Q&A with Brian Kirk

When first reading, “Meltemi,” we didn’t want it to end! This is a story that whisks you away into its characters lives, into the hot summer sun of Greece. One of our editors, Sophia Blush, dug into the careful decisions made when constructing such a story with Brian Kirk, author of “Meltemi.”

I found it interesting that the majority of the story focuses on Amy’s feelings of discontent and unhappiness, yet when the story ends, that focus shifts to Rob. How did you decide to end the story that way?

The way I write stories is different to how I write long form prose. With a novel I generally have some vague outline of where the story is going and perhaps even how it might end. But with most of my short stories I start with a scene or a character/characters and let things develop. This can mean teasing out the story day in day out over a long period of time, trying different moves and rejecting some of them. Yes, Amy is definitely the focal point of the story, but Rob became important to me as the story developed. His own isolation and uncertainty about everything corresponds with Amy’s situation and his breakdown at the end suggests where Amy is also. I liked that, the sense of connection between them even if neither one can really help the other.

Your descriptions of the hot Greek sun beating down were so intense – I could really sense the discomfort. In some ways, it reminded me of Camus’ The Stranger, that feeling that you get when the sun is so hot that you can’t think. There was also, of course, the Meltemi wind. Could you expand on how you used weather to set the tone of the story, and what you wanted it to suggest about the characters’ emotional or moral states?

The weather is so important in the story. I came across the word meltemi – the wind that rises in late summer in the Aegean and brings a change in the weather – a few years ago. I loved the sound of the word and wanted to use it at some point. I spent a number of summer holidays on Greek Islands when I was younger and although I didn’t experience the meltemi I do remember temperatures in the high 30s at times. The speed of life was necessarily slower, and it was hard to motivate yourself to do things. There’s a negative stereotype that due to climatic reasons Northern Europeans are more moral than their Southern counterparts and the story plays with that a little too. I love Camus’ The Stranger and I suppose, like Mersault, my characters’ decision-making processes are affected by the searing heat and blinding light. The coming of the wind in the story signals a change in the weather literally but also the coming changes in the lives of Amy and her son.

The complicated relationships really carry this piece – not only the one between Tony and Amy, but also between the friends, especially Rob. I was impressed by how intricate these relationships were in such a short story. How did you think about/plan these connections out? 

For practical plot reasons I needed other characters beyond Amy and Tony to deliver the story in a full and complex way and I suppose Mark and Emma act as a kind of foil for the main couple, being as they are still without the responsibilities that marriage and a baby bring. As I said earlier, the story grew by a series of accretions and in these versions Rob, who was an afterthought originally, became more important for me. In his outward cynicism and disdain for his friends, he appears to be the kind of person who would have the least sympathy for Amy and her predicament. When he grew into the story I became more invested in the writing and ultimately he offered me an ending of sorts. Although the story never really ends.

We see the state of Amy and Tony’s relationship as it is, but many details are left out: what their life is like at home, how they ended up together, etc. When writing the story, how did you choose what to include and what to leave out?

This is a reflection I suppose of the difference between the novel and the short story. In the story we don’t have time for long flashbacks, or detailed back story. We start in the middle of the action and we see the characters as they are at a particular point in time. We know that Amy and Tony are creative people – she writes, he’s a musician, and they are new parents with all the pressure that brings. It’s apparent there are problems with their relationship but neither one wants or knows how to talk about it. The trip to Greece, like the meltemi, is the catalyst for change. By the end of the story we understand that things can not be the same again. I hope that readers get the sense of the characters’ lives continuing on after the final scene in the story has played out.