A Working Actor Feels Destined to Be a Star At Any Cost in Meredith Hambrock's Darkly Comic Novel

Meredith Hambrock's debut novel received acclaim from some lofty heights in the literary world, including The New York Times, and the author is back again to go from strength to strength in yet another intelligent and darkly comic work.

She's a Lamb! is the story of Jessamyn St. Germain, an working actor who books commercials on occasion, and pays the bills by supplementing her acting work with a day job as an usher at a small regional theatre in Vancouver. But, she knows that she is meant to be a star, and is willing to do anything it takes to usurp the lead actress in a new production of The Sound of Music. In her mind, the director has placed her near to the role to step in when the lead fails, but what lengths will she really have to go to to prove it?

Told in witty and unrelenting prose, this is novel for those readers who delight in black humour and suspenseful page-turning stories. And, we've got a fascinating Long Story Novelist interview with the author right here on Open Book!

Open Book:

Do you remember how your first started this novel or the very first bit of writing you did for it? 

Meredith Hambrock:

Absolutely. I was thirty-two years old and scanning tickets at a theatre company. It was one of the weird part-time jobs I’d gathered that allowed me writing time. I was very frustrated because my writing career and my life felt like they were going nowhere. I couldn’t stop wondering if I would ever achieve what I wanted to achieve, or if it was all a waste of time. The theatre where I worked was about to put on a production of The Sound of Music – and I was faced with watching this show I couldn’t stand thirty-five times in a row instead of seeing my family at Christmas. The mood in the Hambrock household could only be described as “toilet.” I thought I’d write a romantic comedy set during a production of the Sound of Music. It would be about an actress, who is also an usher, as she attempts to become the star of the show. As I wrote, things got quite dark and it felt right so I leaned into it. 

OB:

How did you choose the setting of your novel? What connection, if any, did you have to the setting when you began writing?

MH:

I was working at a theatre at the time, but it was a very successful, well-run place and so I needed the theatre I described to be a lot worse. Getting to write a worse version of my workplace was a lot of fun. The theatre had a venue on Granville Island in Vancouver and the whole island is rife with seagulls. This lead to me reading and becoming mildly obsessed with, Chekhov’s play The Seagull. There’s a quote from that play that serves as an epigraph that makes me laugh every time I think of it in relation to the story. 

OB: 

Did you find yourself having a "favourite" amongst your characters? If so, who was it and why?

MH:

Well as they say in showbiz, you have to stand behind your lead. But an honourable mention goes to my lead’s vocal coach, Renee who is a diva of the first order. Fans! Caftans! She wears clownish make-up and owns an excessive number of humidifiers. Would you expect anything less? 

OB:

If you had to describe your book in one sentence, what would you say?

MH:

A young woman will stop at nothing to make her dream of starring in a production of The Sound of Music a reality.   

OB:

Did you do any specific research for this novel? Tell us a bit about that process. 

MH:

I’m very interested in process. I care about how the sausage is made. The atmosphere, or setting I’m writing in has a huge impact on my state of mind. This novel, She’s a Lamb!, is set during a production of The Sound of Music, the musical I was working at. I had to watch the musical over and over again, while writing the first draft. When you watch something thirty-five times in a row, the first four times, if the production is great, it’s a lot of fun. Then the next twenty are sort of like torture where you become this trapped obsessive person with an eye-twitch who wants to escape but cannot. And then, usually for the last few shows, it becomes like Stockholm Syndrome, where you cling to your captor, desperate to get to see the thing one more time. I think experiencing this weirdness had a huge impact on the novel. So not necessarily research so much as it is experience. Kind of like method acting, but writing. 

OB:

What was the strangest or most memorable moment or experience during the writing process for you? 

MH:

This novel is about delusion and is written in the present tense, which ultimately wasn’t a great choice, though it did provide a lot of immediacy to the action of the book. As I was writing, I was forced to figure out how delusion functions in the moment, and also how to make that feel real, clear, and intentional for the reader. Cracking that made this book feel like it was on to something.

OB:

Did you celebrate finishing your final draft or any other milestones during the writing process? If so, how?

MH:

I CTRL+A and delete all of the text in a document, just to feel something. I just did it for this written interview. It’s become a weird, intrusive thought I can’t escape every time I’m working on something. Someday, I fear it will cause me some real problems. Until then, CTRL + A. 

OB: 

Who did you dedicate your novel to, and why? 

MH:

I didn’t dedicate this novel to anyone because it is quite dark and I didn’t want anyone to feel cursed or insulted. I’m hoping to make more enemies so I don’t have this problem in the future. Actually, wait, I do have an enemy! When my first book came out a writer I adore wrote me one of those recommendation cards and they put it up under the copies of my book at the Book Warehouse on Broadway in Vancouver (at the store’s request.) And then one day someone ripped it up! Can you believe it? A real enemy, out there and I have no idea who it is. I wish they’d reveal themself to me. Whoever did that, this book is for you.  

OB:

What if, anything, did you learn from writing this novel?

MH:

Read more, always, but especially before you start drafting. Additionally, characters who are confident, but also wrong, are way more fun to write.

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Meredith Hambrock’s debut novel Other People’s Secrets was called “audacious” and “fabulous” by the New York Times. She has been a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize and worked extensively in television, most recently in the writers’ room for the Canadian Screen Award–winning sitcom Corner Gas Animated. She lives in Saskatoon.