Familial relationships are often at the core of psychological trauma and mental health issues. What we experience in childhood shapes our worldview and molds our modus operandi. As we grow into adulthood, our behaviors reflect our past, and who we are becomes a product of our lived experiences. The Enumerations by Máire Fisher delves into the complex and poignant nature of being human, particularly in relation to others.

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Book Description: Noah Groome counts to five. At seventeen, he can do more than that, but counting everything in fives—from the steps he takes to the minutes in the day—keeps his raging anxiety at bay. The voice in his head, which he calls The Dark, controls everything he does. And it’s getting worse.

His increasingly severe OCD impacts every member of Noah’s family: his mother Kate, desperate for comfort as her home life falls apart; his father Dominic, who retreats emotionally as old demons rise to the surface; his protective little sister Maddie, forced to be the happy child; and most of all Noah, a troubled teenager trying to protect his loved ones from himself. Following a violent incident at school, Noah is sent to rehab in Cape Town, where he meets Juliet, a rebellious girl with a sex addiction who isn't afraid of the voice in Noah’s head. As bonds are made and long-held secrets are revealed, Noah is not the only one who will find healing. Author Bio: 

Máire Fisher is a writer, writing mentor, and editor. She was born in Zambia, educated in Zimbabwe, and currently resides in South Africa, where she runs several renowned writing workshops. The Enumerations is her North American debut. 

1. This story touches on major trauma and mental illnesses. In today’s society, it seems that if we are not directly impacted by mental illness, we know someone who is. What informed your writing on these topics, and did you draw from a personal standpoint?

I didn’t draw Noah, the young boy with OCD, from a personal standpoint. He came to life in another novel I was writing, where a young woman named Maddy, who worked in a bookshop, was visiting her brother, Noah, on a regular basis. He was older than Noah of The Enumerations, and, as the brother of the main character, he needed a backstory. As I began to write that, he ambushed the entire story! So, there’s still a young woman in a bookshop, waiting for her story to be written, but she’s lost her brother and her name. I have to thank her, though, because Noah came to life through her.

That said, as I was writing, I came into contact with people with OCD, in particular a friend and her daughter (to whom the book is dedicated). When I mentioned the subject of the novel to her, I learned that her daughter had battled with OCD and the monsters it brought into their lives. Both mother and daughter agreed, very kindly, to share their experiences. We talked for ages, and what they told me was hugely helpful both in terms of the treatments used and on a more personal level because The Enumerations is a story about Noah and his family, both when he is living at home and when he is in Greenhills.  After the novel came out, several people said how useful the story was for them (one woman gave it to her father to read, because he insisted that there was nothing wrong with her child, and she had been struggling to bring home to him how invasive and debilitating a condition OCD can be).

2. Noah suffers from an extreme form of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder to the extent that his entire life comes to a halt in order to fulfill his compulsions. What was your research process like when writing about OCD to ensure that Noah’s symptoms were accurately portrayed?

I was very concerned about telling Noah and his family’s story as truthfully and precisely as possible. To do otherwise would have been irresponsible and disrespectful. However, I have no clinical psychology or psychiatric training or background, and so I had to research OCD as fully as I could on my own.

I asked several people to be early readers, including some young people of about Noah’s age (most of the story is set in a facility for young people with various issues, and I wanted to make sure that their voices rang true). As well as reading as much as I could about OCD and the treatments that were current as I was writing, I also visited support groups online, where family members discussed the ups and downs of living with someone with OCD.

I was extremely fortunate to be introduced to three experts, all working in the field. They read my manuscript, corrected some of the terminology I had used, and confirmed that I had described Noah’s symptoms correctly. One of them, a professor at the University of Cape Town, was glad to see a story like Noah’s and his family in mainstream fiction. He also thanked me for not having love solve all the problems in Noah’s life. There is love in the story – Noah’s family’s love for him and his for them, but romance doesn’t really feature high on the list of what he can manage in his day-to-day life.

As far as the other young people who were residents at Greenhills were concerned, I had to make sure that I researched them properly too. I needed to find out whether a character like Willa would have used the pronoun ‘they’ instead of ‘he’ in the early 2010s, not to mention where they would shop for stunning boots of the correct size. All the young people gathered in Greenhills deserved to be sensitively drawn, and while I didn’t delve as deeply into their particular issues, I was very conscious of creating fully rounded characters who would help (or hinder!) Noah in his passage through the story.  I loved writing them all, from Juliet, whose frank and clear-eyed take on life helped to anchor Noah in a new environment, to Willa, who sprang into the story when I was halfway through writing, an irrepressible character with a wonderful voice

3. Did you find it limiting to write the chapters from Noah’s perspective due to his intense and orderly thought process? What was it like to be able to place yourself in the shoes of someone with such a challenging disorder?

I started off this novel with all of the sections about Noah written in the first person. And then, upon very good advice from an excellent editor, Fourie Botha, I changed all perspectives to the close third person. So, as it turned out, I didn’t find it limiting to write from Noah’s perspective. What I found upsetting was imagining how frustrated, scared, worried, anxious, and misunderstood he must have felt. In fact, as I type this, I feel my stomach knotting for him all over again. Once I had a sense of who Noah was and how his life was dominated by a need for order, a fear of disorder, I found myself slipping into his skin. I’d look at a room from Noah’s point of view, see how a table was set, and if a magazine was left lying open on a sofa. I’d find myself counting the steps to the fridge, wondering how long I’d been in the shower for. I thought of being Noah in a class of teenage pupils. I imagined how draining being aware of every single small thing, and the need to balance them all, had to be. I felt his dread of the malevolent forces that would be unleashed if he didn’t do everything correctly and in a particular order. Simply thinking about it all was exhausting, and I think that’s what I tapped into the most: how very tired Noah must have been. The rules he had to live by were self-imposed, and they became more and more complicated as his need for them grew, but they were rules nonetheless, and the fear that consumed him if he failed to abide by them was devastating. I wanted the best for him, and my hope for him was that he’d find a way to allow his life to become less difficult.

Moving to another character’s point of view (Dominic’s, or Juliet’s, or Gabriel’s, or Maddy’s, for example) felt as if I was giving Noah a chance to rest, gather his energy to keep going. I think this also gave the reader a chance to breathe.

4. A key theme in The Enumerations is the impact of mental illness on the relationships between individuals and their family members or friends. Was it challenging to develop the ecosystem surrounding Noah and portray the profound impact of his mental illness, not just on him, but on his community as well?

John Donne says it better than I ever could:

“No man is an island,

Entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.” 

(Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 1624)

Noah is a son, a brother, a grandson, and, eventually, when he meets Juliet and other young people at Greenhills, a friend. His condition affects him and his family profoundly. I have two sons, and couldn’t imagine writing a story about a young person like Noah without thinking about his family and how they, too, would be affected. What would life be like for a younger sister? Would she ever be able to act out, or would the onus be on her to be the child who doesn’t give any trouble? Maddy is a sensitive young girl; she sees how her mother worries about Noah. The last thing she would ever do is be a further burden.  She adores her big brother and hates him being seen as strange. She’s fiercely protective of Noah, yet cannot help feeling relieved when he goes to Greenhills. Kate, Noah’s mother, is torn between accommodating Noah‘s needs in every way possible, being as attentive to Maddy as she can be, and watching in disbelief as Dominic, her husband, withdraws further and further into himself, unable to cope with Noah and the demands he makes on their home life. The students at school don’t understand Noah; they see him as being that guy who’s always counting. And, of course, anyone who is different in any way is often a target for bullies like Kyle Blake. Noah doesn’t live in a vacuum, and creating a family and community for him happened naturally. And with that came the need to understand the people who surrounded him – some of whom needed quite a few words to let their stories be known.

5. In response to stress or challenges, humans naturally seek coping mechanisms, which manifest in various forms. For instance, Noah anchors himself with counting techniques and an obsessive need for order, while Dominic finds grounding in his gardening—an escape from his life. For Noah, however, his counting and structure become all-consuming. Was it intentional to juxtapose these two characters and their coping methods? Are there other coping techniques that emerge in the other characters as well?
   

That’s an interesting question. One of the experts I referred to earlier said that OCD isn’t necessarily heritable, although studies are ongoing. Noah himself believes that if he could learn more about his father’s background and history, it might help to explain why he, Noah, is the way he is. As far as Dominic is concerned, gardening was, I felt, a way for him to escape being in the house with Noah, witnessing his son’s ‘obsessive need for order’.

Noah’s OCD is triggered by a traumatic event, as for Dominic—I’ll stop there and let you discover more about him through the story! Kate immerses herself in the running of their home, trying to be a perfect mother, partner, and corporate wife. But no matter how hard she tries, things crumble around her. Maddy, as I’ve mentioned, thinks that it’s her job to be the good child who will never cause any trouble. Noah feels he has to protect his family from the Dark through following his self-imposed rules and regulations – if he can’t do this, his family will be in danger. Maddy also feels the need to hold everything together for the sake of her family, to help everyone as much as she can. Juliet refuses to let life hurt her, and so she comes across as being flippant, but there’s plenty of backstory to her life, too. As I wrote, it sometimes felt they were all muddling through as best they could.

6. The alternating point of view in this novel is key to understanding the dynamics of the Groome family. During your writing process, did you write continuously from one character's perspective before moving on to the next, or did you switch back and forth between perspectives?  
   

Your question sent me back to the first draft of the novel, where I was writing my way into characters, seeing who they might turn out to be. In that draft, Noah was Neil, Dominic was Gavin, Kate was Belle, Juliet was Pansy, and Maddy was always Maddy.  They formed the core of the story, and as events happened, each character reacted to them. Sometimes I went a long way down a path with them and then had to turn back and let them try something new, but as the story grew, there was a reaction from the characters who were present at each point. So, the simple answer is, I switched back and forth, and often what one character learned about themselves (or didn’t) led to new parts of the story being uncovered…

7. The book opens with a quote by André Gide, “There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.” This suggests that by learning about and truly understanding a person, we can develop greater empathy and compassion for the reasons behind their behavior. When writing, what did you do to map out the correlations between a character's personal monsters and their current behavior?
   

I tried to find the truth for each of the characters in the story. For some of them, it took some digging to discover who or what their monsters were. They were reluctant to let me into their pasts, their families, their innermost thoughts. I had to discover their secrets and learn why they needed to keep those secrets. I had to ask them to admit to their true feelings, and this often led to them facing their fears, meeting their monsters head-on, and doing what they could to disarm them. Once the characters in The Enumerations were able to face the truth about their past, about what was happening in the present, about their hidden fears and desires, life became so much simpler. But it took a while to get them to that point – with plenty of mishaps, misunderstandings, misdeeds, and misery along the way.

8. When writing, did you have a particular character you related to more than the rest? If so, who was it and why?
   

It’s hard to choose one character in particular. I related so strongly to Kate, the mother who wanted the very best for her children. She’s probably the most obvious answer to this question. But strangely, the person who came to mind immediately I read this question was Willa. Their arrival was such a surprise, and I loved the way they burst into the story, self-deprecating, humorous, brave, and more than a little sad. I suppose I relate to them so strongly because I feel that if you give a story its head, write as fast as you can to keep up with it as it unfolds, without trying to direct it, corral it, force outcomes, wonderfully extravagant surprises can happen: characters like Willa who claim their space and invite you to fall in love with them.

9. When Juliet enters the picture, things begin to change for Noah. She is not afraid of his disorder the way that others have been, and she challenges him in his healing journey. The character of Juliet symbolizes human relationships, illustrating that while relationships can be a source of trauma and pain, they also have the potential to heal and restore. Was Juliet a planned and intentional character from the start of your writing process, or did she evolve organically as the story developed?

Juliet is mentioned very early in the story, when Kate meets Monica, Juliet’s mother and so we learn that Juliet too, has been to places like Greenhills. So, I knew she’d play a part in the story. But like Willa, Juliet herself leapt into the story. There’s Noah, on his first evening in Greenhills, unsure of what is going to happen, and how he is possibly going to manage all the changes to his routine, and then – along comes Juliet to add further to his woes. Where Noah is quiet, almost to the point of silence, Juliet won’t stop talking. Noah can’t shake her off and she becomes a constant presence in the time that he’s there. She nudges him into responding to her, and, at times, pushes him further than he wants to go. But, as with other characters, the Juliet Noah first sees on the surface also has demons she has to face and the story that comes with them. Her story evolved organically. The more Juliet invaded Noah’s space, the more I wanted to learn about her.

10. Over the course of the novel, we see a progression in Noah’s disorder and behavior during his time at Greenhills. What was this like for you as the author? Did you find yourself becoming emotionally attached to the outcomes of the characters?
    

So emotionally attached. I wanted the best for Noah, for the whole cast of characters that came to life in the story. It took a while to get to that point. Although The Enumerations isn’t a Young Adult novel, the character at the center of it all is a young adult. I read many YA novels, and in each it’s clear that while life can be messy and agonisingly difficult, with no cut-and-dry solutions, it is possible to allow Hope into the story. Hope that things can become better. Hope that people can evolve and learn. Hope for a future that’s better than the present they’re living in.  That’s the outcome that I wanted for Noah Groome, his family, and his friends. I wanted him to carry Hope into readers’ lives too, along with understanding, compassion, and the love that can’t solve problems, but is there to sustain us in our messy, difficult, complicated, but often gratifying lives.