Colleen and Caulking
Paula Xiberras
I recently had a phone conversation with author Colleen Oakley from her home in Atlanta.
If you read Colleen Oakley’s book ‘Before I go’ you will notice that ‘caulking’ is oft referred to by her protagonist Daisy. For those that unfamiliar Wikipedia tells us that caulking is ‘the process and material of sealing joints or seams in various structures’, to seal. In Daisy’s case it is the windows of her house but in a deeper, perhaps subconscious sense it’s a task that never gets done, at least not by Daisy, it remains a job for her not so house handy husband. Daisy wasn’t able to seal herself and her husband in their happy and safe matrimonial bubble from the menacing forces of illness.
Colleen Oakley is yet to visit Australia but the former magazine editor now novelist’s best friend has visited and also she has Facebook friends here in Australia and so through these contacts she gets to experience Australia vicariously, although she tells me she would love to visit even if that might be quite a daunting process at the moment, considering Colleen has just added newborn twins to her family!.
Colleen basks in the possibilities of novel writing which she says allows her to write anything in comparison to the sometimes ‘paralysing parameters’ of magazine editing.
Collen demonstrates the solidity of her surname in the sober subject matter of her book ‘Before I go’. The book details the story of Daisy a young woman who is faced with a recurrence of cancer diagnosis. What is heavy fair is infused by Colleen by a protagonist with both a questioning spirit and also one that refuses to be broken in spite of all the medical mayhem she must endure. In fact, in Daisy we have a protagonist who deals with her diagnosis with humour and its important derivative, humanity.
Colleen says the reason she decided to make Daisy, who is a college student and young deal with this diagnosis is that a young couple represent to us the ‘orthodox’ happy ever after story and it unnerves us when hurdles are put in its way. Colleen wanted to explore such a relationship in the context of not getting the happy ever after and in doing so wanted to avoid the Hollywood cliché and we do not see the demise of Daisy.
To create a true representation of what Daisy was going through Colleen spent time with a doctor in Atlanta who talked her through research on radiation, including cat and pet scans and the different diagnosis and treatments for Daisy’s condition.
As noted previously one of the recurrent images or allusions we get through the novel is Daisy’s mentions of messiness and indeed in the opening scene when Daisy’s doctor calls to inform her of her diagnosis the house is in a bit of a mess. We learn that Daisy is a great list make, a doer and achiever but in juxtaposition with this is the fact that ‘mess’ will always occur and just like the inability to seal out trouble, things will always have the potentiality to get messy, that life is messy and unpredictable and can’t be fixed by list making in an attempt to keep things organised and orderly.
Colleen says she didn’t notice these many references to mess until another reader mentioned it to her and suggests it was something that she may have subconsciously included in the novel.
Although the book deals with Daisy’s diagnosis it is not depressing, indeed some of Daisy’s imaginings are surrealistic and highly creative in nature and she never fails to engage and enfold us in her story. Colleen is to be congratulated on her fresh, life affirming and sensitive approach to a topic that might not have been so uplifting.
‘Before I Go’ is out now published by Allen and Unwin.