The Reposado Tequila Bar is jammed with people who have come out for the launch of the novel Various Positions. There are parents and grandparents. There are editors and publishers. There’s an older woman snatching away a glass of scotch from her husband and scolding him for drinking. Just one, just one, he pleads, but she is having none of it. There’s a tattooed bartender, moving masterfully behind the long bar, building margaritas, and pouring pints of local ale. Someone turns up the music: it’s a real mishmash of melodies.
And under the soft, eclectic lighting there is the author, Martha Schabas. She is asking where she ought to stand, or sit, so that she can sign copies of what is her debut novel. More people enter into the already bursting room and they wave for her attention. There’s an unbalanced blend of business and family. The room is full of nerves, and busting with pride. It’s hot and stuffy. This is not the sort of event you get to practice, the launching of your first book.
A graceful ballet this is not. And yet it is a story which is unmistakably beautiful.
Schabas has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia, where she was hoping to learn how to write a novel, but admits this was a bit misguided, saying,“writing a novel is the last thing you learn.” If you really want to write a novel, Schabas suggests only “that you should sit in front of your computer for two to 15 years.”
To write Various Positions, Martha Schabas quit her job at a law publication office and took a part-time position at a bookstore. With minimal funds, Schabas says it was a real treat to take the train to work every once and awhile. “I kind of forced myself into writing,” Schabas says, “because if I wasn’t writing my book, then what was I doing?”
The novel is about beauty, brutality, and ballet. It follows Georgia, a 14-year-old Toronto girl and aspiring ballerina. It’s a story about aesthetics and the politics of the body. Various Positions is precariously balanced between what can be the rather asexual world of ballet and the hypersexual social world that abounds on the covers of magazines and billboards everywhere.
“Inevitably,” says Shabas, “the two collide.”
Everyone’s familiar with the image of a ballerina. There she is, trapped in the breath before a pirouette. From the heavens above, an ancient light illuminates the cool stage. She is centered perfection, the height of grace, and above all else she is beautiful. And yet, “ballet is brutal, it takes a lot out of you, you know a good career will end at 35,” Schabas says.
Back in Reposado, more and more people are pressing themselves into the room. There is the ubiquitous banter and idle exchanges that are inescapable at these gatherings. The mercury continues to rise. It’s muggy and palms are sweating. A red haired woman takes a long, folded fan out of her purse. With a quick flip of the wrist, the fan opens and she begins elegantly fanning herself. “This really is the best margarita I’ve ever tasted,” says another woman who is standing up straight next to the bar. Thank god for margaritas.
Editor Lynn Henry takes the microphone and thanks everyone for coming to celebrate “the beautiful dance that is this book.” Then she hands the microphone off to woman of the evening, the author of the ‘beautiful dance,’ Martha Schabas.
There is no stage here, and barely any room to stand. She wonders if she should stand up on the table so that everyone can see her, “but I don’t think my heels will permit it.”
And then Schabas adds, as though to convince people of their inner ballerina, “I think everyone is just going to have to stand on their tiptoes so that they can see me from where they are.”
As people begin to file out of the bar, newly signed copies of Various Positions in their palms, it’s hard not to stop and wonder how this book might influence its readers.
“Sometimes we don’t realise how limited our choices really are,” Schabas says.
Various Positions is published by Doubleday Canada.
