![]() And thank you for name-checking Pendulum! That felt very risky, form-wise, and in lots of other ways. People often try to proclaim the novel dead but it’s like some amazing Frankenstein’s monster, loved and sewn back into being out of necessity because each new story demands new science.Ĭatherine: Ah, I love that Wallace Stevens quote, Pip. And the way Brannavan sort of winds up the second-person narrative so tight and then lets it go in You Should Have Come Here When You Were Not Here. It’s in all these books but also in the high-wire machinery Catherine set in motion in The Beat of the Pendulum. I get excited when I see other people do it. I think this reimagining of the form is what I love about the novel. Each story demands a new pressure on the language. It’s like when you do yoga and you inhale then exhale into a new position. I’m in awe of the way Airini does it in Bug Week. It has to be on that stageĪnd I was like, ‘That’s it!’ Like every new idea or scenario or group of people seems to demand something new from the form. Pip: So agree, Catherine!! Last year, someone showed me ‘Of Modern Poetry’ by Wallace Stevens. Every book requires its own particular manual, even if that’s just an idea of the finished text that you keep in your head throughout the writing process. Often I’ve found myself asking my husband: Did I face these same dead ends with the last one? (Yes, dear.) What did I do then? (Swore a lot and stuck some more Post-Its on the wall.) But every book is different and is trying to tell a story in a different way. I think the euphoria of finishing a novel, for me, obliterates the memory of the sheer difficulty of the task, along with the memory of how I came up with solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems. Paula: Is every book a way of figuring out how to successfully write it, even for those of you who have published fiction before?Ĭatherine: Every time I start a new book, I can’t remember how to do it. I was also very interested in exploring female experiences from a variety of angles. What I was trying to do was figure out how to successfully write a short story. I’ve always tinkered with short fiction, but it took me until 2018 to finish the collection that is now Bug Week. I have been really interested in how you’ve talked about this in relation to Sprigs.Īirini: This book is a different genre for me, as I’ve previously published poetry books. Brannavan and I have talked a bit about this. ![]() I feel like this book was the beginning of me ‘re-parenting’ my imagination into ways of writing that are willing to approach certain topics, tough topics, in ways that are perhaps less damaging, that show more of my experience and try not to fall into narratives from the mainstream that re-traumatise. I was raised by ‘tough books’, often written by authors who turned out to be terrible people, and I’ve become really interested in what this meant to the way my imagination was formed. I think I’m a lot more vulnerable in this than my previous writing. I have friends that do Sudoku and crosswords and I think I get the same stimulation out of writing novels. I still feel like I can’t actually write a novel but I’m quite obsessed with the form. ![]() Pip: Nothing to See is a book that feels to me like it sustains an idea in a bigger time and space frame than my other books. ![]() So I found myself thinking harder and being more ruthless in the edit than I’ve ever been before. It was terrifying to write -I’m nervous most of the time when I write -but I knew I could easily get things wrong or contribute nothing to the discourse. That took a lot more effort emotionally and intellectually, and hopefully I do the subject matter justice. It felt like a step onto hallowed ground, and I was aware of a real responsibility to represent that particular place and history as accurately as possibleīrannavan: This book is much bigger than anything I’ve written, both in terms of physical size and scope. In Remote Sympathy, I step inside the fence, as it were, with Buchenwald forming the backdrop. In that earlier novel, the story unfolded in domestic settings and the camps existed only as shadows in the margins. Yet it also feels like new and challenging territory. How is this particular book different for you? What are you doing (or trying to do) in this book that moves you somewhere new as a writer?Ĭatherine: For me, the book marks a return to the same historical period I explored in The Wish Child. Paula: Congratulations on your shortlisting for the big prize in fiction. The writers talked via Google doc in April 2021, with questions from Paula Morris. This year’s finalists for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction are novelist Pip Adam ( Nothing to See ) short story writer Airini Beautrais ( Bug Week): Catherine Chidgey ( Remote Sympathy ) and Brannavan Gnanalingam ( Sprigs ). ![]()
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