In her debut novel, Meg Todd explores difficult subject matter, covering themes like fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, inter-generational abuse, and sexual assault.
Most Grievous Fault explores the story of Crystal, who is in her late 20s and mother of Becky, 14. The two live together in a small apartment in the city.
Todd says she’s a regular radio listener, and one particular story she heard around 15 years ago planted a seed that would eventually become the novel.
“Especially in news, you’re getting one angle of a story. And I always find myself thinking, how did they get there? What happened before that?… And always thinking also, how will they move forward?”
It went through different iterations, with Todd first writing a diary from the daughter’s perspective. She eventually revisited things and changed the novel to be from the mother’s perspective.
“ I think I was being judgmental in the previous attempts to write the book. I think I was showing a character who wasn’t sympathetic enough to the reader,” she said.
She says she didn’t set out writing with any particular perspective or agenda on the issues that come up in the novel.
“Different people are moved by different things. So some people are particularly passionate about political instability and other people about, perhaps refugee issues or environmental issues,” she said.
“I guess the thing that resonates with me is personal tragedies, personal hardship, the question of how do we move forward through illness, through just so many things that are out of our control?”
Todd says she used to volunteer in the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, and that she feels the idea of judging someone’s story without trying to understand isn’t healthy for society.
“Part of something that I want with Crystal is to try to understand her rather than judge her. That to me is just a fundamentally important thing.”
Speaking about her approach to embodying Crystal, who struggles with alcoholism in the novel, Todd says issues of addiction are very close to us.
“You don’t have to look far to see someone who is troubled,” she said. “I have a lot of people around me who struggle and I have seen very sad stories and I think, you know, we say six degrees of separation, but I think with things like mental health and addiction, it’s much closer, it’s one degree. And if you think it’s not around you, I don’t think you’re looking closely enough at the people around you.”
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