Category Archives: Favourite books

March 1, 2024 · 9:33 am

Talking (new) fiction: Katrina Kell’s Chloé

I love creative projects that cross artforms in some way. My own writing has drawn on sculpture, art and dance, and I have been privileged and truly thrilled to have some of my works inspire paintings, a visual arts installation and, most recently, a concert by a symphony orchestra. So I was immediately drawn to Chloé, a newly released novel by Western Australian author Katrina Kell.

Chloé was inspired by the famous painting of the same name that hangs in the main bar of the Melbourne hotel Young and Jackson. It is a once-seen-never-forgotten work by French artist Jules Lefebvre—a large, lush nude that speaks of another time, a distant world. Given the iconic place it has come to have in Melbourne’s history (I’ll let Katrina tell you about that), my only surprise is that it’s taken so long for a writer to take it on.

I think Katrina has done Chloé proud.

Katrina is also the author of two YA novels, as well as short fiction, poetry and essays, and the unpublished manuscript of Chloé won an Australian Society of Authors Award Mentorship. She lives and works in Boorloo (Perth) and is an Honorary Research Associate at Murdoch University.

Look at this gorgeous cover!

A riveting novel based on the true story of the brave, enigmatic young woman who modelled for one of Australia’s most famous paintings.

Taking the reader from Victoria’s wild shipwreck coast to the artists’ studios of revolutionary Paris and the bloody battlefields of Flanders, this sweeping novel reimagines the volatile history of the beautiful and enigmatic young woman immortalised in one of Australia’s most iconic paintings. Created in Paris in 1875, Chloé, Jules Lefebvre’s depiction of a naked water nymph, was brought to Melbourne’s Young & Jackson Hotel in 1909, where it has hung ever since.

In this passionate, luminous retelling, Katrina Kell seeks to unlock the riddle behind the girl on the canvas, known to history only as Marie. In doing so, she weaves the compelling story of an incandescent spirit—a woman with the strength to defy the boundaries of class and convention in order to survive, and an enduring power to influence the lives of others across time and distance.

France in an Aussie pub

AC: Katrina, in order to imagine the creation of a painting and the lives of its artist and model, it’s necessary to spend a long time minutely studying its composition, its brushstrokes, its light and shadow, the background, the tone of the model’s skin, the lift of her shoulder, the expression on her half-turned face. Did you have the opportunity to do that in person at the outset of your project, or sometime after you’d been researching the painting, and the story, at a distance? I’m wondering what it felt like for you, seeing the painting for the first time.

KK: I saw Chloé at Young and Jackson Hotel in Melbourne early in my research journey. The nude figure depicted in the artwork appears almost life-size. Her gilt-framed image dominates, some might say rules, the public bar she is displayed in. I was immediately struck by the intensity of the Parisian model’s expression. Her glowing corporeality was palpable, but it was her face, her sombre countenance, that drew me into the picture. There was such sadness in her gaze, overlain by an edge of defiance. She was far more complex and intense than the titular naiad Lefebvre claims he painted.

Separating fact from fiction

AC: I imagine your first imperative as a researcher was to explore the lives of the model Marie Peregrine and the artist Jules Lefebvre. I’m sure the latter was easier than the former! Was there anything at all to find concerning Marie? Were there clues, other than those to be found in the very significant visual image in Chloé, that gave you a way into her character?

KK: Researching Lefebvre’s artistic career was certainly easier, but learning about his character proved much more challenging. Reliable material was only available in French. Initially, I was helped by a friend, a professional translator, until I grew confident in my translations. In Paris, I researched in several French institutions and gained access to the space where Lefebvre painted Chloé. It was a poignant experience, climbing the marble spiral staircase to his former atelier, and feeling the ambiance in the chamber where Marie had once posed for the artist.

There were a few sketchy clues about Marie, and the challenge was to separate fact from fiction. Chloé has been a beloved cultural icon for over a century. Myths about Marie and Jules Lefebvre are deeply entrenched and often reductive, so I needed to mine the few nuggets of truth to get to the heart of Marie’s story.

The Anglo-Irish writer George Moore (1852–1933) wrote about a girl named Marie in his memoir Confessions of a Young Man (1888). Moore claimed she was the model for ‘Lefebvre’s Chloé’. In his auto-fictional short story ‘The End of Marie Pellegrin’, he wrote again of the Parisian girl I suspect was Chloé’s model. Moore’s accounts of Marie’s turbulent life closely mirror details shared by Lefebvre during a conversation he had with the American journalist Lucy Hamilton Hooper (1835–1893). It was a spine-tingling moment when I read Hooper’s interview in her ‘Paris Letters’ column in the Appletons’ Journal. I was aware of the oppression and threats to proletarian women following the violent crushing of the revolutionary Paris Commune, and it was becoming clear that Marie’s lived experience would have been fraught with trauma and danger.

‘Having a drink with Chloé’

AC: A second story is woven through the novel—set in Australia, during the First World War. First, could you tell us about the significance of the painting Chloé to Australian soldiers at that time?

KK: ‘Having a drink with Chloé’ has been a ‘good luck’ ritual for Australian soldiers since the First World War. When Chloé was hung in Young and Jackson’s in 1909, the pub, opposite Flinders Street Railway Station, quickly became a drawcard. During this era, many young men would rarely have seen an unclothed woman. Chloé may have been their first and only chance of viewing a naked female body. Some even wrote love letters to the famous painting, and Chloé’s ‘good luck’ symbolism continued over many decades and military conflicts. As West Australian traveller Peter Graeme wrote, of a soldier he saw downing beers in front of the painting in honour of his fallen mates, Chloé may have been ‘the symbol of the feminine side of his life. That part which he puts away from him, except in his inarticulate dreams’ (see my article in The Conversation).

Ancestral links

AC: And the twin brothers, Rory and Paddy, who enlist in the war: how did their story evolve?

KK: My family heritage is from south-western Victoria, so setting this story thread there felt intuitive. My great-great-great-grandfather was captain of the Thistle, the shipwrecked schooner that lies offshore at Port Fairy beach in Eastern Maar Country. The character Abby, Rory and Paddy’s mother, pays homage to my Irish convict ancestor, Abby Desmond, a young woman who arrived in chains but managed to prevail and raise a family here. It was a joy to spend time researching and establishing settings in and around Port Fairy, and the boys’ story evolved quite naturally. It was also easy to imagine how challenging life would have been for a woman like Abby in this beautiful, rugged region.

Castor and Pollux

AC: There are several links—some surprising—between the French and Australian stories. I especially liked the use of the mythological figures Castor and Pollux, and I’m wondering whether the Paris zoo elephants named after those figures might have inspired that link.

KK: My mother, Zant, is an identical twin, and her star sign is Gemini. Her Irish father, who loved astronomy, shared the story of Castor and Pollux with his twin daughters. Mum shared her father’s stories with us. She loved to point to Orion’s Belt in the night sky and show us the twin stars that meant so much to her. So it felt natural that Rory and Paddy’s father, an ocean fisherman, would share the story of Castor and Pollux, the twin gods who rescued shipwrecked sailors. When I learned of the tragic fate of the Paris Zoo elephants, I was moved by how their story seemed to resonate with the wartime experiences of Rory and Paddy. It was a link between France and Australia that emerged serendipitously.

Researching a paradoxical world

AC: I was distraught on reading the fate of the elephants—so emblematic of Paris’s inequities: obscene excess at a time of desperate hunger. Which is a roundabout way of leading in to a question about the turbulent, paradoxical world Marie and her mother Noemi lived in: on the one hand, war, revolution, starvation, persecution; on the other, the flourishing of French culture. It’s a daunting historical canvas. How did you go about your research?

KK: It certainly was a paradoxical world and quite the minefield to research. I read numerous accounts of the Franco-Prussian War and the oppression of the Paris Commune and how the rise of Impressionist art cast a veil of light and colour over a chapter of violence and darkness. Louise Michell, the revolutionary leader, was a rich source of inspiration. Her first-hand accounts of the Siege of Paris and the crushing of the Commune richly informed the novel. I discovered other first-hand accounts written by Parisians at the time and a collection of illuminating letters between Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (George Sand) and Gustave Flaubert during the final days of the Commune. Lucy Hooper, an American journalist based in Paris, wrote regular columns on art, culture, and the day-to-day life of Paris in the 1870s. I also read the work of art historians Hollis Clayson, Gabriel P. Weisberg and Jane R. Becker, as well as George Moore’s memoirs of his life as a young art student at the Académie Julian in Paris.

Being there

AC: I know you had the opportunity, during your extensive research, to visit Paris and other places inhabited by your characters. Can you tell us about the experience of ‘being there’ and whether it had an effect on the development of the novel?

KK: Yes, the experience of ‘being there’ was such a privilege. Walking on the same cobbled streets Marie would have walked on during her lifetime and standing in the space where Chloe was painted. Soaking up the vibrant atmosphere of the Passage de Panoramas, the glorious glass-roofed arcade where the Académie Julian was located. One of the most pivotal and inspiring moments was exploring the paths and sepulchres at Montmartre cemetery. The black charring on tombstones evoked the fighting that once took place there, and I was awestruck by the voluminous mausoleums, the realisation that a fugitive could easily have made a home in one. Visiting the Somme region was equally important, especially experiencing, albeit vicariously, the terrible claustrophobia and the sounds and sights of First World War trench warfare at the Musée Somme 1916 in Albert. And, of course, seeing Chloé in all her glory at Young and Jackson’s was an extraordinary moment.

Recuperating the past

AC: Katrina, this is your first novel for adult readers, and your first foray into historical fiction. Do you see yourself continuing to pursue stories of the past?

KK: Yes, I do, absolutely. I am passionate about recuperating women’s stories, especially stories of creative women who have been ignored in the annals of history. It’s exciting to be researching and laying down the bones of my next novel. This story will explore another fascinating and surprising link between Australian and French art history.

Chloé is published by Echo Publishing
Follow Katrina on Facebook or visit her website

Photo credits: author photo J.J. Gately Photography; Katrina and Chloé photo Dave Kell; Jules Joseph Lefebvre photo public domain; Jules Lefebvre in his studio (1882) photo by Émile Bénard, public domain; Barricade de la place Blanche, défendue par des femmes pendant la semaine sanglante (Barricade at place Blanche, defended by women during the bloody week), lithographie, Musée Carnavalet, public domain; soldiers climbing onto the roof of Young and Jackson Hotel, World War 2, photo Robert Bruce Irving, Australian War Memorial Collection AWM065557, public domain; Arrest of Louise Michel in May 1871, Musée d’Art et Histoire du Saint-Denis, public domain; Montmartre Cemetery sepulchre photo by author

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December 31, 2023 · 11:19 am

On this last day of the year…

I’ve read a lot of books this year past—more than in previous years—and if I was into ratings, I’d be scoring nearly all of them very highly indeed. I abandoned only one (and I won’t be naming it or its author here).

It was my great pleasure to interview three authors with new releases on the blog this year—three standout novels that I highly recommend. If you missed them, do please take the time to read these interviews, and I’m sure, as a result, you’ll be adding the books to your list:

Simone Lazaroo, Between Water and the Night Sky

Robyn Cadwallader, The Fire and the Rose

Angela O’Keeffe, The Sitter

I hope to be bringing an interview with a debut WA author in the first months of the new year!

In my last newsletter, I wrote about some of the other fine Australian books I’ve read:

Fiction: Mirandi Riwoe, Sunbirds; Eliza Henry Jones, Salt and Skin; Molly Schmidt, Salt River Road; Jackie Bailey, The Eulogy; Michael Fitzgerald, Late; and Shankari Chadran, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens

Non-fiction: Gemma Nisbet, The Things We Live With (how I loved this beautiful book!); and Laurie Steed, Love, Dad

YA: A.J. Betts, One Song; and Graham Akhurst, Borderland

To which I will add, from my reading earlier in the year, Gail Jones’s award-winning Salonika Burning—one of my favourites for the year and a war novel unlike most others I’ve read.

I took another foray into Irish fiction during the year, with four fabulous novels that gave me much to think about: Louise Kennedy, Trespasses; Jan Carson, The Firestarters; Olivia Fitzsimons, The Quiet Whispers Never Stop; and Nuala O’Connor, Nora.

Other international titles I admired, as a reader and a writer, were Barbara Kingsolver’s epic Demon Copperhead, and the latest from the brilliant Donald Stuart, Young Mungo. Although so culturally and geographically different, I couldn’t help but see parallels between these two grim stories of boyhood/early adolescence and the kind of rough and careless upbringing that is more a matter of surviving than growing up. Something that amazes me about these two novels—testament to the skill of the authors—is that what I remember most about them are the threads of love that wind through the squalor.

I finished the year with two of Australia’s biggest names in fiction—deservedly so—Charlotte Wood and her quiet, contemplative Stone Yard Devotional and Melissa Lucashenko with her broad historical sweep across what is now called Brisbane, Edenglassie. Both are destined for shortlists throughout 2024. Both touched my heart.

∞∞∞

Looking back at my last New Year’s blog, I see I wrote hopefully that 2023 might be a better year than 2022. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be, for me, but I do remain hopeful for 2024.

And wherever you are, I wish you…

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September 11, 2023 · 8:30 am

Talking (new) fiction: Angela O’Keeffe’s The Sitter

I was blown away by Angela O’Keeffe’s Night Blue when I read it last year, and not at all surprised when it went on to be shortlisted for the 2022 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction.

Angela and I met at Varuna last July, where I was working on my current novel and, in the next room, she was finishing the manuscript of her second novel.

And that manuscript has just been published. I loved The Sitter as much as I did Night Blue and was thrilled when Angela agreed to take part in this interview series.

Angela O’Keeffe grew up with nine siblings on a farm in the Lockyer Valley, Queensland. She completed a Master of Arts in Writing at UTS, and her first novel, Night Blue, was shortlisted for the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, as well as the Prime Minister’s Award. She was the recipient of the 2023 Varuna Eleanor Dark Fellowship, and the 2023 UQP Quentin Bryce Award for The Sitter.

Paris, 2020. A writer is confined to her hotel room during the early days of the pandemic, struggling to finish a novel about Hortense Cezanne, wife and sometime muse of the famous painter. Dead for more than a century, Hortense has been reawakened by this creative endeavour, and now shadows the writer through the locked-down city. But Hortense, always subject to the gaze of others, is increasingly intrigued by the woman before her. Who is she and what event hides in her past?

Heartbreaking and perfectly formed, The Sitter explores the tension between artist and subject, and between the stories told about us and the stories we choose to tell.

Art as story

AC: Angela, this is your second novel and the second involving art. Where does this fascination for art come from? Are you an artist yourself? An art historian?

AO: I am neither! But I am asked this a lot. The attraction had to do with the artworks, of course, but also, and perhaps more so, at least initially, it came from the stories that surrounded them. So it was narrative that drew me in. Blue Poles was hated by so many Australians. Why? Hortense Cezanne looks so unhappy in the portraits, and she was disliked by Cezanne’s family and friends. How did she feel about that? But the stories never felt to me to be separated from the artworks. As I wrote, the artworks were an insistent presence.

‘Travelling and speaking through time’

AC: In the present of the narrative, there are only two characters, both of them compelling even though one of them is dead. A writer—at first unnamed—is in a hotel room in Paris, where she is writing a novel about Hortense Cezanne (1850–1922), the wife of French artist Paul Cezanne (1839–1906). Hortense is the other character—ghost, spirit, presence, shadow, figment of the writer’s writerly consciousness? She seems, during the course of the novel, to inhabit some of these nuances, or an indescribable other. I have two questions concerning Hortense. First, could you please talk about the creation of this unique character—what it was that drew you to this woman from history, and your decision to have her enter a contemporary story.

AO: I knew I wanted to write about Hortense when I saw some of the portraits in Paris in 2017. As already mentioned, it was the story surrounding her that drew me in. She was from a working-class family. Cezanne hid her and their son away from his family for many years out of fear of losing his stipend (on which all three survived) from his banker father. Their friends found her shallow. She sat for 29 portraits, and he was a painstakingly slow painter. In the portraits she looks dejected. I knew I wanted to write from her point of view, to explore how she might have seen all this. Bringing her into the present was an attempt to trace, or make visible, the invisibility of art travelling and speaking through time, how art latches onto the present and becomes something it wasn’t before. So I put Hortense and a contemporary writer in a room together in Paris. Could I conjure a situation in which their individual stories might somehow collide? And what might come of such a collision, what new thing might be born? These are the kinds of questions I was asking as I worked. I couldn’t articulate them then as I can now. But on some level I was aware of them through feelings of curiosity and fascination.

‘She would not defend herself’

AC: And my second question about Hortense: I imagine there were many writerly challenges in bringing Hortense to the page so convincingly. I am thinking, for example, of the issue of corporeality and how she manifests her presence in the contemporary character’s world; and also the question of desire—the needs and wants of the departed. Could you please talk about the challenges you faced and how you handled them?

AO: I have this memory of Hortense being really present from the start, that she was such a strong force that she landed quite easily on the page and I didn’t have to think about it. However, that can’t be true, because I also know that I wrote a full draft of the manuscript that I then discarded. Hortense was somehow wrong, or false in it, and I couldn’t use any of it. Then the pandemic came, and it shifted the book’s orientation, and suddenly Hortense came alive. She was just so present, and all I had to do was sort of feel my way along with her. I realised that she was not going to refute the terrible things that had been said about her. She would not defend herself. Instead, she would inhabit those things, and I would see what came of it. I remember feeling huge excitement at this.

Honouring blanks in the canvas

AC: I love the way Hortense, in life always the observed (the model for 29 paintings by Cezanne), becomes the observer in death. Was it your intention to give agency to this woman who appears to have had so little?

AO: Yes, that was one of my intentions, for sure. But I realised quite quickly that I couldn’t—and didn’t want to—make her whole. There are blanks in the canvases and blanks in her history, and I came to see that it was more interesting—for me, for the book—to honour those blanks, to see what an ‘unwhole’ character might do in this situation. The writer, too, is ‘unwhole’ in the story about her own past.

Hidden things

AC: You have devised a graceful way of telling the stories of the two women. The point of view is essentially Hortense’s—as both observer of the writer’s present and the teller of her own memories—but the writer’s point of view is also given voice when, in Part II, a new narrative is introduced, in the form of a letter from the writer to her daughter. Given that the two women are brought together by the writer’s narrative intention to write Hortense’s story, I wondered whether you were ever tempted to include also that developing narrative (aside from the one brief passage in Part I).

AO: Yes, I considered that. In the first attempt I mentioned earlier, there were some of those passages from the book. But there was something off about it. I can’t say what, really. It just didn’t work. And so when I came to write it again, that book is talked about rather than shown. It’s one more thing that is hidden in a novel about hidden things.

Holding two women in a room

AC: The narrative in the present is set in a significant time, March 2020: one year on from the Notre Dame fire in Paris, just after the catastrophic bushfire season in Australia, and the first month of a global pandemic that changed the lives of us all. All of these events are woven into the novel, and Covid plays a major part, in ways I can’t raise because they involve spoilers. But may I ask at what stage of the writing you were in March 2020? That is, did you set the novel then because of what happened and the opportunities it presented, or did you have to rethink a novel already in progress?

AO: As mentioned, I was at the stage where I was starting from scratch again. I had the two characters in a hotel room in Paris. I wanted them to be there for a while, but I couldn’t find a good reason. Was it jet lag? Probably not. And then the pandemic came and not only did I have the reason but the characters, both of them, came alive in new ways. It was such a wonderful thing to discover in that uncertain and terrible time.

Life mirroring art

AC: Did you write some or all of the novel in Paris?

AO: I couldn’t get to Paris because of the closed border. I had been there a couple of times, and I decided that that would be enough. It added to the sense of urgency, in a way. It was a sort of mirroring of the writer’s difficulty in returning home.

The Sitter is published by University of Queensland Press
Follow Angela on X/Twitter, Instagram, Threads (@angelaokeeffewriter)
There are many online reviews; this one by Lisa (ANZLitLovers)

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March 3, 2023 · 9:15 am

Talking (new) fiction: Simone Lazaroo’s Between Water and the Night Sky

The work of three writers most influenced me in the years when I was studying literature and writing, all the while daring to hope I might one day be able to write, myself. Those three writers were Gail Jones, Joan London and my guest today, Simone Lazaroo. You can imagine, then, how delighted I am to have the opportunity to interview Simone here.

Simone migrated to Western Australia from Singapore as a young child. She is an honorary research fellow at Murdoch University, where she taught creative writing for many years, and is part of a Spanish-funded research group.

Since winning the T.A.G. Hungerford Award in 1993, Simone has published six novels, as well as numerous short stories and essays, and has won the WA Premier’s Book Award for Fiction three times. She has also been shortlisted for the prestigious Kiriyama Prize and the Nita B. Kibble Award.

If you are not acquainted with Simone’s work, please do hunt down the brilliant novels that form her backlist: The World Waiting to Be Made, The Australian Fiancé (optioned for film), The Travel Writer, Sustenance and Lost River: Four Albums.

But before you do that, there’s the sixth, her new release, Between Water and the Night Sky…

Elspeth is full of inexpressible longings: to leave behind life in Perth and her beginnings in a small wheatbelt town, and a secret she scarcely comprehends.

Francis wants to fit in—to make a life for himself after migrating from Singapore that is not determined by the colour of his skin or the judgement of others.

Told by their only child, Eva, this is a novel about falling in love, and falling apart—the beautiful, sad story of a shared history that never ends.

Memorialising courage

AC: Simone, Between Water and the Night Sky has been described as auto-fiction, a hybrid genre blending elements of fiction and autobiography. There are many ways a novelist can weave real events and characters, and themselves, into a work of fiction; Donald Stuart, for example, whose novel Shuggie Bain is often classified as auto-fiction, said that it was not autobiographical but inspired by his own experiences. Could you please talk about your choice to write this novel in the way you have, and some of the challenges it posed?

SL: Between Water and the Night Sky began as a couple of short stories that drew on incidents from my parents’ lives, but fictionalised aspects of these (including some elements of plot, setting, characterisation, imagery). But a few years after my mother died, I felt compelled to incorporate extracts from these short stories into a longer story that memorialised aspects of my mother in particular, including her relationship with my father. I focused particularly on my mother’s courage and creativity in the face of considerable struggles she’d experienced. I’d always felt that the way she lived her life showed a kind of heroism often unacknowledged by society. Doubtless many of us know individuals who have shown unacknowledged courage in dealing with the after-effects in their daily lives of traumas they’ve endured, although we sometimes don’t know the precise nature of those traumas.

I also tried in this book to convey many of the social and historical circumstances of my parents’ lives, to give a sense of the era and some of the social and geographical settings in which they lived. For example, partly due to aspects of the White Australia Policy still operating then, marriage between Anglo-Australians and Asians was unusual in the late 1950s, when my parents married, as was migration of Asians into Australia. However, partly because I simply didn’t know certain details of my parents’ lives before and after their marriage, imagination was all I had to fill in the gaps. Also, as the writing of the story progressed, it took on a life of its own. I used various fictional techniques (some of which I’ve alluded to above) to make the story more engaging, and because of issues of privacy.

At the intersection of cultures

AC: Throughout your body of work, you have explored characters at the intersection of cultures. Could you discuss how this plays out in Between Water and the Night Sky?

SL: The marriage of Elspeth and Francis might be considered an embodiment of the intersection of cultures—in this case, Francis’s Singaporean Eurasian culture and Elspeth’s Anglo-Australian culture. And of course, they each experience the upheavals, difficulties and joys of migrating and living in cultures and nations they are unfamiliar with. These kinds of experience can make unusual demands on the individuals involved, and on their relationship with each other. Some of the effects of such experiences upon a bicultural (or perhaps it would be more apt to say multicultural) marriage and family are reflected in this book.

Ways of seeing

AC: A photo’s just a memento of how a person looks at a particular moment…but a person’s life floats across countless moments. Elspeth, p. 164

I love the use of photography as an elemental motif in the narrative. The younger Francis is a keen hobbyist photographer, an interest gifted to daughter Eva, who studies photography at university. It recurs again and again as a metaphor for light and shadow, positive and negative, truth and illusion. I wondered, too, about the relationship between photographs and words in telling the story of a life—whether each complements the other, compensating for the other’s limitations. Was photography always a fundamental part of the story of Francis, Elspeth and Eva?

SL: Yes—photography is in a sense emblematic of how Francis and Eva develop their ways of ‘seeing’ other individuals, particularly during Francis’s courtship of Elspeth and later as Eva sees Elspeth aging. Many of us are familiar with the ways in which family photographs help trigger narratives and understandings about family members.

An enduring kind of love

AC: The relationship between Elspeth and Francis is both incredibly strong and heartbreakingly fragile, and ultimately does not survive—or at least not in the way we expect of a love story. But (and I’m trying not to wander into spoiler territory here) long after finishing the novel I was left thinking about the nature of love, and what endures between people. Did you conceive this work as a love story?

SL: Not while I was in the early stages of writing it. But as the writing progressed, I reflected on some aspects of Elspeth’s and Francis’s relationship with each other in the light of some of the wisdom I believe my parents acquired about their relationship as they aged, and saw that a nonetheless enduring kind of love had developed between my parents, despite the breakup of their marriage. Although my parents didn’t have the conversation that Elspeth and Francis have just before he dies, I wanted to convey something of the growing respect they had for one another as they aged.

Indirect trauma

AC: The great trauma of Elspeth’s infancy, painfully, shockingly, revealed to her late in life, in some ways drives the narrative. Again, I don’t want to give too much of that away. But I have always been interested in the idea that trauma can be passed from one generation to those that follow, and I sense that in this novel. Could you talk about that aspect of the work?

SL: I’m certainly not an expert in these matters. But I’d suggest that while the offspring of a person who has suffered trauma may experience it much less ‘directly’ than that parent, they nonetheless are affected by their parent’s long-term psychological responses to the trauma, which can continue to play out in their daily life decades after the traumatic event—in ways such as depression, anxiety, perhaps difficulty with some kinds of social engagement—even if the parent hasn’t told them about the traumatic event. And it’s possible that offspring who know more directly about their parent’s trauma may feel a heightened sense of responsibility towards their parent, sometimes resulting in the offspring taking on a carer’s role towards the parent at a young age; this can in turn lead to depression and anxiety in the offspring, particularly if they feel powerless to ‘cure’ or make their parent feel ‘better’.

Narrative immediacy

AC: I’ve noticed that while you don’t use it exclusively, you often seem drawn to writing in the first person. What does first-person narration bring to a novel such as this?

SL: As one of my hopes for this novel was that it might help people who’ve suffered similar kinds of trauma feel less alone, I used first person to try and build a sense of more ‘direct’ communication between the writer and reader.

More broadly speaking, I sometimes use first person in my fiction to give a sense of immediacy and direct revelation of the narrator’s thoughts, feelings and experiences—although attentive readers and writers know this isn’t impossible to achieve with third person point of view, too.

When you have to let a title go

AC: Between Water and the Night Sky is a beautiful, evocative title. Was it an ‘always-was’ title or one that took time to emerge?

SL: It took a long time to emerge—partly because I discovered around the middle of last year, while I was working and travelling in Europe, that the title I’d originally chosen for the manuscript-in-progress (almost three years ago) was very similar to the title of someone else’s novel published about two years ago. So en route to various work destinations in Europe, and just as the cover design was being finalised, I had a frantic email correspondence with the exceedingly helpful and patient Georgia Richter of Fremantle Press, in an effort to find another suitable title. Both titles included water, which is central to the novel’s preoccupations with the Indian Ocean and with states of merging, flux, separation and release, in the relationship between Elspeth and Francis, and in her life generally.

Between Water and the Night Sky is published by Fremantle Press
Simone Lazaroo is on Facebook

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October 4, 2022 · 12:23 pm

The short and the short of it

What a year 2022 has been for short stories. I began my reading year with Rashida Murphy’s powerful collection The Bonesetter’s Fee (Spineless Wonders), and since then I’ve had the pleasure of reading another two outstanding collections: Mirandi Riwoe’s The Burnished Sun (UQP) and Fiona Robertson’s If You’re Happy (UQP). I’m now reading (I like to have more than one on the desk!) Andrew Roff’s The Teeth of a Slow Machine (Wakefield Press) and Ben Walter’s What Fear Was (Puncher & Wattmann)—brilliant, both of them.

I’ve also just finished Susan Midalia’s collection of very short stories, appropriately entitled Miniatures (Night Parrot Press). Having experienced a personally challenging few months, I found this volume of more than 100 stories a joy to read: many of them had me laughing out loud—usually having been taken by surprise. One consists of nothing but a title! I’ve often said that Susan is one of the wittiest people I know.

Miniatures also reflects other qualities I associate with the author: empathy, a preoccupation with language and what it can do, and a strong interest in compassionate politics and the environment.

Susan Midalia happens to be the director of the 2022 Australian Short Story Festival, which is being held this year in Western Australia, at the Fremantle Arts Centre, 28–30 October. Among the participants are visitors Fiona Robertson, Andrew Roff and Ben Walter, as well and Rashida Murphy and Susan Midalia, mentioned above, but do take a look at the full list of writers. I’m delighted to be taking part in a session on ‘Writing Fremantle’ with fellow writers Rita Tognini and Josephine Clarke.

The festival is extremely reasonably priced, at $20 per day for Saturday and Sunday. The full program is here.

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September 28, 2022 · 8:47 am

ARA Historical Novel Prize shortlist

I’m thrilled to see that Robyn Mundy’s brilliant novel Cold Coast has made the shortlist of the prestigious ARA Historical Novel Prize. Congratulations to Robyn and to the two other shortlistees, Geraldine Brooks and Tom Keneally.

Also announced, the shortlist for the Children’s/Young Adult category. Congratulations to Brian Falkner, Katrina Nannestad and Claire Saxby.

The winners will be announced on 20 October. More information on the Historical Novel Society Australasia site.

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September 20, 2022 · 10:06 am

Historical novelists longlisted

The longlists for the 2022 ARA Historical Novel Prize, run by the Historical Novel Society Australasia, were announced last week, and I was absolutely thrilled to see several favourite writers listed.

Congratulations to…

Adult category

Children’s/Young Adult category

Thanks to Lisa at ANZ LitLovers for posting the news last week. Lisa has reviewed several of the adult titles.

The shortlists will be announced on 28 September and the winners on 20 October.

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May 6, 2022 · 2:07 pm

WA Premier’s Book Awards shortlists

The State Library of Western Australia has just announced the shortlists for the WA Premier’s Book Awards. Congratulations to everyone!

WA Writer’s Fellowship ($60,000): for a WA writer to progress or develop a project

  • Caitlin Maling—poet
  • David Whish-Wilson—teacher and author
  • John Mateer—poet, writer and curator
  • Julia Lawrinson—children’s and YA author
  • Nandi Chinna—researcher and poet 

Premier’s Prize for an Emerging Writer ($15,000): for a debut work by a WA writer published in 2021

  • Debesa by Cindy Solonec (Magabala Books)
  • Eye of a Rook by Josephine Taylor (Fremantle Press)
  • Homecoming by Elfie Shiosaki (Magabala Books)
  • Locust Summer by David Allan-Petale (Fremantle Press)
  • Vociferate by Emily Sun (Fremantle Press) 

The Premier’s Prize for Writing for Children ($15,000): for a work by a WA writer published in 2021

  • A Glasshouse of Stars by Shirley Marr (Penguin Random House Australia)
  • One Thousand Snapshots by Steve Heron (Shawline Publishing Group)
  • Stellarphant by James Foley (Fremantle Press)
  • Wednesday Weeks and the Tower of Shadows by Cristy Burne and Denis Knight (Hachette Australia)
  • Where do the Stars Go? by Katie Stewart (Fremantle Press) 

The Daisy Utemorrah Award for Unpublished Indigenous Junior and YA ($15,000 and a publishing contract with Magabala Books): open to Indigenous writers across Australia

  • Robert Runs by Mariah Sweetman
  • Jack Trials: Whistling Spider by Sean Owen
  • That one summer by Shirleyann Wilson  

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December 30, 2021 · 7:18 am

Another year of reading…

This year, like the last, has thrown up many things that have taken time away from reading, but I seem to have found more solace in books than ever before. Perhaps that’s attributable to what I’ve chosen to read; perhaps it’s also that I instinctively turn to books when the world around me makes no sense. I’m grateful to all the authors who have allowed me to travel vicariously and who have reminded me that one of the greatest gifts of reading is a fostering of compassion.

A few stats:

  • Books read: 26 (excluding the many read for research)
  • Women authors: 19
  • Australian authors: 21
  • Western Australian authors: 15
  • Indigenous authors: 2 (obvious room for improvement)
  • Debut novels: 7
  • Genres: 18 fiction, 3 non-fiction, 1 hybrid, 1 poetry, 2 YA, 1 junior fiction

I’m never good at choosing one favourite anything, but I will admit to feeling bereft on finishing Donald Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, and it took me ages to recover from it. And Robyn Mundy’s Cold Coast took my breath away—literary historical fiction at its finest. One of the highlights of the year, for me, was the chance to interview Robyn live at Beaufort Street Books in November, her fleeting visit to Perth just squeezing in before the borders between WA and Tasmania closed.

This year I introduced a new series of author interviews, Talking (new) fiction, and featured six new novels that I loved, and loved delving into:

Huge thanks to Jo, Susan, Michael, Zoe, Robyn and John for their time, their goodwill and their thoughtful, often thought-provoking responses.

Next year’s interview list is already in preparation, and the first post ready to go. I’m looking forward to spending time with some exciting new works.

But for now, thanks to you for reading and for all your valued comments. I hope reading has brought you much to think about in 2021, along with an abundance of joy.

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April 23, 2021 · 6:12 pm

Windows into war…

Perth is about to begin a snap three-day Covid lockdown, which means that Anzac Day this Sunday will be our second in lockdown. Services have been cancelled and driveway remembrances encouraged.

As I wrote in a blog last year, I’m always conflicted in my thoughts about Anzac Day. I turn to novels not to resolve those ambivalences but to explore them further—something that good fiction does so well.

Here are five wonderful Australian novels that give us windows into war, encouraging empathy and compassion, and it’s perhaps not surprising that they are all also stories of love…

World War I

Where the Line Breaks by Michael Burrows (Fremantle Press, 2021): my interview with Michael here

Matthew Denton, a starry-eyed Australian completing his PhD in London, is determined to prove that the Unknown Digger—Australia’s answer to England’s Soldier Poets—is none other than war hero Lieutenant Alan Lewis VC of the 10th Light Horse.

Like Lieutenant Lewis, Matthew is in love, and fighting for what he believes in—but the footnotes to Matt’s thesis come to reveal that all is not fair in love and war.

One hundred years and a lifetime’s experience apart, it becomes more and more difficult to say what makes a hero, especially if that hero is supposed to be you.

Traitor by Stephen Daisley (Text, 2011): review by Lisa, ANZLitLovers, here

What would make a soldier betray his country?

In the battle-smoke and chaos of Gallipoli, a young New Zealand soldier helps a Turkish doctor fighting to save a boy’s life. Then a shell bursts nearby; the blast that should have killed them both consigns them instead to the same military hospital.

Mahmoud is a Sufi. A whirling dervish, he says, of the Mevlevi order. He tells David stories. Of arriving in London with a pocketful of dried apricots. Of Majnun, the man mad for love, and of the saint who flew to paradise on a lion skin. You are God, we are all gods, Mahmoud tells David; and a bond grows between them.

A bond so strong that David will betray his country for his friend.

Stephen Daisley’s astonishing debut novel is a story of war and of love—how each changes everything, forever. Traitor is that rarest of things: a work of fiction that will transport the reader, heart and soul, into another realm.

The Wing of Night by Brenda Walker (Penguin, 2006): review in Sydney Morning Herald here

In 1915 a troopship of Light Horsemen sails from Fremantle for the Great War. Two women farewell their men: Elizabeth, with her background of careless wealth, and Bonnie, who is marked by the anxieties of poverty. Neither can predict how the effects of the most brutal fighting at Gallipoli will devastate their lives in the long aftermath of the war.

The Wing of Night is a novel about the strength and failure of faith and memory, about returned soldiers who become exiles in their own country, about how people may become the very opposite of what they imagined themselves to be. Brenda Walker writes with a terrible grandeur of the grime and drudge of the battlefield, and of how neither men nor women can be consoled for the wreckage caused by a foreign war.

World War II

Bodies of Men by Nigel Featherstone (Hachette, 2019): guest 2, 2 and 2 blog here

Egypt, 1941. Only hours after disembarking in Alexandria, William Marsh, an Australian corporal at twenty-one, is face down in the sand, caught in a stoush with the Italian enemy. He is saved by James Kelly, a childhood friend from Sydney and the last person he expected to see. But where William escapes unharmed, not all are so fortunate. William is sent to supervise an army depot in the Western Desert, with a private directive to find an AWOL soldier: James Kelly. When the two are reunited, James is recovering from an accident, hidden away in the home of an unusual family—a family with secrets. Together they will risk it all to find answers. Soon William and James are thrust headlong into territory more dangerous than either could have imagined.

Vietnam War

Seeing the Elephant by Portland Jones (Margaret River Press, 2016): review by Lisa, ANZLitLovers, here

Seeing the Elephant is the poignant story of a remarkable relationship between Frank Stevens, an Australian soldier sent to the Vietnamese Highlands to recruit and train the local hill tribes during the Vietnam War, and his Vietnamese translator, Minh.

The story is told through letters from Frank to his grandfather. Seconded by the CIA, Frank has been sent to the Vietnamese Highlands to recruit and train the local mountain tribes to resist the North Vietnamese. Once Frank returns home the letters document his struggle to cope with life in Australia after the war.

Nearly fifty years later, Minh, now living in Australia and seriously ill, reads through Frank’s letters and remembers the experiences that he shared with Frank, and discovers that even amongst his traumatic memories, there is consolation and joy.

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