Can you tell us a little bit about your latest book? When did it come out? Where can we get it?
The
Mosaic of the Broken Soul talks
about love, betrayal, displacement and longing for the meaning in modern
society, surviving a variety of adversity in human existence and ultimately –
forgiveness as a tool of healing and embracing life. As the title says it is a book of
one soul’s ache, to simplify it.
I
don’t know if the statement that ‘life is not meant to be easy’ is true,
but I surely know that I had a very difficult period in my life and it forced
me to look honestly into myself. Who am I and why am I that person? Do I, and
to what extent, respect and love that person? The working fabric of my novel
consisted of questions asking for answers, the questions each of us asks in time of
crises or adversity, questions of life’s meaning and worthiness of it. As I was
writing it, the characters from my life appeared on the stage and asked me to
integrate them into the tale. The characters from the shores of the Adriatic
Sea, the characters from the Italian Alps, the characters from the Isle of Man,
London and Dublin…Sydney…and my life story started to take shape and to be
woven into that fabric.
The
book was published in the USA in 2011 (Speaking Volumes) and it attracted very
positive reviews.
It
was voted as a book of the month (September 2012) in Angie’s Diary, the largest
online literary publication. http://angiesdiary.com/bookoftheweek-web/014-botwseptember232012.html
The
book can be purchased at Amazon and all online booksellers, as well as my
publisher advertizes ‘everywhere where books are sold’. http://speakingvolumes.us/detail_ebooks.asp?pid=382
I’d
like to add that the forthcoming novel is titled Fiume – The Lost River
and is going to be published towards the end of the year.
Is there anything that prompted your latest book? Something that inspired you?
Oh,
yes! Both – prompted and inspired! It was a sudden, out of the blue illness
that made me think about my life, my place in this world as a woman, as a
mother, a friend and as a writer. I felt a strong need, almost to be obliged to
tell the story of survival, courage, friendship, motherhood and in particular –
love, as the ultimate healer and the most important ingredient in sustaining
health, or in facing adversity. The inspiration for my book was my own insight
into the mind’s formulations of reality, how easily depression can take over
and how to respond to difficult situations, thoughts, emotions. I’ve never said
that I have found the ultimate tools in healing oneself be it body or soul, but
I have found my way out through cultivating thoughts that open heart and mind
to new ways of perceiving life, thus allowing new possibilities. I wanted to
share those experiences and insights with many people faced with life’s
crossroads.
So, when did you know you wanted to write? Or
has it always been a pastime of yours?
I
would never call my writings a ‘pastime’ because there are much easier
ways to choose as a pastime. I am a deep thinker, so my writings come with a ‘sweat
and tears’ rather than some light entertainment for me and for my readers.
Well, I knew I wanted to write really early in my life as I was always awarded
for my work as a young student, right from primary school onwards. My ‘little quirky stories and
poems’ were published in school magazines and in a local youth press.
I always felt as if I had lived in
parallel worlds, my daily life was so different from my inner world, and I was
mixing them often with ease (for me) and sometimes with astonishment to my
family and the environment, hence I started to write a novel to, somehow,
separate those two parallel stories. I Knew Jane Eyre was born, based on
my, at the time, need to ‘figure out how it would be if…' I was inclined
to know about or figure out life’s ‘ifs’. While I was finishing the
novel, I saw in the papers an advertisement – Young Writer’s Award
Competition and hurried to finish my novel to send it off. There were three
winners announced and I was, to my astonishment, one of them - the youngest
one, with little experience in professional writing and publishing.
Writing
is in my blood, it has never left me: subtle conversations I hear in the rain,
the rustling of the leaves, the wind…those subtle whispers took me to the
various trips around Europe and led me to various interesting people. The
knowledge of languages, my curiosity and adaptability helped to easily
penetrate into the cultural settings of Italy, Spain, England and Australia. Since
then I have written eight novels, published six in two languages. I write in English
and Croatian language. I write short stories too, that is, what I would call a ‘pastime’: Short stories, little poems…sometimes in between writing a novel I am having a
‘little bit of fun’ with shorter expressions. My work has been published
in various literary journals, in print and online, in various countries in
Europe, then in the USA and Australia.
Do you have any favorite authors?
Sure!
And the list is quite longish. I grew up on and was fed by classic literature
so my heart is still there. I like very much Postmodernism and the writers I
love to read are certainly the great example of postmodernism, like Samuel
Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino (when talking about Italo, I love
Italo Svevo too), Umberto Ecco, to name just a few. As I said, classic
literature is where I go back to over and over again. I can’t say that those
writers influenced my own work but I read and re-read Charles Dickens, Daniel
Defoe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Alexander Dumas, Leo Tolstoy, Honore de Balzac. I
can’t miss Marcel Proust and Jean Paul Sartre and name them as my favourite
authors. Just recently I have discovered a great contemporary writer Michael
Arditti. Whether those writers inspired and influenced my work is hard to say,
but it is enough to say that I’ve spent hours, days and years in reading and
often go back to the same source for nourishment.
Do you write in a specific place? Time of day?
Location influences my work
absolutely. That’s why writers travel – in search of original characters or
plots. In all of my novels I travel throughout the world. I start my story in a
certain location with its cultural and historical settings and I take my
characters across Europe, the UK, the USA and Australia. My characters are well-traveled people, always in search of a ‘greener grass’, ‘better
opportunity’, ‘bigger love’, or purely more extravagant adventure…
I can’t escape (and why would I?)
those locations: I was born in Croatia, I still carry the salty air of the
Adriatic in my soul, Italy was a weekly experience and Italian’s my second
language, sometimes I miss Italy more than any other location. I lived in
Andalucia with my daughter and the sounds, the wind – the levante, the
flamenco, the warmth of Andalusian people lives in me…of course those
locations influence my novels. I have written a trilogy called Spanish Stories
and the trilogy was situated, with a good part, in Spain, but then, while
writing, I heard someone from my hometown calling my name, calling my
attention, so I got to chuck him in, to silence his cries, to add colour to the
Andalucian grey land. I have lived in Sydney since 1992; it is only natural
that this city influences my writings, the city where my daughter was born,
made her first steps. It is such a multicultural place that it is a great
source of constant inspiration when it comes to experimenting with different
cultures and customs.
My novels Fiume – The Lost River,
Requiem for Barbara, Little Lies, Big Lies and Visconti’s
Stories are all set in three or four different countries on two different
continents. My characters are often displaced, sometimes confused, often in
search of themselves, surely preoccupied with many questions.
What I want to say is that traveling is essential for my writings. I can’t lock myself in my Sydney house
and look at the ocean. Some authors need solitude to write. I need life to be
presented to me in all its variations and imperfections, with the range of
emotions and experiences, as I like to experience things first hand.
I used to write at night for many
years, but as the time passes I need more night rest, good sound sleep, but
then, early in the morning, I hear that whisper in my ear – time to get up and
sit at my desk. Early mornings are quiet and my mind is very alert in the
morning.
Are there any words you'd like to impart
to fellow writers. Any advice?
The publishing industry isn’t the
easiest one; a writer needs sound knowledge of the topic he is writing about,
hence good research is needed, a talent, a daily practice of his art and lots
of discipline. If you put all those ingredients together, still you need a good
portion of luck. Well-established writers follow their own pattern and
associations, while new, aspiring writers, probably need some advice. It isn’t
easy to give advice to anyone - as there are so many aspiring writers that
believe writing to be an easy task, but it isn’t, indeed. Especially when it
comes to something ‘deep and meaningful’, one has to be in tune with
one’s own being, well read, well informed and equipped with all sorts of
worldly experiences not to mention to possess a great imagination.
If someone really aches to be a
writer, then one has to count on many rejections, which means to develop a
strong, steady character, not to take everything too personally; to understand
that their own friends will fall in number and whose comments might be hurtful
purposely. With the wonders of the internet anyone can write anything about your
book – hate reviews or even hate mail. On the other, positive side, there are a
number of rewards: when good reviews from literary critiques or competent
colleagues come your way, when a reader, a person you’ve never met and never will
meet, sends you an e-mail telling you that your book has made a lasting
impression on them, when you receive an award or just a card from a random
person encouraging you to ‘continue to deliver great work.’
For the novice: weigh it, then put
your heart where you think it yearns to be and sharpen your tools; we are
always delighted when a new, well written story or writer dawns.
Here is the blurb for The
Mosaic of the Broken Soul.
She called the lump in Her breast ‘a black pearl’, She called her Mother
to nurse Her in the darkest hours, She called memories of the three men
She loved at different times of Her life to draw the parallels between seemingly similar situations of betrayal. Who is going to betray Her, who is going to stay...?
She struggles with the meaning of life trying to find it through themes of motherhood, friendship, betrayal, displacement, illness, pain, grief and loss.
She traveled to Andalucia, London, The Isle of Man, where She met colourful characters believing that the unknown can reverse the fragmentation and change reality, believing that all the little broken selves can once again bring the broken pieces into a cohesive mosaic.
She struggles with the meaning of life trying to find it through themes of motherhood, friendship, betrayal, displacement, illness, pain, grief and loss.
She traveled to Andalucia, London, The Isle of Man, where She met colourful characters believing that the unknown can reverse the fragmentation and change reality, believing that all the little broken selves can once again bring the broken pieces into a cohesive mosaic.
Here is an excerpt from The Mosaic of the Broken Soul.
Listen to this now:
Some might say it was early in the morning but as I got up with the song of the first birds, ten o’ clock was almost midday for me.
We were sitting on the sun-lit veranda sipping our second cup of coffee.
The day started lazily as all days do on this Earthly quota. I decided to stroll down to the main, cobbled piazza where I was familiar with the sounds of my heels and my heart, and start my search for inspiration in the quick and changing slides produced by casual protagonists.
The doorbell rang.
My Mother asked: “Can you get the door?”
She always gets up first. She always gets the door.
I looked at her again, as if I needed to confirm what I heard, and the doorbell rang again, and again she said in her calm tone: “Get the door, please,” with the clear intention of staying right where she was. Knowing her ever-accommodating attitude I hesitated a while, then she said: “Hurry up.”
She had a strange expression on her calm face, the one of secret conspiracy - that was what I thought while I was going to answer the door.
I opened the door and a tall man, with dark but mellow eyes, was standing in front of me.
When I recognized his face, or shall I say, his mellow eyes, I thought it was a mirage, for the day was bright and hot already and the air was tremulous and I thought of his tremulous fingers that would gently put away
a strand of my untamed hair.
All my words deserted me at once, especially those that would best accompany my feelings, so he was the one who said: “Will you let me in, or….”
“Of course, of course,” I said, and he walked in.
I took the lead and walked him to the sun-lit veranda where I was sipping the second cup of coffee with my Mother, but as if it was just a dream, the veranda was empty, the table was bare and all I said was: “Shall we sit?”
He sat down and crossed his legs.
He crossed his fingers and I crossed my heart.
He smiled.
I asked: “Is this a mirage?”
He said: “I told you, you were my dream.”
I said: “So, we woke in the same dream this morning.”
All he said was: “We did.”
We did not need a lot of words. He looked at the calm surface of the sea and said “So peaceful,” and I repeated “So peaceful.”...
Author Bio
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Branka Cubrilo was born in 1961 in
Croatia. At the age of eighteen, she wrote her first novel, I Knew Jane Eyre,
and in 1982 it won the Young Writers Award. Soon after, she wrote a sequel to
this story called Looking for Jane Eyre. In 1992, Cubrilo moved to Sydney and
continued to write short stories and novels. In 1999 the novel As a River
(Fiume Corre–Rijeka Tece) was published by Croatian publisher Adamic in her
native town of Rijeka. The book received good critiques in Croatian and Italian
press. After the Croatian book launch, an Australian one followed. In 2000, the
next novel was published, Requiem for Barbara. The book was launched in both
Croatia and Sydney. In 2001, a new novel, Little Lies, Big Lies, was published
by the same publisher. This was the first volume of a trilogy called Spanish
Stories. Cubrilo had obtained a scholarship from the Spanish Ministry of
Foreign Affairs to travel to Andalucia to research the cultural and historical
settings of Cadiz.
Cubrilo has written two more novels but she stopped writing
and publishing when she encountered serious health issues and the
disintegration of her marriage. When she recovered she was able to translate her
experiences into a new novel, The Mosaic of the Broken Soul. Over the last 20
years, Cubrilo has worked as a journalist for various local newspapers in
Sydney, writing articles and short stories and conducting interviews. One of
her novels was serialized in the magazine Women 21. Cubrilo also worked as a
radio producer in Eastside Radios Sydney and Special Broadcasting Services—SBS
Sydney, where she has produced a number of programs and series, conducted many
interviews and written short stories. Cubrilo now writes in English and is also
translating her earlier novels into English. She lives in Sydney with her
daughter Althea.
The Mosaic of the Broken Soul was
awarded with "The Book of the Week" and Branka Cubrilo "The
Author of the Month" award by Angie's Dairy 2012. http://angiesdiary.com/bookoftheweek-web/014-botwseptember232012.html
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/branka.cubrilo
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