Kate Beaton’s wide-ranging literary tastes include mysteries set in the Middle Ages and a graphic novel about the medieval dancing plague
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A new college graduate strapped with debt, graphic novelist Kate Beaton headed for a well-paying job in the far-flung oil fields of Alberta. There the Cape Breton native discovered an alien universe of transient workers making fast money amid vast environmental destruction, as she recounts in “Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands,” which has landed on some best-of-the-year lists. Beaton is also the author of “Hark! A Vagrant” and “Step Aside Pops,” among other books. Her illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker and Harper’s. She lives in Cape Breton with her family.
BOOKS: What are you reading?
BEATON: I’ve been enjoying C.J. Sansom’s “Shardlake” mystery series, which is set in the time of Henry VIII. Shardlake is a detective who is a hunchback. I love historical fiction.
BOOKS: What are some of your favorites in that genre?
BEATON: I read Oliver Potzsch’s series “Hangman’s Daughter,” which is set in Germany in the 1500s. I didn’t know this but hangmen were considered of a certain caste. Their other jobs were like cleaning human waste off the streets. The series brings this whole world to life of people you never thought about. The author discovered he is descended from an executioner. He went to his family tree and went, “Jesus!”
BOOKS: What else have you been reading?
BEATON: It was recently the spooky season so I read “The Burning Girls” by C.J. Tudor. A reverend and his daughter land in this town and find that people are leaving creepy straw dolls around. I’ve always liked scary books.
BOOKS: What draws you to scary books?
BEATON: Most of the “Frog and Toad” stories are something like they ate too many cookies but there is one called “Shivers.” The ending is, “They were having the shivers. It was a good feeling.” And you’re like, “That is right, Frog and Toad.” I feel very seen in this “Frog and Toad” story.
BOOKS: How often do you read graphic novels?
BEATON: All the time. I recently read “The Third Person” by Emma Grove, a gigantic brick of a book. It’s about her dealing with multiple personality disorder and being a transgendered woman. For someone who needs that book, that can be validating. For everyone else, it’s so illuminating.
BOOKS: Do you have a favorite graphic novel?
BEATON: It’s usually the one I just read, which was Gareth Brookes’s “The Dancing Plague.” It’s about the medieval dancing plague. He not only drew but also embroidered some of the pages, which makes the book look extremely of its times. You read it and then you keep thinking about it.
BOOKS: What are your reading habits?
BEATON: Because I have small children I got more into audiobooks. Sometimes I listen to them on headphones while I’m laying in bed next to my kids waiting for them to go to sleep, which can take forever.
BOOKS: What kind of reader were you as a kid?
BEATON: We only had the school library, where the books were demolished from overuse. The book mobile drove by every few weeks. I read books from the ‘50s because it was what they had. I read “Detectives in Togas” by Henry Winterfeld and the “Booky” series, which is about a girl in Toronto during the Depression by Bernice Thurman Hunter.
BOOKS: What did you read while you were working in the oil fields?
BEATON: I read “Nicholas Nickleby.” I felt like one of those dirty urchins with a cruel overseer and some Lothario dudes hanging around. I like Dickens. He does great character work. You can’t top Uriah Heep or Mr. Micawber, both in the same book even.
BOOKS: Which other classic authors do you like?
BEATON: I read “Wuthering Heights” so many times. That book drove me nuts. What is going on with Catherine and Heathcliff! Why don’t I understand this? With Dickens there are no questions about characters’ motivations. In “Wuthering Heights” it’s all, “What do you think?” But I loved it because it drove me nuts. When I went to a comics show in Leeds, I took the train to Haworth, the Brontës’ house.
BOOKS: What was the Brontës’ home like?
BEATON: You are on the moors and you are like, wow. The wind is blowing. The wind! Their tiny shoes are in a glass case. Their writing is there. Everything in town is Brontë, Brontë, Brontë! I didn’t care. I was like, “You got my number, baby.”