Speaker 1: Hello again. It's Ruby Jones and I'm back to introduce
Speaker 1: another episode of Read This Our Sister podcast, hosted by
Speaker 1: editor of The Monthly and bookworm Michael Williams. It features
Speaker 1: conversations with some of the best and most fun loved
Speaker 1: writers from Australia and around the world. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to hear from author Melanie Chang. Before we do,
Speaker 1: Michael is here to share a bit about their conversation.
Speaker 2: Hello Michael, Hi Ruby.
Speaker 1: So Michael, I actually remember when you read Melchang's new
Speaker 1: not Fall the Borrow, because you came into the office
Speaker 1: the very next day and you were very exciting.
Speaker 2: It's true, is it one of those funny things that
Speaker 2: I am very lucky. Don't get me wrong. I am
Speaker 2: lucky to get sent so many books from so many
Speaker 2: brilliant publishers. But this kind of fatigue comes in, Like
Speaker 2: they arrive and they sit on your desk, on your table,
Speaker 2: and you think, oh, oh God, I've got to get
Speaker 2: to that soon. But I've got these five other things
Speaker 2: that are kind of competing for my attention beforehand, and
Speaker 2: I was thrilled to see in your book from Melanie Ching.
Speaker 2: She had two books already a short story collection called
Speaker 2: Australia Day, and her first novel, which was called Room
Speaker 2: for a Stranger. Like I am a fan. I was
Speaker 2: pleased that the book had arrived, but I just had
Speaker 2: too much on my plate. I was like, I'm going
Speaker 2: to get to it when I get to it. The
Speaker 2: new book was called The Burrow, had a nice picture
Speaker 2: of a bunny rabbit on the front, and I was like,
Speaker 2: all right, all in good time, The Burrow. I'll get
Speaker 2: to you when I get to you. But I had
Speaker 2: like five minutes to kill while I was waiting for
Speaker 2: a wash to finish and my washing machine, so I
Speaker 2: just picked it up and perched on the edge of
Speaker 2: my couch and thought, I'm just going to have a
Speaker 2: look at the first page and have a skin And
Speaker 2: then it was like I went into this fugue state.
Speaker 2: Suddenly I looked up and it was dark outside, and
Speaker 2: my washing was sitting in the machine untouched for hours
Speaker 2: on end because I was so transfixed by what I
Speaker 2: found on the page. It was this kind of beautiful,
Speaker 2: tender novel, a story of a family dealing with grief
Speaker 2: during COVID lockdowns, and it was astonishing, and I immediately
Speaker 2: sent a message to Mells publisher and said, I love
Speaker 2: this book. I need to talk to Melanie Ching.
Speaker 1: What a wonderful feeling to be immersed in someone's.
Speaker 2: World like that.
Speaker 1: So, Melanie, she's not only a brilliant writer, she's also
Speaker 1: a doctor. She's a practicing GP. In this episode, you
Speaker 1: discuss with her the power of narrative medicine. So tell
Speaker 1: me a bit about what that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, once I get past my utter incredulity
Speaker 2: at someone being such an overachiever that they're practicing GP
Speaker 2: and an award winning novelist. Once I got that out
Speaker 2: of my system, it was really interesting the ways in
Speaker 2: which that medical practice informs how she writes, informs how
Speaker 2: she sees human beings at their best, at their worst,
Speaker 2: when they're in positions of vulnerability, when they're in positions
Speaker 2: of heightened anxiety. And she introduced me to the idea
Speaker 2: of narrative medicine. And it's a really interesting kind of
Speaker 2: conversation about the ways in which we do justice to
Speaker 2: the stories of people who we have glance in contact
Speaker 2: week in our lives.
Speaker 1: Coming up in just a moment, Melanie Chang, superstitious doctor.
Speaker 2: We began making read this just over a year ago,
Speaker 2: in July of twenty twenty three. It was a little
Speaker 2: over three years after the pandemic had begun, and just
Speaker 2: enough time for people to experience, process and begin reflecting
Speaker 2: on that life altering period of time. We were inundated
Speaker 2: with what can only be described as the COVID novel
Speaker 2: and bya marge, I tended to avoid them, like the plague.
Speaker 2: So why was this book an exception? Well? I do
Speaker 2: have something of a theory about that. See, when she's
Speaker 2: not crafting delicate, richly drawn stories, Melanie cheg as a
Speaker 2: day job, is a practicing GP. I know, talk about overachiever.
Speaker 2: But not only does it mean that as a G
Speaker 2: she spends a lot of her day listening to people
Speaker 2: at the most vulnerable, they're most human. I think perhaps
Speaker 2: it meant that for Melanie Chin, a pandemic and its
Speaker 2: attendant losses and indignities offered a different kind of narrative potential.
Speaker 2: Before I even read my first Colvid novel, I already
Speaker 2: had a sense of fatigue. You know, you go through
Speaker 2: those years and I think we came out the other
Speaker 2: side and we're like, oh my god, this is going
Speaker 2: to be every bit of culture from now on, every
Speaker 2: bit of pop culture whatever. And the Burrough might be
Speaker 2: the first time I've read something where placing it in
Speaker 2: that time and space feels so powerful and so moving
Speaker 2: and so evocative in ways that really enhance the core
Speaker 2: story rather than add to a sense of cultural fatigue.
Speaker 2: And I'm curious about when you knew you wanted this
Speaker 2: to be a kind of lockdown novel.
Speaker 3: Well, I'd had kind of general discussions with you know,
Speaker 3: my agent, even before you know, embarking on writing again,
Speaker 3: and she was telling me, beware the lockdown novel. Publishers
Speaker 3: are not interested in it, and readers don't want.
Speaker 2: To go there.
Speaker 3: So I already had that in my head before i'd
Speaker 3: even kind of had the idea for the Burrow. I
Speaker 3: didn't have that intention initially, of course, but it was
Speaker 3: such a big part of my life as a working
Speaker 3: GP and as a homeschooling mother. And the inspiration, of
Speaker 3: course for the novel came from my own pet, mini
Speaker 3: lock rabbit, which we took in as a lockdown pet,
Speaker 3: as so many other families did not in rabbits necessarily,
Speaker 3: but you know, something small and furry to get us
Speaker 3: through the bleak pandemic, and it just felt right to
Speaker 3: set it in that era, even though I knew that
Speaker 3: it might be a hard cell. I think it is
Speaker 3: a great magnifier the pandemic. I tend to write stories
Speaker 3: set in you know, domestic setting, small homes, because I
Speaker 3: feel there's a lot of drama in it, and it
Speaker 3: just added to the claustrophobia, the fear, and the uncertainty.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it made sense and you know, on some level,
Speaker 3: and this is something that I've realized later it wasn't
Speaker 3: part of my intention, but I think it is important
Speaker 3: that we document that time because while we don't want
Speaker 3: to revisit it now, because we have this kind of
Speaker 3: almost collective PTSD about it, myself included, I think that
Speaker 3: in decades in the future, we will have forgotten what
Speaker 3: it was actually like on a day to day basis,
Speaker 3: and future generations might also want to know what it
Speaker 3: was like. I mean, we often think we'll remember, but
Speaker 3: you know, as time and time again will show us
Speaker 3: we to be forget.
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the things that shocked me,
Speaker 2: and most of all, I remember moments during lockdown, thinking
Speaker 2: this will change everything forever, you know, like we're not
Speaker 2: going back, this is going to fundamentally change the way
Speaker 2: we are as a society, the way we relate to
Speaker 2: each other. And the speed with which we reverted to
Speaker 2: type with which we tried to just pretend it hadn't happened,
Speaker 2: was like the entire project of global capitalism was just like,
Speaker 2: oh no, I'm asserting myself again. I'm not remotely interested
Speaker 2: in thinking about the ways we relate to one another,
Speaker 2: the ways we commute, the ways we work, all of
Speaker 2: that stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very much, sir. I think that is the power
Speaker 3: of denial. I think a lot of us had that
Speaker 3: feeling early on in the pandemic that you know, there
Speaker 3: was almost a little bit of relief in stopping and
Speaker 3: pausing and you know, reconnecting with our family. Initially, there
Speaker 3: was some joy in doing that, and then of course
Speaker 3: two years down the track.
Speaker 2: I mean, you said your homeschooled a child, So anyone
Speaker 2: who homeschooled their child had a limited capacity to see
Speaker 2: the romance exactly, but at a thematic level, at a
Speaker 2: creative level, in the context of this book, the ways
Speaker 2: in which, as you say, has this kind of magnifying
Speaker 2: or heightening effect on a whole lot of themes and
Speaker 2: ideas that are incredibly resonant, regardless of pandemic or not.
Speaker 2: You know, around isolation, around intimacy, around both that combination
Speaker 2: of claustrophobia and loneliness that can happen in families. You know,
Speaker 2: the ways in which those things play out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean even that denial is something that
Speaker 3: this family who are ravaged by grief are also in
Speaker 3: the film of denial and they haven't yet moved on,
Speaker 3: and so so that also resonates, you know, with the
Speaker 3: smaller story of the book set within this larger pandemic theme,
Speaker 3: and working as a health professional, you know, there was
Speaker 3: a great deal of fear and uncertainty and that I
Speaker 3: felt was reflected in this creature, which was a prey animal.
Speaker 3: And I think it was very important that the pet
Speaker 3: was a prey animal. It's so different from a dog
Speaker 3: or a cat, which you know, we don't tend to
Speaker 3: think of as predators, but of course they are, and
Speaker 3: so they are allowed to relax in a way that
Speaker 3: you know, it was quite striking to me as the
Speaker 3: pet owner of a rabbit. I hadn't ever spent much
Speaker 3: time with rabbits before. How we would come across each
Speaker 3: other and he would bolt, and you know, he was
Speaker 3: always alert. He doesn't even sleep with his eyes closed,
Speaker 3: and he only ever sleeps very short interludes. And you know,
Speaker 3: that was a little bit like me during the pandemic.
Speaker 3: I didn't sleep for very long. I was in this
Speaker 3: heightened state of anxiety and awareness, and to have that
Speaker 3: mirrored in this animal was really interesting to me, and
Speaker 3: I did think this is something I'd like to explore.
Speaker 2: His name was Minnie.
Speaker 3: His name's Miles, named after by my son, after Miles Morales.
Speaker 2: I don't want to move away from Miles just yet,
Speaker 2: because I'm curious about the wise in which different kinds
Speaker 2: of pet ownership do change es. You know they do.
Speaker 2: Are you in a pet person pre Miles?
Speaker 3: Well, no, a bit like Jin, the character in the book.
Speaker 3: You know, I grew up in Hong Kong and apartments,
Speaker 3: and so we felt it was a little bit cruel
Speaker 3: to have pets. But I've always been quite fascinated with
Speaker 3: pet ownership. I've also kind of had some difficulties to
Speaker 3: reconcile with.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: For instance, when we got Miles and adopted him, we
Speaker 3: were taking him away from his mom and his siblings,
Speaker 3: and I don't know how I completely felt about that,
Speaker 3: And he's a lone pet and so it did feel
Speaker 3: like somewhat a selfish kind of act in some ways.
Speaker 3: And like rabbits are very interesting, and I think I
Speaker 3: convey this in the book that you know, they don't
Speaker 3: give you much, but when they do give you something,
Speaker 3: it's quite a you know, a bit of a dopamine kick.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, hard to get lover or something.
Speaker 3: You know, like it's the pursuit of it that we love.
Speaker 3: But the other thing about I mean, I mentioned the
Speaker 3: prey animal side of things, but there was also this
Speaker 3: feeling that there was this unknowable quality two miles for me.
Speaker 3: You know, we're always joking that he's giving us the
Speaker 3: bombastic side eye. We don't really know what he's thinking
Speaker 3: or what he's feeling. I mean that rabbits do this
Speaker 3: glorious thing called a binkie, which is a little leap
Speaker 3: in the air, and halfway through they kind of twist,
Speaker 3: and once you've seen it, it's really delightful, and that
Speaker 3: is when you know they're happy. But that is very
Speaker 3: few and far between, so in between times we're really
Speaker 3: left guessing and again in terms of the themes of
Speaker 3: the novel, that tied in quite beautifully. I think because
Speaker 3: we've got these four characters living in the house, they're
Speaker 3: not really talking about the real issues with each other.
Speaker 3: They're kind of trying to interpret each other's behaviors and movements.
Speaker 3: There's this intense unknowable quality between them. So I love
Speaker 3: that we might think that, you know, human beings are
Speaker 3: more accessible to each other than animals are to humans,
Speaker 3: but there is a core in all of us which
Speaker 3: is unknowable.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And particularly as the book lays out, particularly
Speaker 2: in crisis, there is a thing about grief and a
Speaker 2: family or any unit of people struck by a tragedy
Speaker 2: where everyone's affected differently and everyone's having to cope in
Speaker 2: different ways. That can mean closing off to one another.
Speaker 3: Yes, very much so. I mean the issue here was
Speaker 3: the circumstances of the death is accidental, unexpected, and so
Speaker 3: many of us go through life with the delusion that
Speaker 3: tomorrow will be like yesterday, or next week will be
Speaker 3: largely like you know, this week, And we have to
Speaker 3: to some degree believe that, because why would we continue
Speaker 3: doing half the things we're doing But for those people
Speaker 3: and you know, I've had first hand experience dealing with
Speaker 3: families through my work or friends that have gone through
Speaker 3: that kind of sudden, unexpected, accidental death, and it is rocking.
Speaker 3: I remember a friend of mine saying she didn't trust
Speaker 3: the universe anymore. And so they also are not, as
Speaker 3: I discussed in the book, a religious family and a
Speaker 3: family of faith. They are very much a kind of
Speaker 3: family based in science, belief, and cause and effect. And
Speaker 3: so when an accident happens, what they tend to do
Speaker 3: in the aftermath, at least family and gene, is to
Speaker 3: look back and think, what could I have done differently?
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of shame in that, a lot
Speaker 3: of guilt in that, and that is what they're brewing
Speaker 3: in in these years after the loss, their own guilt,
Speaker 3: and they don't want to disclose it for fear of
Speaker 3: what that might mean.
Speaker 2: And also the difficulty of responsibility to others like that
Speaker 2: sheer impossibility of being a parent while grappling with your
Speaker 2: own shame, guilt, grief. You know, that thing about the
Speaker 2: need to have that kind of care for others and
Speaker 2: to be there for others and to be reliable to others.
Speaker 2: That absolutely stifles your character's capacity, but human beings capacity
Speaker 2: to go through their own process of grieving.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we see, you know, for instance, Jin revert
Speaker 3: to some of this what I call magical thinking that
Speaker 3: he had as as a child, like superstitious thinking that
Speaker 3: if you do this, you somehow have some control over
Speaker 3: the future. And similarly, you know, Lucy does retreat to
Speaker 3: prayer and Amy gets quite angry about that. And I think,
Speaker 3: you know, that was important to me because I've always
Speaker 3: felt a little bit envious of people of faith and
Speaker 3: people of religion, because if you believe in cause and
Speaker 3: effect and you're very scientific, then it comes with this
Speaker 3: huge burden of responsibility as well, because you then the
Speaker 3: implications are that every behavior, every action has untold or
Speaker 3: unforeseen consequences, and that really comes into play when an
Speaker 3: accident happens. And that's a huge burden really to bear,
Speaker 3: and that's what we're seeing in this family. And so
Speaker 3: in order to try and alleviate themselves of that, they
Speaker 3: start to look to prayer or they look to more
Speaker 3: superstitious thinking. And I think we all do that on
Speaker 3: some level. There's a huge contradiction even in myself and
Speaker 3: a lot of the ways I behave.
Speaker 2: Are you superstitious? Yes, I would say so.
Speaker 3: I'm admitting it now. I might not have I hadn't
Speaker 3: read of them, because who wants a superstitious doctor?
Speaker 2: Right? But I think I do. What a superstitious doctor?
Speaker 2: What a doctor? That's like, well, you've done everything right,
Speaker 2: but now I'm going to tap this three times? They
Speaker 2: kind of walk around the building or whatever. I'm okay
Speaker 2: with that.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well that's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well I think you know, as a child, I was
Speaker 3: quite superstitious. And you know, you could argue that a
Speaker 3: lot of the things that we do attached to faith
Speaker 3: are a kind of form of superstition or a type
Speaker 3: of way of regaining control over the uncontrollable. And so
Speaker 3: so yeah, that's what I was trying to achieve.
Speaker 2: After the break, Melanie shares the details of her own
Speaker 2: life that inspired the Burrow And have you ever heard
Speaker 2: of narrative medicine? I hadn't, but it's crucial for understanding
Speaker 2: this book. We'll be right back. Grandmother's are a recurring
Speaker 2: thing in your work. Generally, you're clearly interested in grandmother's
Speaker 2: as narrative engines and as a particular type of human being.
Speaker 2: What is it about.
Speaker 3: Grandma's Well, I only had one grandmother growing up, so
Speaker 3: my mother's mother died when she was very young, four
Speaker 3: years of age, and I think that had its own
Speaker 3: impact on me and maybe even plays into this book.
Speaker 3: But my other grandmother was my Chinese grandmother, who I
Speaker 3: was actually named after, so my Chinese name, so Lynn,
Speaker 3: is actually her name. But I could not communicate with
Speaker 3: her because I don't speak Chinese and she didn't speak English,
Speaker 3: and so it was a lot of mystery associated with
Speaker 3: our relationship. And I wrote about that in a short
Speaker 3: story included in my collection Australia Day. And Now, of
Speaker 3: course I have my own children and they have two grandmothers,
Speaker 3: and I think it's quite a unique and special relationship there.
Speaker 3: Even in the book about the distance of the generation
Speaker 3: allowing something quite fresh and new, it's very different from parenting. Now,
Speaker 3: even having friends that are embarking on that relationship with
Speaker 3: their own grandchildren, they talk about, you know, how magical
Speaker 3: it is, how often healing it is, because it's kind
Speaker 3: of all of the fun stuff about parenting without as
Speaker 3: much of the day to day tedium of it.
Speaker 2: That distance and closeness locked up together is such an
Speaker 2: important part of it. And it does strike me that
Speaker 2: grandparents in migrant families there's a particularly interesting thing at play,
Speaker 2: which is the kind of gulf in lived experience. So
Speaker 2: those challenges of communication, of kind of sharing a worldview
Speaker 2: or reality are kind of heightened by both generational divide
Speaker 2: and then place of living, geographical context, all of that stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very much so. And so we didn't mention the
Speaker 3: Lucy's other pair of grandparents who are exactly that, you know,
Speaker 3: they're Jin's parents, and there is this huge kind of
Speaker 3: gulf between them. They do speak English, but kind of
Speaker 3: haltingly and culturally they're quite separated. And in the book
Speaker 3: we talk about the gifts that they buy not being
Speaker 3: you know, so welcomed by Lucy because they're often either
Speaker 3: judged to be too simple for her, or the clothes
Speaker 3: are too big because they're trying to get a lot
Speaker 3: of wear out of them, and Jin, you know, expresses
Speaker 3: some jealousy about how Lucy has a closer relationship with Pauline,
Speaker 3: who Amy's mother in the book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Pauline is such a wonderful character. I do love her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2: You mentioned before your debut was a book of short
Speaker 2: stories called Australia Day. But I'm curious, since then, you've
Speaker 2: written two novels and they are both beautiful in many ways.
Speaker 2: I would say, delicate novels that take the kind of
Speaker 2: energy of a really wonderful short story and work out
Speaker 2: how to render it deeper and more complex. I'm curious
Speaker 2: about whether that's a deliberate trajectory. Have you moved away
Speaker 2: from the short story or are these boundaries fluid?
Speaker 3: I think you know, when I started writing, I mistakenly
Speaker 3: thought short stories were easier to write, which, of course,
Speaker 3: as anyone who writes short stories, it's not true. They're
Speaker 3: different from the point of view of time, though they
Speaker 3: are easier to complete, and so that was good for
Speaker 3: me when I had another job. But I came to
Speaker 3: love the form. And the reason I love the form
Speaker 3: is sometimes the same reasons that people find short stories difficult,
Speaker 3: which is that they demand more of the reader. They
Speaker 3: expect the reader to rise up to the challenge, fill
Speaker 3: in a lot of gaps with their own imagination, and
Speaker 3: so that's hard if you're used to reading novels where
Speaker 3: everything is tied up really neatly. But once you kind
Speaker 3: of get hooked on that then you present reading novels
Speaker 3: that tell you everything because you like to be respected
Speaker 3: as a reader and so and I enjoy that, and
Speaker 3: so I think i've I have taken that forward into
Speaker 3: writing longer form. And I don't write very long forms.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: My two books are short novels. But that's because I'm
Speaker 3: just a ruthless editor. And that is what happened with
Speaker 3: my apprenticeship through short story writing. And I love the
Speaker 3: quote from Toni Morrison that it's often what you don't
Speaker 3: write that gives what you do write its power. And
Speaker 3: I do a narrative medicine course at Melbourne Union and
Speaker 3: a student there recently talked about the negative spaces and
Speaker 3: short stories, which I really love as well. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I've brought that across to the novels and I think
Speaker 3: that's how I'm going to practice going forward.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about the relationship for you between medicine
Speaker 2: and writing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I find them to be quite complimentary, and I
Speaker 3: think that maybe to do with me practicing in general
Speaker 3: practice rather than maybe surgery per se. But every day
Speaker 3: when I go to work and I sit down and
Speaker 3: I call someone into the room, the first thing that
Speaker 3: happens is that they tell me a story, the story
Speaker 3: of their illness. And a great supervisor I had in
Speaker 3: general practice a long time ago told me, look, just
Speaker 3: spend some moments one day when you're not working, sitting
Speaker 3: in a medical waiting room, and just imagine what those
Speaker 3: people are doing as they sit there. They are practicing
Speaker 3: what they're going to say when they sit in the chair.
Speaker 3: And of course that's true, and I've done it myself
Speaker 3: when I go to a GP practice. So words are
Speaker 3: really important. So they tell us. And that's what narrative
Speaker 3: medicine is about. It's about the patient's story meeting the
Speaker 3: doctor's story and creating something entirely new. But yeah, I've
Speaker 3: always found it to be, you know, an inspiration. I
Speaker 3: don't write about specific patients, you know, I write in
Speaker 3: the fictional space, but of course I draw on the
Speaker 3: insights that I gain. You know, I don't live an
Speaker 3: extraordinarily interesting life, but through my work I get to
Speaker 3: see into a lot of different lives and different experiences.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I've always brought that into my writing. It's
Speaker 3: been a privilege, but of a great source of inspiration
Speaker 3: for the writing.
Speaker 2: Well, it seems to me that you're on a daily basis,
Speaker 2: seeing people at their most tender and the most vulnerable.
Speaker 2: You know, the people who are scared, people who are anxious,
Speaker 2: people who are you in pain, and that must give
Speaker 2: a particular impression of the human condition.
Speaker 3: I guess yes, And I have to remind myself sometimes
Speaker 3: that you know, the people that are presenting to general
Speaker 3: practice are not the wider population in general. That is,
Speaker 3: when they're at their most vulnerable or unwell. But I've
Speaker 3: also had the experience where people tell me things that
Speaker 3: they said they've never told anyone else. So as a writer,
Speaker 3: that is wonderful because most of all, it's validating because
Speaker 3: I think there have been things that I've thought, or
Speaker 3: dark thoughts that I've had that then I see reflected
Speaker 3: in patients and I realize that's quite common and normal,
Speaker 3: and I can reassure them also through that process.
Speaker 2: What do you want for characters like the characters in
Speaker 2: the Burrows when you're writing, what's the relationship there?
Speaker 3: I think I am interested in complexity. I really am
Speaker 3: not interested in heroes and villains in good and bad people,
Speaker 3: because I have seen people through work who have done
Speaker 3: awful things, but I've seen them as a person and
Speaker 3: I've seen them in a vulnerable state, and it's hard
Speaker 3: to hate that person, and it's hard to reduce them
Speaker 3: to this awful act that they've done. It's actually scary.
Speaker 3: And maybe that's why people like to keep these hero
Speaker 3: villain categories, because once you start to see the human
Speaker 3: element of these awful acts, then it's confronting for you
Speaker 3: as a fellow human being in that maybe you would
Speaker 3: be capable of doing some of these, you know, terrible things.
Speaker 2: Also, it's a weird thing that desire for empathy when
Speaker 2: we read that desire to feel like, as you say,
Speaker 2: there's a hero we can cheer for, or we can
Speaker 2: feel a little less shabby or lost ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I kind of like reading vulnerable characters because again,
Speaker 3: it makes me feel less alone in my vulnerability. So
Speaker 3: that's the impulse.
Speaker 2: One of the things that comes through again again is
Speaker 2: that the nature of grief is it can be so inarticulate,
Speaker 2: you know, it can be so the impossibility of finding
Speaker 2: words that are kind of sufficient for it. And our
Speaker 2: relationship with animals relies on a kind of inarticulate relationship,
Speaker 2: a kind of trust and I love, and then a
Speaker 2: family relies on an ability to understand one another or
Speaker 2: to talk to one another. And so part of what
Speaker 2: I love so much about The Barrows is that comes
Speaker 2: in at the intersection of all those ideas, that there
Speaker 2: are some things that are impossible to put to words,
Speaker 2: but there is a fundamental need to find a way
Speaker 2: to do so when you're a family unit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think, without giving too much away of
Speaker 3: the in the book, you know, ultimately the family finds
Speaker 3: salvation in opening up and actually saying those difficult words
Speaker 3: to each other and actually articulating the guilt that they're
Speaker 3: all nursing around what happened. And that's another thing I
Speaker 3: think that I've learned through speaking to so many pages
Speaker 3: through genero practice, is that so much of tragedy is
Speaker 3: actually in the unspoken. You know, I might see various
Speaker 3: family members from the same family and you just wish
Speaker 3: that they would talk to one another. And another thing
Speaker 3: I think I've learned is that intimacy comes from being
Speaker 3: emotionally vulnerable with each other. It's scary to make the
Speaker 3: first step, especially because you don't know, I mean, making
Speaker 3: yourself vulnerable is always scary, and you don't know how
Speaker 3: the other person's going to react. But when an accident
Speaker 3: like this looms so large over a household, like for
Speaker 3: the Lee family, their healing can only really come once
Speaker 3: they let it all out in the open.
Speaker 2: I think I don't think it constitutes a spoiler to
Speaker 2: tell your prospective readers that they don't have to be
Speaker 2: scared of this book. This is a book that is
Speaker 2: very much about love and tenderness and about kind of
Speaker 2: finding a way to one another through an impossible situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'm recently read in the introduction to George
Speaker 3: Saunders tenth of December, an interview with him where he
Speaker 3: talks about being on a flight from Chicago to Syracuse
Speaker 3: and it was a terrible flight. They flew into a
Speaker 3: flock of geese and for a moment they all believed
Speaker 3: that they would die. And George Saunders talks about for
Speaker 3: the three or four days after that that the world
Speaker 3: was the most beautiful place. Everything was suddenly imbued with
Speaker 3: this meaning, and he talks about that being the trick
Speaker 3: that if we could just maintain that, you know, that sense.
Speaker 3: But it only lasted three to four days, even for
Speaker 3: George Saunder's you see, So if there can be any
Speaker 3: silver lining to this kind of awful tragedy that happens
Speaker 3: to a family like that in the Burrow. It is that,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe it can bring that kind of meaning,
Speaker 3: gratitude you don't take things for granted.
Speaker 2: Well, the other comfort that comes out of it is
Speaker 2: if stories like that can create wonderful and enduring works
Speaker 2: of literature. And I have no doubt that's what's happened here.
Speaker 2: And I'm so excited for people to get to read
Speaker 2: this astonishing and beautiful book. Thank you for coming in.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Michael, it means so much. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Melanie Ching's beautiful novel The Burrow is available at all
Speaker 2: Good bookstores now.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to another special episode
Speaker 1: of Read This. Join us each Sunday to hear our
Speaker 1: favorite interviews from the show. Listen out for upcoming conversations
Speaker 1: with Robbie Arnott and Nardi Simpson. And if you don't
Speaker 1: want to wait until next Sunday to dive in to
Speaker 1: read this, you can search for it wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts.