An Interview with Marianne Micros
Marianne Micros did not expect to be nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award with her book Eye (Guernica Editions, 2018), a collection of short stories that explores mythology, fairy tales, and magic. It is the first time she has been nominated for this award and I could hear the excitement in her voice as we chatted over the phone earlier this month.
Her book takes us to Greece, to a time when traditional beliefs and superstitions shaped the life of the community. The common thread that binds together the collection is the evil eye — a curse cast by a malicious glare — and the characters in Eye experience visions, transformations, and enchantments that change the course of their lives.
Marianne, who retired some four years ago as an English professor at the University of Guelph, channels her fascination with myth, popular belief, and oral tradition in this highly fantastical book. You can feel the influence of the summers she spent between the isle of Lesbos and small villages in the Peloponnese region, in the way her characters move through the alleys and agoras of ancient uphill hamlets that face the Aegean Sea.
“People in Greece still believe in the evil eye nowadays,” said Marianne, “and they wear amulets — like the one on the cover of the book — for protection. One time, when I was in Greece, I remember I had a bad cough and cold. The ladies of the village gathered around me and did this ritual to see if the evil eye was on me. And after that, I felt better!”
Superstition runs deep in Marianne’s family. Her Yiayia and her mother believed in the evil eye, and that belief has been handed down from generation to generation since before her grandfather left Greece to move to America. “In Greek families, when babies are born, they always have the amulet pinned to their cradle,” Marianne told me. “I did that myself, with my first daughter. The people who came to see her would spit three times to repel the evil eye. I mean, nobody would allow that around their children, but that is the ritual. It’s a way to wish them well.”
Her stories recall life in a different time; a time when people would gather at night and sing and dance in the light of oil lamps and when streets were still made of cobblestone and dirt. Marianne remembers the first time she visited her extended family in Greece. There was no electricity and life was hard, but she remembers the feelings of hospitality and friendliness. It was an experience that changed her and made her appreciate her Greek roots.
The focus of Eye lies in female healers: women who have the power to repel the evil eye. It comes as no surprise that the book is dedicated to her mother, a strong woman whom Marianne describes as having had a natural ability to protect from hexes and curses. Marianne recalls how her mother would tell her to be careful of the devil and to make the sign of the cross on her pillow before going to bed. “I wanted my book to be a celebration of these women,” she said. “To show that they had a huge power and then that power was taken away from them, as time went on and modernity approached the villages.”
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Eye is an ode to spirituality, to everything supernatural that goes beyond the reality we see.
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The icon of these women is the Virgin Mary, who appears several times throughout this collection. The female healers talk to her, whisper their worries, and share their secrets and prayers. Some blame her for their misfortunes; others need her as someone they can rely on; she is not just an image on the wall, she is a character that plays a major role in the stories from Eye. “The Virgin is a very important figure for these women,” said Marianne. “I think she’s got certain characteristics that can be found in some of the goddesses from earlier beliefs and cultures — as a matter of fact, the Orthodox church still maintains the use of plants and water as in ancient rituals. She is the symbol of this clash between the tradition of the healer and the Church.”
Marianne explains that Eye is also a tribute to the mother-daughter relationship, especially her own. A mother of two daughters and a loving grandmother, she writes to capture the unyielding and defiant attitude of the women of her life. It is these women who are the narrators of her stories, the witnesses of things changing throughout time, and the guardians of the secrets of the evil eye. They are, in a certain way, the keepers of past, present, and future spirituality.
“In this world, we lost a lot of spiritual ideas. My stories talk about death and religious belief, the pull between paganism and Christianity. Magical things give me hope that there is more that I don’t know,” said Marianne. By turning the pages of Eye, you can experience a sense of awe for this mix of popular belief and Christianity. You can feel the centuries-old Mediterranean culture, where magic mingles with religion. Eye is an ode to spirituality, to everything supernatural that goes beyond the reality we see. “In the old beliefs, there’s something that does continue. There’s an underlying meaning in them. I see it in my stories.”