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Apparently written in 20-minute bursts on the bus to his job as Communications Manager of V&A Dundee, and hidden from his wife until it was completed, Chris Carse Wilson’s debut novel is an intense study of grief and obsession, following two people who try to come to terms with bereavement by pushing themselves mentally and physically to their limits.
The narrator is driven to their wit’s end trying to puzzle all this out. Along the way, they talk about the darkness that has clouded their life at times, and the ways they’ve tried to cope. Running is one thing that helped, a way to keep moving, to hang on: Eerie and ethereal, Fray is an unsettling quest in the unforgiving Scottish highlands – utterly spellbinding’ MARION TODDEqually, if on any given day, I'm struggling or my anxiety is sparking or I'm just feeling grey and depressed and overwhelmed for whatever reason, then 10 or 20 minutes of running will not fix it, but it will make it better. You mentioned that while you are loving running, you aren't racing at the moment at all? Fray begins with its anonymous narrator arriving at a cottage in the Scottish Highlands. The narrator’s mother died some time ago, and shortly afterwards their father disappeared, apparently unable to accept what had happened. The narrator has now traced their father to this cottage – he’s not there himself, but the place is full of papers and maps written and drawn by his hand. The novel chronicles its narrator’s attempt to piece together these texts and, hopefully, find a clue to their father’s whereabouts. But, and this is crucial, this book isn’t really about me – it’s about the mental health experiences we all face, and the ways we may struggle to understand or communicate these.
Their child, desperately searching the wild forests and dangerous mountains of the Scottish Highlands, not knowing what's out there. He had long wanted to write about his own mental health experiences but had always struggled to find a way to do this. The key moment came during a mountain run in a storm. Yes, my parents were both runners, they got into it because of the Great North Run, and I sort of followed on. I ran as a kid, joined a club, and did cross country and athletics through my teenage years. I was an 800m runner and I loved it. It’s so fascinating because it’s almost impossible to get it right. I always think an 800m race feels like a great idea until about 500m, then you are hanging on for dear life. I was a decent club runner but nothing out of the ordinary, but I loved it and with a few breaks I’ve continued ever since.This is an exciting, intense book which explores the redemptive power of nature and the universal challenges we all face living with our own mental health. The papers are haphazard and don’t make a great deal of sense. The narrator’s father talks of searching for his wife, but also mentions the Devil. He records times and weather conditions precisely, then describes experiments whose purpose is unclear. One of his hand-drawn maps has the word ‘hotel’ marked prominently, but there doesn’t seem to be a hotel nearby. Perhaps the father has made some sort of breakthrough, but if so, its nature is inscrutable. Fray is a book about family, love, and overcoming grief, set against the beauty and the threat of the Scottish Highland wilderness,” he says. Absolutely, and I think also without really realising it until I was older. The times of my life when I’m running, I'm happier and healthier, suffer fewer mental health problems. I'm more in control of everything. Life is just better, full stop. And at times where I'm not running because of illness or injury or just a moment where I've sort of fallen out of love with it, things are worse, you know, on a very simple basic level. Running makes every day better. It makes your life better. And much easier to control.
A book by a keen runner who had long wanted to write about his mental health experiences but struggled to find a way to do so until he was caught in a mountainside storm will go on sale on Thursday. Fray is set in the remote wilderness of the Scottish Highlands, and follows a nameless narrator as they desperately search for their missing father. Instead, they discover an abandoned cottage filled with thousands of confusing, terrifying scraps of paper, detailing the father’s frenzied attempts to find his dead wife. Chris Carse Wilson began writing Fray in 2016 and kept it secret from everyone including his wife Elaine, 42, until it was finished.The author said: “My mental health challenges are inextricably linked to being autistic and how I experience the world, which for 40 years of my life I never understood. Author Chris Carse Wilson, whose book Fray goes on sale on Thursday (Jane Barlow/PA) At its heart, Fray is a book about love and self-acceptance, while also taking the reader on a wild adventure through the Scottish Highlands.” That combination of the wild, threatening weather and this abandoned building gave me the way into telling a story that is open and honest about mental health.” An abandoned cottage in the remote wilderness, filled with thousands of confusing, terrifying handwritten notes. The diagnosis has been an incredible moment, although I’m still learning and coming to terms with it.
HarperNorth has pre-empted the “spine-tingling” début novel by Chris Carse Wilson, communications manager at V&A Dundee.He said: “My mental health challenges are inextricably linked to being autistic and how I experience the world, which for 40 years of my life I never understood. The diagnosis has been an incredible moment, although I’m still learning and coming to terms with it. Their world contracts to the cottage and its surrounding mountains, glens and forests, and in Wilson’s hands the isolation is palpable and unremitting. It’s ironic that one can feel such claustrophobia in a novel dominated by the perilous grandeur of the great outdoors; but there are no secondary characters to break the spell, no respite from these compulsive trains of thought. Soon the protagonist is showing signs of mental exhaustion, tormented by their failings: their goal-orientated life, fear of failure, the unsought advice that has driven people away and soured relationships. Fray is an exceptional and haunting debut, very reminiscent of the work of Max Porter ... I absolutely loved it. Chris Carse Wilson is a highly talented writer and Fray is filled with passages that resonated deeply with me' ????? My running and writing kind of have always existed in parallel to each other. I've been running for 30 years, I've been writing for 30 years. And I've always used both of them in different but complementary ways to manage my mental health – to manage challenges that I have with anxiety, all of which is linked to being autistic, which is not something I knew about until a year or two ago. You've said that being out in nature, running outside, is very important to you
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