Lisa Moore is the bestselling author of the novels February, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the winner of Canada Reads 2013, and Alligator, a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her third novel, Caught, starts in Newfoundland but also ventures to other parts of Canada, the Pacific Ocean, Colombia, and Mexico. The novel is, as its jacket copy says, "about a man who escapes from prison to embark upon one of the most ambitious pot-smuggling adventures ever attempted." Yet it is about much more than that. Lisa answered some questions here about Caught.

Kiley Turner: Mark Medley, in his interview with you about Caught, described it as fundamentally “a novel about freedom.” But your main protagonist, David Slaney, in his quieter moments, is unsure about why exactly he needs freedom so much, and what he thinks it is or will do for him. He's in constant motion to achieve it, but sometimes quite blindly. Is freedom, then, mostly a willingness to go against the norm and to do adventurous things? Is it a constant state of being prepared to move and challenge our lives?

Lisa Moore: Oh this is such a good question. I think it's exactly what I wanted to explore with the novel. For Slaney—at least for part of his journey—freedom is defined by the physical. Escape from prison, the thrill of being on the water, the power and velocity of being in the fist of a storm, the wind in his face, and of course the sexual encounters he experiences along the way. Freedom is the sense of being unfettered.

But as the novel progresses Slaney becomes aware that freedom is also about being in command of one's own destiny. It abolishes fear, the fear of unleashing will.  The will to be or do whatever you want, which is a kind of freedom from want, or desire. This is where the notion of adventure comes in. A willingness to push oneself past fear into new experiences.

Alongside Slaney's experiences of freedom are the reader's understanding of how Slaney is constricted, without his even being aware of it. A kind of situational irony—the reader knows there is an invisible leash and Slaney does not know it.

So there's the question: Are we free if we think we are? Or is freedom an objective absolute? I guess I started the novel thinking freedom is something everyone craves. Then I had to ask myself: what is it?

KT: Caught also made me think of that movie, Sliding Doors: go through this door and your life becomes this, go through that one, and it’s something else entirely. And if this makes sense to you, is Caught also profoundly a novel about identity—and how fragile, and changeable, and even elusive—it is?

Lisa Moore: Yes, I think it's about transformation. What is essential, if anything, when it comes to identity? How much can an identity alter and change and still be called an particular identity? The transformation here is from innocence to experience. In this way it's kind of a mirror of the mythic fall from grace. When Adam and Eve were cast out of heaven they became aware of their nakedness. In the late 70s, when the novel is set, there is a leap in the technology of surveillance that changes Slaney's life. There is an eye in the sky, (a satellite dish), and one character thinks of it as the eye of God, or something monstrous, the eye of a Cyclops, that can see all. This leap of course is the forebearer of the intense and all-seeing  technologies of surveillance we live with now. We have become aware of our own nakedness, our every gesture can be watched or tracked and judged. In such an environment, what happens to our notions of freedom? But getting back to the question of identity, perhaps what is core or essential to the idea of identity is flux or transformation, a constant state of instability when we grasp at the question: who the hell am I? Yes, as you say, fragility.  

KT: A persistent theme in the book is the struggle we all have to find a balance between accepting things as they are and pushing for something else, something new. What happens with Slaney and his girlfriend Jennifer seemed one vehicle for this exploration, for example. And pushing for something else, in Slaney’s case, comes with high costs. Do you think Caught ever comes down on one side of the acceptance-resistance teeter-totter, or did you expressly want it to remain hung in the air?
 
Lisa Moore: I tried to stack that teeter-totter with equal weights on both sides. Mostly I want to up-end the reader's (and my own) notions of the right or wrong in that equation. I am glad that Slaney goes for it. For me his journey is a spark of rebellion against the status quo that's deeply inspiring. But would I want it for myself? Would I be willing to pay the costs? I don't think I have the courage. But I am not sure.

KT: Some of the coverage of Caught has focused on its audacious plot and characters—people who are willing to do anything to chase a dream—coupled with the characters’ origins in Newfoundland, a province that in the rest of Canada once had a reputation for being rooted in the past and for being economically disadvantaged. Is this a satisfying combination in the novel for you—the drive and sex appeal of Slaney, as well as his being a Newfoundlander?

Lisa Moore: Oh yes. I love Slaney's irreverence for things as they are. I see that irreverence in a lot of Newfoundlanders.

KT: Caught begins as a thriller and goes on to become much more complicated than that, subverting many genre tropes in the last half to more fully explore thematic concerns and characters. Why this choice? Did you ever think Caught was going to be purely a thriller, or were you actually surprised in the end by how much of a thriller it turned out to be?

Lisa Moore: I was playing with the Odyssey—a great adventure story. There are sirens, sea monsters, and Cyclops here in Caught, and even a dog, at the very end, who seems to recognize Slaney upon his return. In some ways Jennifer is a modern-day Penelope.

But Caught is also based on several stories about drug smuggling here in Newfoundland in the 70s. A time when smuggling drugs meant pot, rather than harder, life-destroying drugs. Those true stories, a kind of folklore around here, had such strong elements of suspense—wily cunning, bravado, youthful courage and a will to break all the rules, and to have an excellent time while doing it, all those elements demanded suspense. I couldn't be true to this story without it.

KT: Caught is very different than February but in some ways similar (perhaps I'm thinking of the interior struggles of the characters). What was your relationship like with each of the books’ main protagonists, Helen and Slaney, beyond incredibly close? What, if it's possible to even summarize, do you identify with in each of them?

Lisa Moore: They are both courageous characters in very different ways. They are both full of humour and keenly observant, and in some way humble in the face of what I'll loosely call the wonder of the universe. How it can lash its tail and knock the legs out from under you, how it can bless. They are both vulnerable too. Vulnerability cracks open doors to insight sometimes. Or at least in fiction it can.  

KT: Newfoundland seems like a very exciting place to be these days—for many people but in particular writers and artists. What is it like to be a writer there today?

Lisa Moore: There's a great community of writers here who support each other. We're a gang. A posse.

KT: Caught is hugely visual and dialogue-driven. It’s also a drug-fuelled adrenalin ride, with all the highs and lows of that. So … could you see Caught being adapted for screen?

Lisa Moore: I would love for that to happen.

KT: Finally, where did you get the idea of chucking (finished!) books out of boats? Loved that character tic!

Lisa Moore: Well, there's not much storage space on a sailboat. Ada, the character who reads and tosses her books is a cocktail of character traits: spoiled, selfish, talented, as well as a kind of moral compass in the novel. She's loyal and full of betrayal and capable of kindness and great love. That's at least part of the way I see her. Throwing a book into the ocean is a sacrilegious act, as far as I am concerned, but a devil-may-care gesture for her.