Speaker 1: All right, be honest, you're a read this listener, so
Speaker 1: that already tells me that you're a reader and one
Speaker 1: who's both well informed and has clearly impeccable taste. That's
Speaker 1: a given. So answer me this. Can you name five
Speaker 1: writers from New Zealand? Oh wait, if I are a
Speaker 1: betting man, I'd say maybe you went with Witty eh
Speaker 1: Mehra who wrote Whale Writer. Maybe Janet Frame, Catherine Mansfield.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe you're a fan of crime writer
Speaker 1: Nio Marsh, or you're reaching back to remember Alan Duff
Speaker 1: who wrote Once for Warriors. They're the kind of exceptions
Speaker 1: that tend to come up when people make that list,
Speaker 1: but it's hardly a list that reflects contemporary, exciting new voices.
Speaker 1: We've had a wide range of guests in our almost
Speaker 1: one hundred episodes from all around the world. We've had
Speaker 1: conservatively about fifteen thousand Irish writers on the show at
Speaker 1: this point, But with the exception of Eleanor Catton, the
Speaker 1: only other New Zealand writer I can think of is
Speaker 1: Ben Suri, and his status as an Australian is pretty
Speaker 1: established at the point. Australia's closest neighbors have been shamefully underrepresented,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's just an US problem. By
Speaker 1: and large, Australians have a reading blind spot when it
Speaker 1: comes to Keyway authors. I'm definitely guilty of it. There's
Speaker 1: Lloyd Jones, who wrote the amazing novel Mister Pip, amongst others.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of poets I like. I read a
Speaker 1: great novel by Elizabeth Knox last year, called The Absolute Book.
Speaker 1: I like the work of Emily Perkins, but that's not
Speaker 1: a huge range of writers. Last year I was a
Speaker 1: judge on the RA Historical Novel Prize. It's one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand dollars and it's open to Australian and
Speaker 1: New Zealand historical novelists and the process of reading the
Speaker 1: shortlist introduced me to countless authors I hadn't read before
Speaker 1: amongst the entrants. More shamefully, I was embarrassed. I have
Speaker 1: to admit that it was introducing me to the work
Speaker 1: of one of my fellow judges, an author called Katherine Chidge.
Speaker 1: Catherine's written nine novels, she's one COMSS awards and strings
Speaker 1: of accolades. She is a big deal, but she remains
Speaker 1: almost entirely unread in Australia. I swiftly played catch up
Speaker 1: and was delighted to discover that she's a brilliant writer,
Speaker 1: one of grace and style, whose books are these imaginative, clever,
Speaker 1: humane things, each quite different to one another, each rewarding
Speaker 1: and enjoyable reads. The x Man's Carnival or Pet might
Speaker 1: both be good places to start, or you could begin
Speaker 1: with her new book, The Book of Guilt, which might
Speaker 1: just be the one that's going to help her find
Speaker 1: a much bigger Australian readership. It follows a group of
Speaker 1: triplets in a mysterious care home in late seventies England.
Speaker 1: But it's not the late seventies as we know it.
Speaker 1: This is a work that hinges on an alternate history.
Speaker 1: The Second World War didn't end in the same way
Speaker 1: at the same time, and the ripple effects are considerable.
Speaker 1: The result is haunting and compelling and deeply thoughtful. I'm
Speaker 1: Michael Williams and this is Read. This the show about
Speaker 1: the books we love and the stories behind them. You
Speaker 1: and I first met as co judges on the judging
Speaker 1: panel of a literary prize, which is one of those jobs.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it'll be fun and ends up being
Speaker 1: just an extraordinary kind of avalanche of books that you
Speaker 1: have to get your head around. But the thing about
Speaker 1: that price was it was a historical fiction prize, and
Speaker 1: I thought, given the singular relationship with history that the
Speaker 1: Book of Guilt has, I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 1: history in general and historical fiction and the relationship between
Speaker 1: events of the past and the imaginative. For you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, ever since I was little, I've been
Speaker 2: completely fascinated by the stories of the past. And I
Speaker 2: remember when I was a kid growing up with my
Speaker 2: one sibling, a sister who was just older than me.
Speaker 2: My mother always used to say to us in the
Speaker 2: school holidays, what do you want to do on your day?
Speaker 2: So we'd have a day each and we could choose
Speaker 2: what we wanted to do. And my sister always wanted to,
Speaker 2: you know, go to the Wellington Zoo or go swimming,
Speaker 2: And I always wanted to go to the antique shops
Speaker 2: and to look at and handle those objects from the
Speaker 2: past because they seemed to me to be vessels of story.
Speaker 2: That was what was fascinating to me about those items
Speaker 2: that I started to collect with my pocket money and
Speaker 2: I'm still an avid collector and admirer of antiques. And
Speaker 2: then when I went to live in Berlin in the
Speaker 2: mid nineteen nineties as a student, it was really the
Speaker 2: first time I'd seen on the landscape ripped large the
Speaker 2: evidence of the past, and in particular of World War Two,
Speaker 2: because you know, Australia is the same as New Zealand,
Speaker 2: we didn't have that kind of damage to our geography.
Speaker 2: And it blew my tiny mind, especially because I was
Speaker 2: in Berlin just a few years after the war had
Speaker 2: come down, and there was still, particularly in the East,
Speaker 2: so many buildings that had never been restored at all,
Speaker 2: so you could still quite easily imagine what it had
Speaker 2: been like in those final days of the war when
Speaker 2: Berlin was falling. And the other thing that happened then
Speaker 2: that really stuck with me was that not infrequently in
Speaker 2: the news there would be a story about a building
Speaker 2: site that had accidentally excavated an un exploded bomb from
Speaker 2: the war and that had to be very carefully defused.
Speaker 2: And that felt like an amazing metaphor to me of
Speaker 2: the past being always present and always just underneath our feet,
Speaker 2: waiting to explode. So the book that I wrote first,
Speaker 2: which came out in nineteen ninety eight, you know, A
Speaker 2: Lifetime Ago, was called in a Fishbone Church, and it
Speaker 2: did touch on those elements of German history that had
Speaker 2: so got under my skin, and I guess that always
Speaker 2: stayed with me and then came to the surface again
Speaker 2: in my two novels that are set in World War
Speaker 2: two Germany, The Wish Child and Remote Sympathy. And I
Speaker 2: guess as a writer, I store away artifacts that I
Speaker 2: think will be useful to me, or that I know
Speaker 2: somehow belong in my writing, and I'm not quite sure
Speaker 2: how when I first encounter them. But years later, or
Speaker 2: sometimes even decades later, they'll, you know, they'll they'll be
Speaker 2: excavated again, they'll rise to the surface again, and I'll realize, well,
Speaker 2: that's that's why I remember that particular thing. So an
Speaker 2: example of that from my time in Germany was that
Speaker 2: as a student, I enrolled in a university paper that
Speaker 2: was specifically for foreign students and it was an intro
Speaker 2: action to German history and it involved subsidized trips around Germany.
Speaker 2: So obviously I decided to do that paper and we
Speaker 2: went to you know, some of the most beautiful parts
Speaker 2: of Germany. But we also toured the university campus, so
Speaker 2: this was the freer Univasitet in Berlin, and we saw
Speaker 2: some of the buildings where medical experimentation had taken place.
Speaker 2: You know, it was right there on the campus that
Speaker 2: I always attending. Again blew my tiny key we mind.
Speaker 2: And another trip that we did was with a history
Speaker 2: professor who took us all to Broken vald concentration camp
Speaker 2: and we slept overnight there in the former SS quarters,
Speaker 2: which I still kin't quite believe that happened. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: bonkers as bonkers. And it was kind of a remnant
Speaker 2: from the East German days when it had been the
Speaker 2: responsibility of every teacher, every high school teacher to take
Speaker 2: their students to boben Veild and they would to the
Speaker 2: camp and see the atrocities. And I remember our professor
Speaker 2: telling me about, you know, pointing to this stump of
Speaker 2: an oak tree and saying that that had been the
Speaker 2: celebrated Girta oak. And the story was that before the camp,
Speaker 2: long before the camp had been built, there there was
Speaker 2: this oak tree that the great Girta had sat beneath
Speaker 2: on his hillside rambles and written poetry and plays in
Speaker 2: the shelter of this oak tree, and so it was
Speaker 2: sacred to the s s and it was a symbol
Speaker 2: of you know, the noble Germany that they idealized, and
Speaker 2: to the prisoners, it was a symbol of everything that
Speaker 2: had been lost. So this was the only tree that
Speaker 2: was spared when the prisoners cleared the land to build
Speaker 2: the camp. And the legend attached to that tree was
Speaker 2: that if it perished, then so too with Germany. And
Speaker 2: sure enough, towards the end of the war, precision US
Speaker 2: bombing attack that was aimed at the armaments factory next
Speaker 2: to the camp, some sparks from those bombs flew over
Speaker 2: the fence and the tree was satellite and had to
Speaker 2: be felt. So the stump is still there, but the
Speaker 2: tree is not. And it was one of those amazing
Speaker 2: symbols that just kind of drops into your lap sometimes
Speaker 2: as a writer, and it was one of those moments.
Speaker 2: Right now, Yes, I need to remember this, I need
Speaker 2: to write this down. I need to take photos of this,
Speaker 2: because somehow it will be important to my writing, you know,
Speaker 2: two decades later, or however long or longer. So I
Speaker 2: guess that's you know, how I think about history and
Speaker 2: the imagination. It's always very much tied to those physical
Speaker 2: objects for me, and those elements of the concrete world.
Speaker 1: I love that. I wonder whether it's the same for
Speaker 1: Kwai writers as it is for Australian writers. I think
Speaker 1: Christopher Kosch one of his books about Kind of Spies
Speaker 1: in Canberra that I remember as being a book mainly
Speaker 1: about dampness in an Australian city. But there's a line
Speaker 1: in that that I'm sure I'm misquoting, but along the
Speaker 1: lines of history was something that happened elsewhere that actually
Speaker 1: the domestic history wasn't exciting, that wasn't enough to fuel
Speaker 1: kind of these imaginative leaps, that you actually had to
Speaker 1: remove yourself from this part of the world and go
Speaker 1: elsewhere to really feel energized and excited about history. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious for you, from the Wellington antique shops to
Speaker 1: a sleepover in book involved whether you had a sense
Speaker 1: that it was only when you left home that you
Speaker 1: could see this storytelling potential. I guess of these moments.
Speaker 2: I do know what you mean, and yes, I think
Speaker 2: I did feel that certainly in my twenties, you know,
Speaker 2: when I went off to Boolin but having said that,
Speaker 2: you know, the first book that I started writing was
Speaker 2: there was very much in New Zealand's story, even though
Speaker 2: it did have scenes set in Berlin, you know, with
Speaker 2: a young student very like myself studying in Berlin. But
Speaker 2: it was also looking back to home, and I had
Speaker 2: that experience that I think a lot of writers talk about,
Speaker 2: which is the ability to see home in greater clarity
Speaker 2: when you're far away from it. I have set probably
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty of my books in New Zealand and overseas,
Speaker 2: and I think things are starting to change in New
Speaker 2: Zealand in the way that we think about our own history.
Speaker 2: So you know, that was something that I noticed time
Speaker 2: and again in Germany and that I really admired about
Speaker 2: the German people was how I'm afraid they are to
Speaker 2: look their dark past in the face and to acknowledge it.
Speaker 2: And it felt like New Zealand was a little bit
Speaker 2: behind them in that. I think that started to change
Speaker 2: over a couple of intervening decades. And today, for instance,
Speaker 2: the day that we're speaking, I said to you, as
Speaker 2: public holiday, So it's the Natouruke holiday, which has been
Speaker 2: in existence now for maybe four years. This might be
Speaker 2: the fourth year that we've had it, and it celebrates
Speaker 2: the Maori New Year in Nturukei is a star constellation
Speaker 2: that appears at this time of the year. And for
Speaker 2: me that felt like, and I know from a lot
Speaker 2: of New Zealanders, when that holiday was established, it felt
Speaker 2: like a real acknowledgment of the people who were here
Speaker 2: first and a celebration of that. So, yeah, I think
Speaker 2: things are starting to change.
Speaker 1: I don't want to read too much into the fact
Speaker 1: that one of the things in the Book of Guilt
Speaker 1: underpinning it seems to be a deep skepticism about the
Speaker 1: value of a treaty, in this case, an imagine treaty
Speaker 1: that ends the Second World War, and you give yourself
Speaker 1: a world where, instead of a decisive victory, instead of
Speaker 1: a military victory the Second World War, the assassination attend
Speaker 1: on Hitler is successful, and a treaty is broken and negotiated.
Speaker 1: And I found it funny that you, Catherine Chig, seemed
Speaker 1: to be setting up an imagine world where there's something
Speaker 1: a bit dangerous and poisonous about the compromise that comes
Speaker 1: with making peace.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I was really interested in exploring that possibility.
Speaker 2: You know, it's kind of territory that's been quite well
Speaker 2: trodden before. What if World War two had ended differently,
Speaker 2: but instead of you know, what if the Nazis had
Speaker 2: been victorious? Yeah, I wanted something a bit more kind
Speaker 2: of grayscale than that. What if uncomfortable compromises had to
Speaker 2: be reached? And how would Britain have looked in the
Speaker 2: wake of having to make those sorts of compromises and concessions,
Speaker 2: and what might they have gained as well? You know,
Speaker 2: what might they have have bought with those thirty pieces
Speaker 2: of silver?
Speaker 1: And that very much comes back to your tour of
Speaker 1: the university campus and the question of medical experiments happening
Speaker 1: during the war, because one of the things in imagined
Speaker 1: reality that you're presenting us with is what happens if
Speaker 1: the spoils of that research belonged to everyone after the
Speaker 1: war is done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, this was a question that I kept
Speaker 2: coming up against when I was researching the West Child
Speaker 2: and Remote Sympathy. Those two books said in Nazi Germany,
Speaker 2: is that painful debate around what should happen to the
Speaker 2: research that was conducted during the war, like should we
Speaker 2: ever touch it? Could it ever be used for good?
Speaker 2: Or should it just be shelved and should it be
Speaker 2: treated as probably the pseudoscience that it was, but that
Speaker 2: really intrigued me, so, Yeah, it is something that sparked
Speaker 2: the idea for the book of.
Speaker 1: Gift coming up. Catherine explains why the Second World War
Speaker 1: is such a central historical moment in so many books,
Speaker 1: and she also share some of her favorite contemporary New
Speaker 1: Zealand writers that we should all be checking out. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. As you've said, this is kind of
Speaker 1: the third time that not just German history, but the
Speaker 1: Second World War plays a central role in one of
Speaker 1: your books. And I'm curious about what it is about
Speaker 1: that historical moment that is such a rich inflection point
Speaker 1: in our understanding of so many things humanity, international relations,
Speaker 1: that in a storytelling sense, it's hard to think of
Speaker 1: another historical moment, certainly of the twentieth century that has
Speaker 1: been so central to so many stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, and I think it's because for me anyway,
Speaker 2: it's because it was still easily within living memory when
Speaker 2: I was growing up and my dad was completely obsessed
Speaker 2: with World War Two. He was born in nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 2: so wasn't old enough to go to Wolban desperately wanted to.
Speaker 2: And you know that informed all of the games that
Speaker 2: he played with his friends when he was growing up,
Speaker 2: which 'sed to tell us about. And all the books
Speaker 2: he read were you know, Churchill's autobiography, or they were
Speaker 2: books about Hitler or you know, those were the books
Speaker 2: that were on our shelves when I was growing up.
Speaker 2: And then I went to live in Germany for a while,
Speaker 2: so you know, I couldn't really escape it. I think
Speaker 2: it was something that was always going to find me
Speaker 2: and stimulate my imagination. It just loomed so large for
Speaker 2: me in my childhood, and it is crazy to think that,
Speaker 2: you know, I was born in nineteen seventy that's really
Speaker 2: not too long away from nineteen forty five. You know,
Speaker 2: it is the well that so many writers keep going
Speaker 2: back to draw from, and has it all been said already?
Speaker 2: So with all of my books, and especially with those,
Speaker 2: I was really conscious to come at it from an
Speaker 2: oblique angle or from an angle that hasn't been tried before. So,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of telling stories that are on the
Speaker 2: periphery and that aren't looking, aren't placing atrocities center stage.
Speaker 2: I'm not interested in kind of sensationalizing those terrible events.
Speaker 2: I'm much more interested in telling the stories of those
Speaker 2: people on the fringes.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, the Book of Guilt is not
Speaker 1: about the Second World War. The reason I use the
Speaker 1: phrase inflection point is that in this imaginative world, that's
Speaker 1: the moment of departure. So it's a book that is
Speaker 1: set in England of the nineteen seventies, but an alternate,
Speaker 1: slightly subtly different England. The moon landing didn't happen at
Speaker 1: the same time, things are not quite as they were
Speaker 1: because of that shift. One of the recurring things in
Speaker 1: your work, it seems to me, is the voices of
Speaker 1: younger people trying to understand or process kind of adult
Speaker 1: scenarios and schemes. And the Book of Guilt is very
Speaker 1: much centered around these three young boys. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us a bit about them?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, the Book of Guilt is the story of
Speaker 2: identical triplet brothers, Vincent, Lawrence and William, who are growing
Speaker 2: up in a boy's home in the New Forest, and
Speaker 2: they're cared for by mother morning, Mother afternoon, and mother night,
Speaker 2: and every day they have to take particular sorts of
Speaker 2: medicine to protect themselves from an illness called the bug,
Speaker 2: something that they and children like them are particularly susceptible too.
Speaker 2: And if they recover permanently from the bug, then they
Speaker 2: are allowed to go and live in Margate, the seaside
Speaker 2: resort where all the other children who have recovered before
Speaker 2: them have gone, And they can swim in the sea
Speaker 2: every day, and they can sun themselves, and they can
Speaker 2: eat as much candy floss as they like. So this
Speaker 2: is what every boy wants. And every couple of months
Speaker 2: theresited by doctor Roach, who comes to check on their
Speaker 2: health and is also particularly interested in their dreams. So
Speaker 2: every day Mother Morning comes into their bedream to wake
Speaker 2: them and has a ledger with her called the Book
Speaker 2: of Dreams, and she records their dreams in this book.
Speaker 2: So the triplets are thirteen thirteen years old, and there's
Speaker 2: another child who's also thirteen, Nancy, who lives a little
Speaker 2: way away in Exeter and is confined in a similar
Speaker 2: way as the boys are confined, but in her case
Speaker 2: she has never been allowed to leave the family house
Speaker 2: her whole life. Her parents are more or less keeping
Speaker 2: her prisoner. At the beginning of the book, we find
Speaker 2: out that the boys home and other homes like it
Speaker 2: in England are about to be closed down and the
Speaker 2: remaining children, the few remaining children are going to be
Speaker 2: released into the community, and this process is being overseen
Speaker 2: by a woman called the Minister of Loneliness. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that's kind of the setup for the book. And I guess,
Speaker 2: going back to your question, Michael about child narrators, I'm
Speaker 2: so interested in that time of life when we're not
Speaker 2: really still a little child, but we're also not yet adult.
Speaker 2: We kind of have a flat in both worlds and
Speaker 2: we're beginning to question adult infallibility. And this is definitely
Speaker 2: something that Vincent, who is the main narrator of the
Speaker 2: Book of Guilt, it's also partly narrated by the Minister
Speaker 2: of Loneliness and Nancy, where Vincent is beginning to question
Speaker 2: everything that the adults in his life have told him,
Speaker 2: and gradually he begins to piece together that's of knowledge
Speaker 2: and discovers the truth. As the reader discovers the truth.
Speaker 1: Part of what I so love about and what I
Speaker 1: think is so effective is not just that process of
Speaker 1: understanding trust, understanding the world and what you learn as
Speaker 1: a thirteen year old who's been brought up in such
Speaker 1: as singular environment, let's to say to be as elliptical
Speaker 1: abottle as possible. Is the ethical framework of a teenager
Speaker 1: is a fascinating thing, not just what you're taught, but
Speaker 1: what your instincts are about cruelty and kindness, about generosity
Speaker 1: and your relationship to others. And the ways in which
Speaker 1: Vincent is both sympathetic and unsympathetic seem to me to
Speaker 1: be one of the real skills of this book. How
Speaker 1: did you plot that out? How did you work out
Speaker 1: where your comfort levels were with your protagonist?
Speaker 2: I really loved writing Vincent. You know, he has had
Speaker 2: this very unusual upbringing and hasn't been exposed to the
Speaker 2: outside world, so there are these kind of structures built
Speaker 2: into his life to replace what he hasn't encountered. For instance,
Speaker 2: once a week, the boys have ethical Hour where they
Speaker 2: get together in their classroom slash library, and one of
Speaker 2: the mother's writes a question on the blackboard along the
Speaker 2: lines of the questions that were posed to us at school.
Speaker 2: You know, I went to a Catholic school in religious
Speaker 2: studies class, Like a building is on fire and you
Speaker 2: can either save one child from that burning building, or
Speaker 2: you can save a painting that's so valuable you could
Speaker 2: sell it and raise enough funds to save twenty children.
Speaker 2: And what do you do? And you know, the answer
Speaker 2: in religious studies class was always well, there is no
Speaker 2: answer to that. You can't. You shouldn't even be debating
Speaker 2: questions like that.
Speaker 1: Please debate this question. No, not so fast, you can't.
Speaker 2: And is that kind of disconnected? I was really interested
Speaker 2: in exploring with Vincent and his brothers, and you know,
Speaker 2: they sort of they say to themselves, well, you know,
Speaker 2: on craft day we made these bird feeders with suet
Speaker 2: and seeds for the birds to hang in the trees
Speaker 2: and when to when there's very little food, and so
Speaker 2: therefore we must be kind. Doesn't that show that we're kind?
Speaker 2: But they're never quite sure who they are or what
Speaker 2: they are.
Speaker 1: With a world like this where clearly, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: the stuff that's on the page, but I imagine there's lots
Speaker 1: of stuff that's not when it comes to building the
Speaker 1: imaginative framework and the speculative framework in which this world exists.
Speaker 1: You know, the alternate history elements aren't the subject of
Speaker 1: the book, they're the setting of the book. And I
Speaker 1: think that's a really lovely approach that the story is
Speaker 1: one that can only happen in that world that you've created,
Speaker 1: but you don't feel the need to explain or to
Speaker 1: fill in all those gaps or to put that in
Speaker 1: the foreground in the writing of it. What does that
Speaker 1: look like? Do you have a giant schematic where you're like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: these are the things that I know to be true,
Speaker 1: and some of them will make their way onto the
Speaker 1: page and others just wanted.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I have a very detailed timeline about what
Speaker 2: really happened in Britain in nineteen seventy nine, and then
Speaker 2: picked from that that the real life events that I
Speaker 2: wanted to weave in because it was it was important
Speaker 2: to me to kind of hang this imagined world on
Speaker 2: the real world to make it seem as believable as possible.
Speaker 2: So yeah, although I do take quite light touch with
Speaker 2: the speculative elements of the book, I've really wanted to
Speaker 2: weave in those things that I remember from nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: like the television shows, you know, the Generation Game and
Speaker 2: the Two Ronnies, or in the UK, Jimmy Savile's show
Speaker 2: Jim Will Fix It. That's kind of there in the
Speaker 2: shadows as well, to suggest that even though this is
Speaker 2: an imagined world, it's very much tied to the real
Speaker 2: world and there were some pretty terrible things going on
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: It baffles and distresses me that you're not better known
Speaker 1: in Australia and I just want to, like, I know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a strange kind of structural thing, but I
Speaker 1: just I want to take a moment to think about
Speaker 1: Australian reading of New Zealand writers and ask whether whether
Speaker 1: you read Australian writers there or whether you have a
Speaker 1: similar blind spot to the one that we appear to
Speaker 1: have culturally. What the hell is going on there?
Speaker 2: Catherine, I don't know what the hell is going on
Speaker 2: and it baffles me too, and it frustrates me no end.
Speaker 2: I remember it must have been nearly ten years ago
Speaker 2: that I was on a panel at a New Zealand
Speaker 2: literary festival with Kate Grenville and the subject of the
Speaker 2: panel was basically, why are we not reading each other's books?
Speaker 2: And you know, nearly a decade on, nothing has changed.
Speaker 2: And I do think there's an element of cultural cringe
Speaker 2: going on there, you know, I think underneath it all,
Speaker 2: we think that if it's from this part of the world,
Speaker 2: well it can't be very good then, can it. So
Speaker 2: you know, let's read American writers, let's read British writers
Speaker 2: or writers in translation, anything but read our closest neighbor.
Speaker 2: And it used to be like that here until very
Speaker 2: recently it was like that here with New Zealand writers
Speaker 2: as well. We didn't read ourselves much either. And certainly,
Speaker 2: you know, I would never see my books at the
Speaker 2: Airport Bookshop, which has always been kind of a gauge
Speaker 2: for me to see how much market penetration I'm achieving.
Speaker 2: And just probably this last year, I've started to see
Speaker 2: my books at you know, the more commercial chain store
Speaker 2: book stores and at the Airport bookshop.
Speaker 1: Catherine help us out name a couple of New Zealand
Speaker 1: writers that Australian listeners to this show should be across
Speaker 1: and maybe aren't.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, Danien Wilkins has just won the Jan Medlo
Speaker 2: Acorn Prize for Fiction, which is our biggest literary prize.
Speaker 2: It's you know, the big fiction prize at the National
Speaker 2: Book Awards, and he's just won that for a novel
Speaker 2: called Delirious. Danien has been publishing for a few decades now,
Speaker 2: and it feels like with Delirious, he's really starting to
Speaker 2: the big time in New Zealand. He's been kind of
Speaker 2: underappreciated here until now. And Delirious is a really beautiful, contemplative,
Speaker 2: quiet sort of book about an aging couple who make
Speaker 2: the decision to move into a retirement village and then
Speaker 2: decide it's the worst thing that they've ever done in
Speaker 2: their lives, and against that there's this tragic past where
Speaker 2: they're still trying to come to terms with the loss
Speaker 2: of a child. It's just it's beautifully nuanced, it's really moving.
Speaker 2: It sounds depressing, it's not. There's a whole lot of
Speaker 2: humor threaded through it as well. So I really encourage
Speaker 2: Australian readers to connect with Damien Wilkins. Another writer, a
Speaker 2: New Zealand writer I love is Adam, who is wildly
Speaker 2: experimental or like nothing else. You will read her novel Audition.
Speaker 2: It came out in New Zealand a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: I think has just come up out internationally and it's
Speaker 2: the story of three giants who are hurtling through space
Speaker 2: in a spacecraft that is very cramped and if they
Speaker 2: stop talking and stop telling their stories and trying to
Speaker 2: feel their way to what's happened to them in their
Speaker 2: past and who they are, then they grow bigger, and
Speaker 2: the space and the spacecraft shrinks even further and they
Speaker 2: will die. So yeah, she is a really exciting, risk
Speaker 2: taking writer that should be known all over the world.
Speaker 2: Another writer I love is the poet and essays Kate
Speaker 2: camp who talks about the every day in her poetry
Speaker 2: in a way that makes it seem strange and magical.
Speaker 2: She's also written a book of essays called You Probably
Speaker 2: Think This Song Is About You, which is about growing
Speaker 2: up in New Zealand in the nineteen seventies. And yeah,
Speaker 2: she's a stunning, stunning writer.
Speaker 1: Are three excellent tips. I'm very grateful to it. And
Speaker 1: you know, of course, Katherine Chiggy is the other person
Speaker 1: that we want every Australian listener to this show and
Speaker 1: beyond to get onto the work of. And it's been
Speaker 1: such a trait to talk to you today all.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Michael. Great to catch up with you.
Speaker 1: Katherine Chidge's latest novel, The Book of Guilt, is available
Speaker 1: at all good bookstores now and hopefully quite a few
Speaker 1: airport bookstores as well. So this is it. This is
Speaker 1: our final episode for now at least, and it's bittersweet.
Speaker 1: It's been such a pleasure getting to host this show
Speaker 1: and share the stories behind some of our favorite books.
Speaker 1: A massive shout out to the more than ninety writers
Speaker 1: who have appeared on our show over the past two years.
Speaker 1: We couldn't have made the show without you, and you
Speaker 1: continue to inspire and delight. We are very grateful for
Speaker 1: all those reading hours. A massive thanks to Schwartzman. It
Speaker 1: is outgoing head of audio, Sarah mcvee. She was the
Speaker 1: founding editor of the show. It was her brainchild. She
Speaker 1: pushed me through many many pilots before we got the
Speaker 1: formula right. She is one of the country's foremost audio storytellers.
Speaker 1: She will go far and she is a huge supporter
Speaker 1: of this show. I'm very grateful to her for the
Speaker 1: work and for her friendship. At the end of each
Speaker 1: episode you hear Travis Evans and Salton Fetcher's names. They
Speaker 1: have been an indefatigable part of team read This helping
Speaker 1: with the editing and the mixing and all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff that makes the show actually sound great and Zultan
Speaker 1: Fetcho composed the music that you hear in each episode.
Speaker 1: A big thank you to both of them, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're going on to great things. And to my
Speaker 1: producer and partner in crime on this show, Clara Ames.
Speaker 1: Clara is the one who makes the whole thing hold together.
Speaker 1: She's the one that makes things sound smart. I'm probably
Speaker 1: the right time to confess functionally illiterate, and Clara is
Speaker 1: very good at stitching it together in such a way
Speaker 1: that lets us pretend to be something that we're not.
Speaker 1: I'm going to miss her enormously and it's been so
Speaker 1: much fun working with her to put these episodes together.
Speaker 1: And to you, our listeners, I know we always say share, review, rate,
Speaker 1: all of that stuff. If you do that now wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, it will keep read this alive
Speaker 1: in the interim while we try to find it another home.
Speaker 1: Make sure that you're subscribed so that if something drops
Speaker 1: in the feed one day, not too far down the path,
Speaker 1: you'll know that it's there and you'll be able to
Speaker 1: keep listening. Read This has been a Schwartz Media production,
Speaker 1: and that's no small thing. Schwartz believed in us and
Speaker 1: set it up when we got started. I'm very grateful
Speaker 1: to them and our proprie to Murrow Schwartz and his
Speaker 1: wife Anna are two of the most avid listeners to
Speaker 1: read this, and I get constant and delightful feedback from
Speaker 1: them on it. I'm grateful to both of them, and
Speaker 1: to our CEO, Eric Jensen for supporting the show, and
Speaker 1: to all the other colleagues at Schwartz who have supported
Speaker 1: the show. The other major supporters have read this are
Speaker 1: ar group. They're managing direct day. Edward fetterman inenthusiastically back
Speaker 1: to the show and made sure that it was possible
Speaker 1: for us to be ambitious and to keep going. Ed Fed,
Speaker 1: you are a delight A big thank you to you
Speaker 1: and the team at our. This week's episode was produced
Speaker 1: and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing by Travis Evans
Speaker 1: and original compositions by Zulton Fetcher. I moved house only
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago, and that meant boxing up
Speaker 1: all my books and my extraordinary and supportive partner, Steph
Speaker 1: may have found the limits of her supportiveness when she
Speaker 1: saw the many, many boxes coming to our new house.
Speaker 1: It put me in mind to the fact that when
Speaker 1: we were first creating read this Our working title for
Speaker 1: it was too Many Books, the idea that there were
Speaker 1: too many books and not enough time, and we would
Speaker 1: help people sift through them, but we resisted. I hate
Speaker 1: the idea of too many books. There's not enough. Give
Speaker 1: me more, give us more to read. I tried to
Speaker 1: explain to Steph that while individual books on those shelves
Speaker 1: might be easy to get rid of, that they might
Speaker 1: be somehow dated, or not particularly interesting, or not something
Speaker 1: I would ever read again. It wasn't about the individual book.
Speaker 1: It was about the collection. It was about the stories
Speaker 1: behind the books that we loved, and the ways in
Speaker 1: which they all link together to tell a story of
Speaker 1: a reading life. And that gives me a whole lot
Speaker 1: of pleasure. The show has given me a similar kind
Speaker 1: of pleasure, and I hope that it continues. We're not
Speaker 1: going to call this the end. We'll call it the
Speaker 1: end of part one in that ominous way that suggests
Speaker 1: that this could be a multibook series going into the future.
Speaker 1: Happy reading, and hope to speak to you again soon.