny and self interested, which was fun.





Grief and loss are the haunting themes of 'Chasing the Light'. I felt sure you must have felt some great sorrow of your own in order to be able to capture Mathilde's paralysing sense of loss over the death of her husband, and  Ingrid's abiding awareness of her mother's absence. Can you tell us how you manage to connect with these women and their grief?




That’s true, Kate. I had a major family tragedy when I was just 12, and my two year old sister drowned in our backyard swimming pool. It was a defining moment, when childhood suddenly ended and adulthood began through the experience of profound grief. My mother also died young, at age 46, at a time when we were quite estranged and though that was more than 25 years ago, I still feel a sense of loss, and think about how I could have acted differently. 






I particularly loved the passages with the whales - both the cruel and the beautiful. I've been thinking about them ever since I read the book. Can you share with us your own feelings towards these parts of the book?




I found the research into whaling to be the most disturbing part of the process. Some years ago I spent a week on a humpback whale research vessel in Hervey Bay and that’s where I first learned about deep sea whaling in the Southern Ocean, and the toll it had extracted. We’re talking about 40,000 whales killed in a single season in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The whaling museum in Sandefjord, Norway, where Ingrid lived, has a blue whale fetus in a jar as part of its display and it’s a very sad sight. I live near Byron Bay, so the annual humpback whale migration is part of my life and I find those creatures deeply moving. I mourned them while I was writing.





Finally, I believe you wrote the novel as part of a doctorate of creative arts. Tell me about the process.




I enrolled in a Doctor of Creative Arts at the Writing and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney. It was a great experience, and I was lucky enough to have novelist Gail Jones as my supervisor while writing 'Chasing the Light' – her feedback helped me stop and reconsider during the first draft, and then start all over again with a different approach – something I’m not sure I would have done by myself. It also meant the book was informed by the academic side of my research into gender and Antarctica – I think that’s an invisible, but important influence. I loved being part of the research group – the staff and other students were inspiring and incredibly supportive and it challenged me to think harder and in a different way. I’ll miss it!



If you enjoyed this interview, you may also enjoy an earlier interview I did with Jesse, talking about her novel 'The Raven's Heart'



Jesse's website is here.



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