On the cusp of 50, and during a record-breaking Toronto heatwave, art gallery owner Bea Billings is having something of a midlife crisis. The protagonist of Governor General’s Award-winning author Don Gillmor’s new novel, Breaking and Entering, is dealing with her son’s recent absence from the family nest, her husband’s (maybe?) affair, afternoon cravings for more and more wine, the breakdown of her ever-confrontational sister’s marriage and the care of their elderly mother. That’s a lot, obviously, and it somehow manifests in Bea’s strange new hobby: lock-picking (with a surprisingly dedicated group of real-life online devotees), which turns into the titular breaking and entering (less popular and prevalent, you’d hope).

 

 

Anyone who’s ever shoplifted, or peeked into their dinner party host’s medicine cabinet to see what’s what, will recognize the thrilling rush that accompanies Bea’s new habit. While we don’t recommend stealing, we do recommend living vicariously through Bea’s sticky fingers. After enviously watching a rich woman pay for a $1,500 Yamamoto dress with $100 bills, for example, Bea follows the woman home, waits for her to leave, picks the Schlage single-cylinder deadbolt with a hairpin (yes, this book will teach you everything you need to know about locks) and proceeds to steal the dress. Back at home, she “poured a glass of white wine and swirled it and took a sip and walked around the house in the glorious Yamamoto.” (You’re lying if you deny that’d feel totally awesome.)

Breaking and Entering is the 64-year-old author’s first novel with a female protagonist, so how did Gillmor borrow from real life to get deep into Bea’s unravelling brain? Will he admit to any similarly strange habits? And after all that diligent lock research, could he break into my house if he wanted? Zoomer found the journalist and author in rainy Nova Scotia to answer all these questions and some more.

Rosemary Counter: I’m calling you in Nova Scotia. Are you relaxing at a cottage?

Don Gillmor: I am, but it’s pouring rain, and cold. I’m wearing a wool sweater and a jacket inside. Not exactly how I prefer my summer vacations. I’m usually based in Toronto, but we booked this place months ago for a road trip. It’s gorgeous out here, but the weather’s not been great. It’s good for getting a little bit of work done though.

RC: How did this book come to be?

DG: This one was actually a confluence of two things. The first was a short story that I wrote about 10 years ago about a young man who broke into houses for a living. He was married, and he’d tell his wife every morning that he was going off to work at a security company, but really, he was a professional thief. It was about how we don’t always know everything about our partners, which always interests me. So, I went back to that story and thought maybe there was a novel in there. At the same time, I’d been having conversations with women friends who were telling me about this idea of middle-aged invisibility. They felt that at 50 or so they were suddenly invisible in the world. I thought about taking the idea of invisibility to its Zen pinnacle and have Bea breaking into houses and stealing things without ever being noticed.

RC: Have you ever written from the perspective of a female protagonist before?

DG: No, I hadn’t actually. I’ve certainly had many female characters, but never the main characters, and this book’s three main characters are all women. When I’m writing from a male perspective, I can always just go into my psyche and pull out some experience to work with. In this case, I had to work harder to take a bit of a leap. But once you start inhabiting someone’s head, whatever their gender, you start to feel like you know them. Bea grew and came alive as I wrote.

RC: I bet a lot of your female friends are going to think Bea’s based on them.

DG: I didn’t base her on anyone in particular, and even if I did, I would never admit it! There are pieces of probably a dozen people I know in there, and just little moments I borrowed. There’s a scene where Bea’s at her birthday and she eats a brownie that’s laced with marijuana. She takes a few bites and gets spectacularly stoned. That happened to a friend of mine, right before she was leaving for work, when she had a few slices of banana bread. It turns out her son’s friend had made THC banana bread for him. She was stoned for, like, two days, but because she didn’t know she’d taken it, she thought she was having a stroke.

RC: I shouldn’t laugh, but I am, because it’s funny, and the same’s true for the lock-picking and breaking and entering. How’d you come up with that?

DG: I was just online one day and was surprised to find there were actually hundreds of lock-picking clubs across North America. They’re all over the place. Of course, they see it as a hobby about escape or empowerment, but you have to assume that some of them at least use their skills for illegal purposes. I learned a lot online about locks and how to pick them. I fiddled around with them with a bobby pin the way they do in movies.

RC: Could you break into my house if you wanted to?

DG: No! I wouldn’t mind being able to pick locks, but no luck. I sat there with a hairpin for 25 minutes then got frustrated and quit. Picking locks is a lot harder than it looks. Years ago, I helped a neighbour across the street pick the lock of their old Toyota with a coat hanger. They’d locked their keys in their car, so they were initially so grateful, and then within five seconds, they were all very suspicious. Like, how in the hell does he know how to do that? I’d seen it in old television shows.

RC: I don’t break into cars or houses, of course, but I admit I’ve peeked into a medicine cabinet or two. Do you have any weird habits like Bea’s that you’d like to confess?

DG: I don’t do that, but I know lots of people who do. I understand the impulse. For Bea, I think it’s a combination of empty nest and midlife crisis, which can shift you for better or worse. I don’t think I have any weird habits though, no. I should actually probably get some more habits, because they say you’re supposed to as you get older. I’d like to learn to play guitar finally one of these days.

RC: Weather, heat and climate change is clearly a theme in the book. Why’s that so important to the story and could the same story happen in the dead of cold Canadian winter?

DG: Part of it was just me putting my own climate anxieties into the story. I’m less obsessive now, but there was a phase where I was checking the melt rate of glaciers and tracking the hottest city in the world on any given day…

RC: That sounds like a weird habit to me, by the way!

DG: Ha-ha! Yes, I suppose it is. I’d also Google which cities had the worst traffic, which was actually sometimes Toronto. We’d even beat out L.A. I put all these worries into Bea and dropped her right into a heatwave. Heat is also good to work with as a writer, because it makes people angry and frustrated and they act in ways that they might not in January. In North American cities, crime spikes during the hot summers. In the winter, they tend stay home and stay out of trouble.