WEBVTT - Read This: Evie Wyld Is Having More Fun Than You Think 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:03.520 Hey there, it's me Ruby Jones. All week we're sharing 0:00:03.560 --> 0:00:07.080 our favorite episodes from our sister podcast, Read This. It's 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:09.959 the show where the editor of the monthly, Michael Williams, 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:13.520 talks to some of the best and most respected writers 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:18.480 from Australia and beyond. Today we're hearing from award winning 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:25.919 Australian author Evie Wilde. Michael Williams is here with me now, Hello, Michael. 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:29.680 Oh, Hi there, Ruby Jones. Hi Michael. 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:34.000 So, Evie Wilde's novels they're known to be quite dark. 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:38.160 Aren't they. Yeah, there is definitely a kind of recurring 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:44.040 thread in Evie's novels about intergenerational trauma, about grief, about secrets, 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:47.920 and about pain. They are trauma informed novels and that's 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:51.240 part of why she's built this loyal following. But Evie 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:53.960 is also incredibly smart and very funny. 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:54.280 You know. 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:58.560 The books are still kind of joyous celebrations of human 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:01.200 connection one way or the other, even when they do 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:04.640 have somewhat dark themes. And her new book, The Echoes 0:01:04.880 --> 0:01:08.680 straddles that kind of divide really well. In part looks 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:12.360 at questions of nostalgia of the things that we remember 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:16.160 and romanticize from our past and wear that intersects with 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:19.360 trauma and unspoken things. But it's a quirkier book than 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:19.880 that too. 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:22.000 It's a ghost story, isn't it. 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:25.319 The echoes it is. It's a kind of love story. 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:28.000 But one of the main characters is already dead and 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:30.520 I don't mean that. And and Patrick Swayze they sit around 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:33.000 a potting wheel. Sense, but you're going to hear in 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:36.680 the story Evie thinks says something very interesting about ghost stories, 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:39.679 and we end up having what is I think, quite 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:43.640 a lively and fun conversation about some pretty dark themes. 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:47.440 She even has her own story about a haunted house 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:49.120 that she and her husband lived in when they had 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:53.320 a newborn baby. Oh yeah, it's great. I mean, I 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:55.600 do put forward the theory that all babies are haunted, 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:58.400 and she doesn't disagree with that. So there's a lot 0:01:58.440 --> 0:01:59.960 in this episode. It's a heaps of fun. 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:06.360 Can't wait to listen, Michael, thank you so much. Coming 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:09.760 up in just a moment, Evie Wilde is having more fun. 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:10.399 Than you think. 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:20.240 In a sense. Stories about intergenerational trauma and grief, novels 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:27.400 about history, artistic representations of colonialism, and dispossession. Always ghost stories. 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:30.560 They are a form of literature that's inevitably haunted by 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:33.480 what has come before, a way that we might reckon 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:37.200 with loss and silences and all of That's true of 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:40.480 what Evie Wilde is doing in The Echoes. But this 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:43.040 book is a ghost story in a far more literal 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:46.920 sense too. Max and Hannah's relationship, but the heart of 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:49.480 the book is in many ways typical of a couple 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:53.600 in their late thirties, debates around marriage and children, niggling 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:58.840 doubts and anxieties, tensions they can't talk about. But Max 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:03.280 is dead, he says, I do not believe in ghosts, which, 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:07.320 since my death, has become something of a problem. What 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:09.880 follows is a novel not just about how difficult it 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:12.640 is to ever truly know someone, but about what it 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:16.040 means to try to hide from your past. And for 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:20.520 Evie Wilde, thinking about her own past begins inevitably with 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:21.800 thinking about Australia. 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:26.200 When I was a kid, I was just like I 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:30.520 am Australian, and I would affect a bad accent. But 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:34.520 obviously you can tell from talking to me. I live 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:36.880 in London. I was born in London. A lot of 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:41.440 my bios seem to say was born in Australia but 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:43.520 lives in London, And I think that's just because it's 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:48.480 just easier for people to understand I am technically half Australian. 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:52.120 My mum came over when she was twenty one. She 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:57.080 lived in a pie shop in Paramatta, and she came 0:03:57.120 --> 0:04:01.560 over in quite an unusual way, went traveling. She's very 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:04.880 working class, and she met my father, who was very 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:09.480 very British and couldn't deal with Australia at all, got 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:13.760 absolutely slated whenever he went over there, and very burnt 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:17.000 and bitten, and so there was never any possibility really 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:20.640 of us moving over there. And I think what I 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:23.200 picked up on as a kid was, you know, apart 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:27.400 from the beauty of Australia where my family subsequently moved to, 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:30.279 which is a sugarcane farm in northern New South Wales, 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:33.320 like the freedom of that place and the smell and 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:36.760 the birds and all of that stuff. That was something 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:41.240 that I thought about constantly as a child, and I 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:44.560 dreamt about it so much so that when I was there, 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:47.040 I would be really panicked that I was just having 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:47.479 a dream. 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:48.480 I was going to wake up. 0:04:48.880 --> 0:04:51.839 And I think that comes from my mum's homesickness, you know, 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:55.599 really seeing her in a park in London, find a 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:58.360 gum tree and just like scrunch up the leaves and 0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:02.360 really inhale it for me that you know, that kind 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:04.880 of got passed on and you know when she came 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:08.400 over it was it was a thirty six hour flight, 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.479 and you know, the idea of doing that more than 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:15.440 once every two years, and the expense and all of 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:19.400 that stuff, and also you know, she didn't have a landline. 0:05:19.720 --> 0:05:23.840 I think just being cut off from your family in 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:26.479 such a way when you're so young, it kind of 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.960 really built up this quite heavy homesickness that I kind 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:35.440 of inherited. As for like, do I feel more or less, 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:39.520 I don't know. I lived in Australia in my twenties 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:44.320 in Sydney, and I think by that point I was 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:49.279 kind of I mean, I was really feckless. I ended 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:52.440 up living in a flat share with some people from 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:54.840 Portsmouth in the UK because that was the only place 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:57.640 I could find and it was on BONDI and it 0:05:57.680 --> 0:06:01.279 was all really just embarrassing. And I got a job 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:03.680 working for the Red Cross, like going door to door 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:06.120 in the suburbs and I got a dollar every time 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:09.680 somebody bought something of it was completely hopeless, and I'm 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:13.960 sure that added to my feeling of you know, maybe 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:16.960 this isn't my home, but yeah, it just I didn't 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:20.200 have any direction and I didn't feel the roots that 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.440 I wanted to feel. And I think that is that's 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:26.719 part of being from two places that when I'm here 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:29.720 in London, I really I yearn for Australia. 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:31.680 But it's the same the other way around. 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:35.880 What's the relationship between that part of your identity and 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:38.960 your imaginative, creative self. 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:43.160 I think, apart from my last book, The Best Rock, 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:46.960 I think all of my books have started from a daydreaming, 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:48.599 like a sort of nostalgia. 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:51.840 It's easier for me to. 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:54.760 Write about place I'm not in and to kind of 0:06:55.839 --> 0:07:00.680 in sort of April in London think myself into December 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:04.240 in New South Wales. I think that is like it's 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:07.480 like a yearning and it's kind of the collection of 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:11.160 all of those family stories that I was listening to 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:11.480 when I. 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:11.920 Was a kid. 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:15.040 There is a deep nostalgia for me and my favorite 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:17.680 thing to do is like go through the photo albums 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:20.960 of just snapshots of you know, when we were kids, 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:24.480 and they're all grainy and everyone's covered in zinc, and 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:28.000 it just you can smell it and you can hear it, 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:32.200 Like whenever I hear a butcher bird or a magpie, 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:37.840 it's like instant transportation. Or the Pakistani mangoes are in 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:40.760 season at the minute, and just like I go down 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:43.240 to our local shop and walk back just smelling one 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:43.960 like a lunatic. 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:49.520 So yeah, I love the fact identify that one of 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:53.560 the kernels of your books is nostalgia as a starting point. 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:57.320 How does the line go so swiftly from nostalgia to 0:07:57.400 --> 0:07:59.320 trauma just out of curiosity? 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:05.920 I think everyone's got both in them. I mean, I'm 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:09.920 a big horror fan. That's probably what's going on. I 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:15.160 think every beautiful setting is vastly improved by a monster 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:22.360 or a ghost. So I think for English people in particular, 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:26.640 Australia does hold like some of the last monsters, you know, 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:30.080 like that, whether it's snakes or spiders or sharks. 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:32.120 I think there's stuff. 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:37.120 That when you're in England, being English, you feel very 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:40.360 very afraid of, and actually when you're in Australia you 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:42.520 forget about it and you go swimming in the river 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:44.800 and it's all fine, but well, most of the time 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:48.600 it's fine, but yeah, I think my family live on 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:54.400 a river that has sharks in and it floods every 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:56.400 now and then, and so that the house is up 0:08:56.440 --> 0:09:00.960 on stilts, and I think just the concept of sharks 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:05.760 underneath your house is like such a beautiful, horrific thing. 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:08.280 And I find there are so many of those things 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:09.719 available in Australia. 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:16.600 While intergenerational trauma and echoes of the past themes that 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:20.360 run through all of your work, this is perhaps the 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:24.440 one that most explicitly, most overtly ties some of those 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:27.480 ideas to the colonial experience in Australia. And I'm curious 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:31.360 about whether there was an anxiety about going down the 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:34.040 barrel of that big, tricky conversation. 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:39.600 Yes, it's a huge anxiety, and I think, you know, 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:43.360 by this point in my career, I feel like when 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:46.280 you're anxious about something, you kind of have to head 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:49.600 towards it a bit. My main anxiety about it is 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:52.800 I'm not articulate on it, but I think that was 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:56.480 the point that I started from, and then I realized 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:59.120 that one of the big problems is we're not articulate 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:05.079 about it because woods cannot express what happened and what 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:09.520 the English have done. So like, there was definitely a 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:13.040 stage in the writing of The Echoes where one of 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:16.600 my editors was like really anxious about it, and she 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:18.840 was like, Oh, should we just take out all of 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:22.960 the stuff about the Indigenous school for girls and and 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:25.120 you know, should we just play it safe? And I 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:28.080 felt like there was a real moment of like a 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:30.400 part of me really wanted to do that, but I 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:35.840 think it is really important to fumble your way through 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:40.040 to some kind of acknowledgment of what went on and 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:44.520 the you know, talking about inherited trauma, like certainly not 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:48.360 the biggest trauma of what happened, but the experience of 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:53.439 being a white Australian and having whatever your ancestors did 0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:57.400 in the past is you know, that's really really heavy, 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:03.200 and I feel like it's important to scramble around and 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:07.920 try and find words or images or something that express 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:11.600 that feeling of just like horror and. 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:14.280 It is you know, I think the best novels, the 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:18.920 most powerful novels, grapple with that question about how to 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:22.920 depict something that goes beyond what can be articulated. I 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:26.040 mean I remember the I think it was Nick Hornby's 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:29.719 review of Saturday by Ian McEwen, where he went to 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:32.760 town on that novel because he said, odd's a cop 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:34.960 out from McEwen, because all the characters are poets and 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:39.680 brain surgeons and expressly kind of engineered to be able 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.600 to articulate their every thought and their every emotion, and 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:48.040 a true novelist doesn't make that easy for their characters. 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:51.319 They depict them without them having the power to articulate it. 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:52.800 Yeah. 0:11:52.880 --> 0:11:55.200 I think that's a good point, and I don't find 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:59.240 that there's much. I'm not that interested in people who 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:05.160 have succeeded in life that well and what their idea 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:09.480 is on the world, because it's not it's kind of 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:12.960 in the cracks that the interesting people live. And I 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:16.880 think it's really important that you don't finish the book 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.079 with an answer, because obviously I don't have an answer, 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:22.280 and I don't think there is an answer. I think 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:24.760 it's just I don't know if you're allowed to swear 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:26.720 on your podcast, but I think it's fucked. He can 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:30.960 be put out. I think it's about trying to kind 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:35.520 of lock into that feeling that you get when that anxiety, 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:37.719 like you picked up on that kind of feeling of 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:41.400 like in your chest when the subject comes up, and 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:43.800 trying to form it into some kind of shape and 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:46.880 that's never going to look pretty. And there were drafts 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:51.000 where I had Uncle Tone be a lot more articulate 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:54.440 about it, and they just didn't work because they weren't him, 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:56.840 and it was you know, I was Ian mcewning. I 0:12:57.000 --> 0:13:01.640 was trying to get my thought what's across. But I 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:05.120 think what is more interesting and more pertinent is that 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:09.240 people don't know what to say and they're not It's 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:11.280 all about looking away, really. 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:11.439 Isn't it. 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:15.240 So we have a standard set of things we can 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:18.360 say and we stick there, and I think any trying 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:23.560 to kind of reach out into the darkness of what 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:27.760 surrounds those safe words is really frightening, certainly for me anyway, 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:31.400 And I'm always afraid of putting a foot in it. 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:36.520 But I'm also really afraid of being silent. So ultimately 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:40.400 I think the book is looking at who gets to 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:43.480 tell stories. Well, I know that I would never, for example, 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:46.920 tell a story from an indigenous person's point of view, 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:52.240 but it seems madness to me to not admit the 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:59.400 white Australian experience of living on indigenous land and choosing 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:02.040 to look away or choosing to look in front of it. 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:05.559 No, it absolutely does. And I'm glad you mentioned uncle 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:08.640 tone because seems to me the significant thing about that 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:15.520 character isn't whether he has the language to express this disquiet, 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:20.520 these ideas, whatever, but he does have the tenacity, the pugnaciousness, 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:24.400 the drunkenness as well to not have barriers to what 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:27.320 he feels he can comment on. You know, as a character. 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:30.480 He must be liberating as a writer because he is 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:33.680 someone who is not inhibited in sounding up. 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:37.160 Yeah, it was kind of important to me to give 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:40.880 that kind of voice to someone who's also not what 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:45.080 we would call a goodie. I mean, I wrote him 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:47.680 as somebody who I wanted you to be kind of 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:50.960 charmed by him in a way and feel real grief 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:54.560 at what he eventually does. And I was sort of 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:58.280 thinking about within the Me Too movement, the in particular 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:04.080 comedians that accused of correctly of doing terrible things, and 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:08.240 how how their friends like stood up for them and 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:12.920 then were shouted down, and that discomfort of there's someone 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:15.840 you love and they've done a terrible thing. It doesn't 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:19.160 mean you don't love them anymore, and that awkwardness. So 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:22.440 I really wanted to give him the mic for talking 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:28.160 about those things, because he's not some pious, right thinking person. 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:30.840 He's just scrabbling around in the dirt with the rest 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:31.280 of us. 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:35.200 He does memorably say, there's no unfucking it is there? 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:38.400 Once you've sucked it up, there's no unfucking it. Yeah, 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:39.200 do you believe that? 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:43.600 I think there's trying to unfuck it, which is important. 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:45.040 I mean, I don't. 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:48.680 Think that things that we have done are unfuckable. 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:52.120 There you know, what would we do? Yeah? I just 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:54.080 can't figure out what that would be. 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:59.640 Once we've silenced a whole language and a whole I 0:15:59.640 --> 0:15:59.920 don't know. 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:01.680 We just put a muffler over everything. 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:04.760 I don't feel like British politics is robust enough for 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:09.280 the colonial experiment to be rejected in all colonial Australians 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:12.320 to return to Britain. I feel like that might we 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:14.080 wouldn't be well received. 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:16.200 I think, yeah, we'd have to open up the Isle 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:17.760 of Wight. Yeah, okay. 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:24.600 When we return. Evie reveals the story behind her own 0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:27.560 haunted house and why. Writing from the perspective of a 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:30.400 ghost can be a whole lot of fun. We'll be 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:46.640 right back. You mentioned before that you wouldn't write from 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:50.800 the perspective of an Indigenous character, but the recognition of 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:54.680 that history, the recognition of that schism in the Australian 0:16:55.040 --> 0:16:58.920 contemporary lived experience, is really important to you, and I'm 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:02.560 curious about how how how you approach that, how you 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:06.000 approach as you said, so, I mutually the echoes is 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.560 about who gets to tell a story. Are there points 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:13.200 where you found yourself with the limits of a story 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:14.359 that you felt you should tell. 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:21.199 Yes, definitely, I think I've walked the line, but I 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:25.840 would be absolutely open to hearing where I haven't. I 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:32.480 felt awkward talking about death of Indigenous people and I 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:35.439 was like, but I can't leave that out because that 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:39.439 is what we did, and I feel the landscape of 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:45.000 Australia is so steeped in blood that it felt embarrassing 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:49.400 to leave it out. But yeah, I think I'm absolutely 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:54.520 sure that I have blundered into things unknowingly and I 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:57.800 would be delighted to know what they are. 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:00.800 It strikes me one of the things that raises the 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:04.240 degree of difficulty for you in being sensitive to those 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:09.480 questions about how to handle death and belief and spirituality 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:12.040 and other cultures. Is The Echoes is a book that 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:15.480 has fun with for lack of a bitter way of 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:19.440 putting a questions of mortality in the afterlife, and then 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:22.960 you know it's a ghost story at its heart. Do 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:24.480 you believe in ghosts? 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:29.240 I believe that people see ghosts. The Echoes, The London 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:31.919 parts of The Echoes is set in a house that 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:37.000 me and my husband fled because it was haunted. But 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:39.520 at the same time, you know, I don't really believe 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:42.360 in afterlife, so I believe it is. 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:45.919 You know, we had a new baby. I believe babies 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:47.000 are haunted, are. 0:18:46.960 --> 0:18:51.440 Deeply haunted, absolutely little fleshy haunted houses. 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:57.640 Yeah, absolutely, But so like you know, we both experienced 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:02.360 sort of some weird things happening, and all of them 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:04.120 on their own totally explainable. 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:06.440 You know, there was a swarm of bees in our bathroom. 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:09.399 That's because there was a swarm of bees swarming and 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:11.760 they found a hole and came into our bathroom. But 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:14.760 because it was happening at the same time as I 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:18.960 was not quite hallucinating, but I could see with my 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:23.160 eyes that there was no woman there. But I could 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:25.959 picture a woman in the doorway looking at me, and 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:28.560 she looked like no one I've ever seen before. And 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:30.800 it had such a feeling to it, and there were 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:35.760 smells and there were noises, and you know, I don't 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:40.080 I don't know. It's a funny thing to look at 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:42.919 your partner and go, shall we go and live with 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:46.040 my mother? Because with the ghost here and for them 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:52.120 to go, yes, take the baby, let's go. And now 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:53.840 we look back on it and we laugh about it. 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:57.439 And I'm sure you know, I was terrified because I 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:01.040 had a new baby. I was sleep ap, I was 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.240 you know, who knows what the sort of drugs SO 0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:08.560 was on for the cesarean we're doing, and you know, 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:13.240 we were both just having daily meltdowns. And the noise 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:17.600 of a crying baby is haunting itself. I come from 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:20.080 like a background of like there's loads of ghost stories 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:22.800 in my family, and you know they're those really great 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:25.280 ones that have no neat ending. 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:26.440 They're just horrifying. 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:28.679 They're just like I opened a box there was an 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:30.879 old man in there in which and then you know, 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:31.679 and that's it. 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:32.720 There's no closure. 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:35.639 It's just like ugh, I mean, first the close the box, 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:38.680 I forget put the lead back on that. 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:39.840 Box throw I matching. 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:44.000 Yeah, So I think I believe that we are very 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:47.800 strange creatures and that one of our coping mechanisms is 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:49.320 is ghosts. 0:20:50.880 --> 0:20:53.119 I feel like it's really it was really. 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:55.600 Interesting in writing the book, like having to kind of 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:59.600 set down on paper what what rules my ghost can 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:02.480 have and what constitutes it? 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:02.680 Guys. 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:06.560 I when my father died, I would see him everywhere, 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:09.240 you know, but it would be a real human being 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:12.040 walking down the street and I'd be walking behind them 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:14.440 and they would be walking just as my father did 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:17.800 in his clothes, and I hadn't seen their face, but 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:19.760 I was. I would follow them, and I'd be like, 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:24.120 that's just him, And what's the difference between that and 0:21:24.200 --> 0:21:27.200 you know, somebody sitting on the end of your bed 0:21:27.240 --> 0:21:30.000 at night, or like, you know, having a dream about 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:34.080 them where they say some stuff to you. Might be 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:38.000 complete nonsense, might be something that you've been really worrying 0:21:38.040 --> 0:21:41.440 about that was unfinished. And that's kind of like that, 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:45.240 you know, the unfinished business of ghosts. I feel like 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:47.840 it's all so tangled up with who the living are. 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:51.680 How much fun has it been as a writer to 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:56.560 introduce an element that is sits beyond what we know 0:21:56.760 --> 0:21:58.320 or what we're believing. You just say, I'm going to 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:00.320 say a new set of rules for the story I'm 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:02.720 telling you is that it doesn't have to adhere to 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:04.320 the things that I know in the world or the 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:08.159 kind of story I've told before. I get to wipe 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:10.639 the slight clean and say, Okay, in this world, in 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:13.320 this world, Max's did and Max is going to talk 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:13.840 to us. 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:17.120 Yeah, it was great fun. I had a lot more 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:20.360 fun than you can see in the book. I think 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:24.080 the only super weird thing he can do, apart from 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:28.000 still being around and being dead, is his size changes 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:31.760 depending on what he's feeling like. But I did have 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:35.880 versions where you know, he was part of he like 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:39.119 when you die, you sink into the brickwork of the house, 0:22:39.760 --> 0:22:42.760 you know, and then he could see all the other 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:46.399 people who'd died there, and it just it became wild 0:22:46.560 --> 0:22:50.040 and mad and really difficult to find the story within. 0:22:50.160 --> 0:22:53.320 So in the end, the most interesting version of him 0:22:53.520 --> 0:22:56.480 turned out to be someone he just feels a bit impotent, like, 0:22:56.600 --> 0:22:58.600 you know, they hadn't finished what they were going to 0:22:58.680 --> 0:23:02.240 say and they can't say it, and seeing the parts 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:05.639 of his girlfriend Hannah that he hadn't seen before. You 0:23:05.680 --> 0:23:09.200 know that she can sing, that she talks to herself 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:11.440 who she is when she talks to herself when she's 0:23:11.600 --> 0:23:15.200 entirely alone, and he can't have any input in it. 0:23:15.320 --> 0:23:18.840 I feel like it's such a massive fun thing to write, 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:23.639