Speaker 1: Good everyone, Welcome to conversations. My guest today is Natasha Lester,
Speaker 1: now one of our best selling authors. We say that
Speaker 1: because she's made it big in America. She's a New
Speaker 1: York Times best selling author and she's prolific. She writes
Speaker 1: nearly a book a year, and the beautifully presented books
Speaker 1: romantic as well. Her latest book is a bit more
Speaker 1: than a romance. It's a story of a French heroine
Speaker 1: and the book is called The Mademoiselle Alliance. Natasha Lester
Speaker 1: joins us from Perth. Natasha, welcome to the program. How
Speaker 1: are you.
Speaker 2: I'm very well. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I want to say the Mademoiselle Alliance.
Speaker 2: French accents working this morning, won't wait.
Speaker 1: Tell us about the Mademoiselle Alliance. The hero, the heroine
Speaker 1: of this story.
Speaker 2: So she was the only female leader of a French
Speaker 2: resistant network during the Second World War, which you would
Speaker 2: think would be a pretty remarkable achievement, and that would
Speaker 2: mean that she would become someone whose name would be
Speaker 2: quite well known after the war. But it hasn't turned
Speaker 2: out to be that way. I mean, as often happens
Speaker 2: with women in history, they can get a little bit
Speaker 2: lost in the subsequent years, but possibly also because after
Speaker 2: the war, Chale de Gaulle created this Companion de la
Speaker 2: Libera film, which was an award for the people he
Speaker 2: considered to be the most instrumental in helping to bite
Speaker 2: for France's freedom throughout the war years. And there are
Speaker 2: one thousand and thirty eight people he put onto that list.
Speaker 2: Two and thirty two of them were men. Unsurprisingly, so
Speaker 2: only six were women. Marie Madeline for Card, despite the
Speaker 2: fact that she led the largest resistance network in France
Speaker 2: throughout the war, was not on that list, but two
Speaker 2: of her subordinates were, so that's possibly why she was
Speaker 2: a little forgotten for quite a while. But I'm hoping
Speaker 2: to change that with this book.
Speaker 1: Now you write fictional history, I think that's the term,
Speaker 1: and I mean I love it. Frederic Forsyth is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite author, and he wrote fictional history basically.
Speaker 1: So tell us about Marie Madline for carm and how
Speaker 1: did you come across her and what inspired you to
Speaker 1: write about her.
Speaker 2: I mean, I read a lot about the war because
Speaker 2: my books often tend to be set around that time period.
Speaker 2: So I considered myself to be reasonably cognizant of the
Speaker 2: people and events that had happened during that time, and
Speaker 2: I'd come across her name only once in that whole time.
Speaker 2: I'd been kind of reading about the Second World War,
Speaker 2: and that, I guess was what drew me to look
Speaker 2: into her history a bit more, because I thought, well,
Speaker 2: maybe she's one of these women that I like to
Speaker 2: write about who have been forgotten by history, and maybe
Speaker 2: there's a bit more to her story than there's one mention.
Speaker 2: I mean, when you're and you're kind of reading about
Speaker 2: resistance heroes, you know, Jean Mullin obviously is the name
Speaker 2: you come across time and time again. But no, Madeline
Speaker 2: for Card was one I'd only come across this one time.
Speaker 2: So I went and scoured the internet to buy a
Speaker 2: copy of her memoir, which is out of print now.
Speaker 2: It was published decades ago. Got my hands on a
Speaker 2: copy of that, started to read, and I wouldn't believe
Speaker 2: the things that she had done during the war, when
Speaker 2: you know, she was just an ordinary woman. She wasn't
Speaker 2: a military person. She had no training an espionage or
Speaker 2: anything that she did, but she just took it on
Speaker 2: because she had to. I thought, Okay, there's so much here.
Speaker 2: I want to try my hardest to bring this together
Speaker 2: into a story that will be a novel but draws
Speaker 2: as much as possible on the true events that happened
Speaker 2: to her.
Speaker 1: So her biography was written in French. Lash to denoy.
Speaker 2: Sorry. As soon as one start talking French, I dub
Speaker 2: it to French.
Speaker 1: Translation. Is is that right?
Speaker 2: Correct? That's right? Yes?
Speaker 1: You You obviously speak fluent French, almost not quite.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't ever say I spoke fluent French. No, A
Speaker 2: French person wouldn't say I spoke fluent French. But I
Speaker 2: speak good enough French, yes, to be able to read
Speaker 2: her memory in French.
Speaker 1: Well, look, we'll come to you in time. Okay. Well
Speaker 1: let's talk about Marie Madeline for cards. So her life
Speaker 1: was extremely interesting. I mean she seemed to she seemed
Speaker 1: to be an adventurous when yes, didn't when women would adventurous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's because of her childhood and
Speaker 2: her parents. Largely. Her father worked for the for the
Speaker 2: A Marie a Merchant Marine Service and he was posted
Speaker 2: to Shanghai, so they lived in the French concession of Shanghai.
Speaker 2: That's where Marie Madeleine grew up, so you can imagine
Speaker 2: what kind of childhood you might have in such an
Speaker 2: at that time, you know, exotic kind of place. She
Speaker 2: was kind of left to roam the streets for Shanghai
Speaker 2: with her nanny and her brother and her sister. They
Speaker 2: had quite an unfettered childhood. Her parents were quite liberal
Speaker 2: in their outlook in terms of who their children mixed
Speaker 2: with and the kinds of adventures their children were able
Speaker 2: to have. And then he went back to Paris because
Speaker 2: their father sadly died. And while she was in Paris,
Speaker 2: she fell in love. At age seven, she was going
Speaker 2: to be a concert pianist of all things, and she
Speaker 2: ends up being a spy. But so she practiced the
Speaker 2: piano for eight hours every day, was on track to
Speaker 2: become a concert pianist, and fell in love at age
Speaker 2: seventeen with a military man who was about ten years
Speaker 2: older than her, and she, I mean, she loved him,
Speaker 2: but she was also quite attracted by the fact that
Speaker 2: his next posting was to Morocco, and because she'd always
Speaker 2: lived in exotic places, Morocco seemed like a fabulous place
Speaker 2: to go and live as well. So then she went
Speaker 2: and lived in Morocco for a few years with her husband,
Speaker 2: had two children, learnt the Arabic language. She was a
Speaker 2: bit of a polyglot. She could speak numerous languages. She
Speaker 2: helped her husband with a little bit of espionage work
Speaker 2: in Morocco. In fact, he worked with the French intelligence
Speaker 2: service there, and she also helped out at a clinic,
Speaker 2: women's clinic, and she ended up delivering babies and things
Speaker 2: like that in Morocco in the late nineteen twenties, early
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties. So this is Marie Madeleine in her sort
Speaker 2: of early twenties, and I think those experiences formed the
Speaker 2: woman she became later on. When she returned to Paris
Speaker 2: in the nineteen thirties, did.
Speaker 1: She have much to do with it because there was
Speaker 1: the old Jeering uprise, was the French had trouble with
Speaker 1: civil wars And was her husband involved in any event.
Speaker 2: Yes, so he was part of the intelligence service sent
Speaker 2: to Morocco to really report on what the tribes as
Speaker 2: they were called at the time, were doing and whether
Speaker 2: there was going to be any more uprising or any
Speaker 2: more unrest after the Riff War, which had obviously being
Speaker 2: problematic for France. So that's where she became useful to
Speaker 2: him because she could speak Arabic. She was this beautiful
Speaker 2: woman who people liked to converse with, so she was
Speaker 2: able to gather information for her husband in his role.
Speaker 1: You really like this lady, don't you read? I read
Speaker 1: in the author's notes that you had to overcome your
Speaker 1: hero worship before you can write the book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did. I mean, can you imagine she was
Speaker 2: for her time? Was she loved car rallying? She was
Speaker 2: a pilot, which women just weren't pilots in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, it was unheard of. She's lived in all
Speaker 2: these amazing places, She's learned the language, absorbed herself into
Speaker 2: the culture, and then she suddenly answers her country's call
Speaker 2: when she needs to. So yeah, I'm pretty much in
Speaker 2: awe of her.
Speaker 1: What was she doing when war breakout? And when I
Speaker 1: say war breakout, when the Germans occupied Paris, I suppose
Speaker 1: that's when it really hit home. Were you able to
Speaker 1: get a picture of what her life was like then?
Speaker 2: Yes? So when she returned to Paris, she separated from
Speaker 2: her husband, took her two children back to Paris in
Speaker 2: the sort of mid nineteen thirties, and became a journalist
Speaker 2: for Radio sid Day. A job there was to interview
Speaker 2: women who were doing remarkable things in the art in
Speaker 2: all the different fields, you know, women like her, basically
Speaker 2: women who were ignored by the other more traditional conservative
Speaker 2: French newspapers. And at a party in nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 2: she met a man called Jeorge Lustano Lacal and he
Speaker 2: went by the codename Navar, so we'll use that because
Speaker 2: that's much easier to say. And he was really he
Speaker 2: admired her intellect and her journalistic skills, and he knew
Speaker 2: something of the fact that she had learned a little
Speaker 2: bit of intelligence work when she was living in Morocco,
Speaker 2: and so he invited her to join him in setting
Speaker 2: up his newspaper. And his intention with that newspaper was
Speaker 2: to bring to life, bring to the eyes and ears
Speaker 2: of the French government and the French people that Hitler
Speaker 2: was preparing for war, because at this time in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty six, nobody believed that he was doing that. So
Speaker 2: her first job that he gave her was to drive
Speaker 2: to Belgium to collect some secret dossias that had been
Speaker 2: smuggled out of Germany by a friend that exposed the
Speaker 2: true intentions of the German high command. So she drove
Speaker 2: up to Belgium, collected those documents, came back to Paris,
Speaker 2: thaw them published in the newspaper, and realized that that
Speaker 2: was what she wanted to do. She wanted to be
Speaker 2: a part of trying as much as possible to help
Speaker 2: her country to avoid this looming threat of Hitler.
Speaker 1: As you just saying, it's it's hard to imagine that
Speaker 1: there's elements of fiction in them, because, as you say,
Speaker 1: you're telling me what she did. So how much of
Speaker 1: the book is fictional and does it lose any of
Speaker 1: the reality of what actually happened.
Speaker 2: So the main things that you have to do when
Speaker 2: you're an author dealing with and a resistance network that
Speaker 2: number three thousand people and pretty much every second person's
Speaker 2: name was Onrea or Jan and they also had real
Speaker 2: names and code names, is you've got to reduce the
Speaker 2: cart of characters. So that's the main part where things
Speaker 2: get a bit fictional, where you start to combine people.
Speaker 2: You might take the things that two or three people
Speaker 2: did and give them just to one person, just to
Speaker 2: simplify things, because three thousand people is a lot for
Speaker 2: anyone to keep their mind around when you're reading a novel.
Speaker 2: But everything that Murray Madeline did is basically in the novel. Obviously,
Speaker 2: I've had to take out a few of the different
Speaker 2: intelligence projects that she worked on because there was simply
Speaker 2: too many her What she did was so vast it's
Speaker 2: impossible to encompass in a book. And the thing that
Speaker 2: I probably have fictionalized the most is to really drill
Speaker 2: down into what her motivations were for doing what she did.
Speaker 2: I can only guess that that really she doesn't. Her
Speaker 2: memoir is very detailed, but she doesn't like to get
Speaker 2: very personal in her memoir, and when she was interviewed
Speaker 2: while she was alive, once again, she didn't like to
Speaker 2: get very personal and talk about her children and her
Speaker 2: loves and that kind of thing. So you've got to
Speaker 2: imagine your way into those aspects of her life. That
Speaker 2: that's the part that I would say, is I hope
Speaker 2: trueish to the person she was based on everything that
Speaker 2: I've read, But nobody can ever know really what was
Speaker 2: going on in her mind.
Speaker 1: We need to take a break. I want to find
Speaker 1: out more about Marie Madline Fucard. We speaking to Natasha Lesta,
Speaker 1: who's our New York Times bestselling author, very prolific, so
Speaker 1: much want to talk about back shortly. My guest on
Speaker 1: Conversations today is Natasha Lesta. Natasha's become one of our
Speaker 1: best selling authors, recognized in America by New York Times
Speaker 1: even has her books have separate covers when they go
Speaker 1: to they're published in America. I don't know why, but
Speaker 1: her latest book is called The Mademoiselle Alliance, about a
Speaker 1: lady who worked with the French resistance called Marie Madeline
Speaker 1: for Card. Now, Natasha, there must be something about in
Speaker 1: the way my mind thinks, but this is a lady
Speaker 1: who was French, and she had lovers and five different children.
Speaker 1: In the end, my mind is saying that she was promiscuous.
Speaker 1: Am I am I way of being there or just
Speaker 1: thinking like a true male?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. I actually read an article that talked
Speaker 2: about this, that was written in contemporary times about why
Speaker 2: is it that you Marie Madeline for Card might be
Speaker 2: so to be like that simply because she was a woman.
Speaker 2: And look, I don't all the research that I've done,
Speaker 2: I don't think she was at all. I think she
Speaker 2: was absolutely faithful to her first husband and he was
Speaker 2: just a different kind of person to her. He was
Speaker 2: much more formal, much stricter. She was an adventurous woman
Speaker 2: who loved to talk to people. She was very social,
Speaker 2: and she had this charithma that I think you could
Speaker 2: probably mistake for something other than what it was. I
Speaker 2: think it was just, you know, some people walk in
Speaker 2: to room and they command the room, and some people
Speaker 2: find that compelling, and other people are jealous of that,
Speaker 2: and so a lot of the different accounts come from
Speaker 2: whether you were drawn to that or you wanted to
Speaker 2: have that yourself, I think. And so she certainly fell
Speaker 2: in love during the war with her second in command,
Speaker 2: and they were deeply, deeply in love. That's the one
Speaker 2: thing you can glean from her memoir. She doesn't mention
Speaker 2: him tenderly often, but when she does, the adjectives she
Speaker 2: uses to describe him, you know, he's magnificent and he's hers,
Speaker 2: and you just know you can feel that yefuent feeling.
Speaker 2: And he obviously, tragically did not survive the war. So
Speaker 2: after the war, she then married again, and she stayed
Speaker 2: with her second husband for the rest of her life.
Speaker 2: So I don't think you could call her promiscuous at all.
Speaker 2: I think you could just say that she lived a
Speaker 2: normal life.
Speaker 1: Well, she died in nine, in eighty nine. Were you
Speaker 1: able to I mean a children would have survived her,
Speaker 1: I'm sure did. Are we able to interview any of
Speaker 1: the children?
Speaker 2: No, I haven't interviewed any of her children, although I
Speaker 2: have recently heard from her god son, which is very interesting.
Speaker 2: So there was a man called Kenneth Crane who was
Speaker 2: her sixter liaison during the war. And this gentleman that
Speaker 2: I've heard from is Kenneth Crane's son. And so Marry
Speaker 2: Madeleine and Kenneth Crane became very close during the war,
Speaker 2: as you would because he was the one who was
Speaker 2: fighting for her with the British and fighting for alliance
Speaker 2: with the British. She met him when she went to London.
Speaker 2: She stayed in London for several months during the war.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting to be able to talk to people
Speaker 2: who've actually spoken to Marie Madeline when she was alive
Speaker 2: and who knew her. Yeah, and I had done that
Speaker 2: before with previous books, and it's really quite a lovely
Speaker 2: experience actually.
Speaker 1: So he remembered it obviously, because he's oh, yes, absolutely
Speaker 1: with me. Yeah, he was her godson? Correct, that's right, Yes,
Speaker 1: and he contacted you.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: What sort of a thrill was that?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's fabulous. I love it when people do that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, just like I say, just to be in
Speaker 2: contact with someone who knew her when she was alive
Speaker 2: is remarkable.
Speaker 1: Do we have to read the book to find out
Speaker 1: what she did later in life when the war rendered?
Speaker 2: So I don't cover that part of her life because
Speaker 2: it was already quite a long book and I wanted
Speaker 2: to just take that one part of her life and
Speaker 2: focus on that. So I think that there's very little
Speaker 2: about her on the internet. Really. Lynn Olsen wrote a
Speaker 2: fantastic biography about her, which is probably the most accessible
Speaker 2: source for most people. That's called Madame Foucard's Secret War.
Speaker 2: But once again she summarizes Marie Madeline's life after the war,
Speaker 2: but there's not that much about it. She does talk
Speaker 2: about a reunion ceremony that Marie Malon organized with the
Speaker 2: families her remaining agents that had an aeroplane fly in
Speaker 2: just like it would have during the war when they
Speaker 2: were landing planes by moonlight to bring them supplies and
Speaker 2: agents from London, etc. And that's quite a lovely and
Speaker 2: moving anecdote to read about in Lynn Olson's biography.
Speaker 1: Well, we have to buy the book The Mademoiselle Alliance.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I want to say all.
Speaker 2: In French, it would be that's correct.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about you. Why are so many of
Speaker 1: your books based in France?
Speaker 2: So I learned the language in high school just because
Speaker 2: I enjoyed it and I was resonably good at it,
Speaker 2: and I continued my French language studies after high school
Speaker 2: and I ended up working for Laurel Paris, which is
Speaker 2: a French company. Obviously, so I had French lescense there,
Speaker 2: met a lot of French people, learned a lot about
Speaker 2: the French culture, and I think that that's part of
Speaker 2: why I've become very interested in French history. It's come
Speaker 2: through a love of the language. And obviously that does
Speaker 2: make it easier when you are researching French history to
Speaker 2: be able to read documents in French, because everything you
Speaker 2: look at in the archives in France is in French.
Speaker 2: And I just I love the culture, I love the history,
Speaker 2: I love the country. I've traveled there a lot. My
Speaker 2: family loved country. To my fourteen year old son has
Speaker 2: just spent eight weeks there on a student exchange program
Speaker 2: and we're having a French student come and stay with
Speaker 2: us in May. So we just we just all love it.
Speaker 1: Your sons speak French? Did he speak that? Did he
Speaker 1: pick the language up?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he was studying it before he went, but
Speaker 2: he's become much better since he returned. We now have
Speaker 2: a weekly dinner conversation in French. Everyone has to speak French.
Speaker 2: My husband speaks no French, so he doesn't participate much
Speaker 2: in that. My daughter's learning and my son is now
Speaker 2: really good. So it's quite fun exciting.
Speaker 1: That you didn't set out to be a writer, and
Speaker 1: maybe that's what you thought you could become, but when
Speaker 1: you left school there there was no passway for you.
Speaker 1: So explain a bit more about you, your career pathway.
Speaker 1: You speak that you talked about working for Laurel.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so I always wanted to be a writer.
Speaker 2: My mum has kept all these books and poems and
Speaker 2: stories that I wrote when I was a kid. But
Speaker 2: here in Perth, when I left high school there were
Speaker 2: no brand writing degrees at university. So you know, if
Speaker 2: you wanted to be a doctor, you went and did
Speaker 2: a medical degree and then you became a doctor, or
Speaker 2: if you wanted to be a teacher, you did the
Speaker 2: education degree and you became a teacher. But it was like, well,
Speaker 2: how do I become a writer? I had no idea.
Speaker 2: So my dad, who's an accountant, I went to him
Speaker 2: for career advice, which I don't know why I did that,
Speaker 2: but so he suggested I do a bat for a
Speaker 2: commerce I think he was secretly hoping I'd become an
Speaker 2: accountant and take over his accounting practice. So sorry, dad,
Speaker 2: that didn't quite work out. But in commerce, I noticed
Speaker 2: there was a stream for marketing and public relations and
Speaker 2: that involved writing to some extent. So I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: well I'll give that a try because I don't know
Speaker 2: what else to do. So I studied that. Then I
Speaker 2: did work in marketing for about ten or twelve years
Speaker 2: for companies like Laurel. I worked for Big M flavored
Speaker 2: Milk in their marketing department for a number of years.
Speaker 2: I don't know whether you have that in South Australia. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So all kinds of random, fast moving consumer goods kind
Speaker 2: of marketing role. And then I decided to finally do
Speaker 2: something about the writing dream. Once we've gone to Melbourne
Speaker 2: for my work. We came back to Perth with my
Speaker 2: husband's work. I went back to university then and studied
Speaker 2: creative writing because now there was a creative writing degree,
Speaker 2: and was lucky enough to get my first book that
Speaker 2: I wrote as my master's thesis, that one that Take
Speaker 2: Hunger for Award and was published by Fremantle Press, who
Speaker 2: are a wonderful local West Australian publisher.
Speaker 1: We'll come to that. You mentioned you write poetry. There's
Speaker 1: a little story about you. One of your poems was
Speaker 1: published and you've got one hundred dollars for it. I
Speaker 1: wonder whether you can recite that poem for us as
Speaker 1: we go to the break.
Speaker 2: But I really don't think I could. I know it
Speaker 2: was called from this Day Forward. That's about the only
Speaker 2: thing I remember about, and it was it was free verse,
Speaker 2: so I didn't even rhyme.
Speaker 1: Well, set you on the path, there's no doubt about that.
Speaker 1: Natasha Lester is my guest, folks. The book is called
Speaker 1: The Mademoiselle Alliance about an heroic French resistance fighter you
Speaker 1: would call it or agent back shortly, Welcome back to conversations, everybody.
Speaker 1: If you just turned in we're speaking to Natasha Lester.
Speaker 1: And Natasha is a Western Australian lady who's made it
Speaker 1: big in the international world of writing and her books
Speaker 1: have been published in America. Her latest one is called
Speaker 1: The Mademoiselle Alliance and about this heroic French lady called
Speaker 1: Marie Madeline Foucart. We spoke about that. We're talking a
Speaker 1: bit more about you, Natasha, and some of the other
Speaker 1: books that you've written. So you always dreamed of being
Speaker 1: a writer when you left school, there was no pathway
Speaker 1: for it, so you go I was intrigued for working
Speaker 1: for Laurel, a French company. When you sort of skipped
Speaker 1: over that part, how glamorous was it?
Speaker 2: Like everything, it sounds much more glamorous than it really was,
Speaker 2: although there were definite moments of glamours. So one of
Speaker 2: our py jobs was every time we had a new
Speaker 2: product to come out, a new lipstick or a new muscara,
Speaker 2: we would So we were based in Melbourne, we would
Speaker 2: go to Sydney and present it to the beauty editors
Speaker 2: in Sydney. And it wasn't just you didn't just stand
Speaker 2: up and say, oh, here's a new lipstick. There was
Speaker 2: a whole event organized around it. So, for example, we
Speaker 2: were promoting an anti wrinkle cream one time, and so
Speaker 2: we hired a whole lot of those wrinkly sharp hay
Speaker 2: puppies and we had the beauty editors playing with these
Speaker 2: wrinkly puppies while we were talking about this anti wrinkle creame.
Speaker 2: And another time we were promoting this like high shine
Speaker 2: now polish, So we hired this beautiful harbourside mansion in
Speaker 2: Sydney which was all high gloss marble throughout to kind
Speaker 2: of reflect the high Shine sort of theme. And so
Speaker 2: we did all these very glamorous fun events and that
Speaker 2: part of it was glamorous. The rest of it was
Speaker 2: you know, number crunching and presenting to the French when
Speaker 2: they came out, which was very rigorous, very hard work.
Speaker 2: You know, in French they were very exacting. That was
Speaker 2: a lot of midnight kind of finishes around that time,
Speaker 2: but we did get a lot of free product in return.
Speaker 2: I literally had more lipsticks than any woman could ever
Speaker 2: use in an entire lifetime, so that was also very fun.
Speaker 1: So whilst you're working for Laureol, do you still have
Speaker 1: this burning ambition to be a writer? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I did, And in fact, I was doing a little
Speaker 2: bit of dabbling, I guess you could call it. On
Speaker 2: the side, I enrolled in a very early formation of
Speaker 2: an online course that was just a very casual sort
Speaker 2: of thing. But what that did was that just got
Speaker 2: me to start writing again because I had, like I say,
Speaker 2: I had always written, but then once I began working
Speaker 2: full time, I'd gotten out of the habit of that.
Speaker 2: So it got me back into the habit of that,
Speaker 2: and that reminded me of how much I enjoyed doing that.
Speaker 2: So that, I guess was the impetus behind giving it
Speaker 2: an actual go rather than just dabbling at it on
Speaker 2: the side I'm working full time. Was saying okay, when
Speaker 2: we had to move back to Perth. Was rather than
Speaker 2: go out and look for another marketing job, which I
Speaker 2: knew was never going to be quite the same as
Speaker 2: what I've had at Loureal because head officers at that
Speaker 2: time just weren't located in Perth, was to say, okay,
Speaker 2: why don't I take a year off working full time
Speaker 2: and go to university, try the writing thing out, find
Speaker 2: out a if I'm any good at it. Because it's
Speaker 2: all very well to think you want to be a writer,
Speaker 2: but what if I was terrible at it? I could
Speaker 2: easily have been, And also whether I would really enjoy
Speaker 2: it if I devoted myself to it full time, because
Speaker 2: that's another thing, you know, It's the idea of being
Speaker 2: a writer is very different to the actuality of being
Speaker 2: a writer. So I did my year. I discovered that
Speaker 2: I loved it, and my poem was published, So I
Speaker 2: must have had some talent hidden somewhere in there. So
Speaker 2: I continued on after that.
Speaker 1: You had three babies in five years. Now, most women,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm being too general here, but but they'd been.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so hard having kids, and particularly when
Speaker 1: they're young. I mean, how did you navigate that process?
Speaker 3: Yes, I think I blocked part about out of my
Speaker 3: mind because it was just so hard. But I also
Speaker 3: think that you know, when you really want to do something,
Speaker 3: you do make yourself do it.
Speaker 2: And I remember the one moment I do remember very
Speaker 2: vividly from that time is about six months after my
Speaker 2: first child been born, and I realized I hadn'tritten a
Speaker 2: single word in that whole six months. My whole six
Speaker 2: months have been devoted to trying to get her to sleep,
Speaker 2: and you know, trying to sleep myself and all the
Speaker 2: usual things that mums go through, and I thought, okay, well,
Speaker 2: the rest of time will unfold in this exact same
Speaker 2: way unless I do something about it right now, And
Speaker 2: so that day I made about that every time she
Speaker 2: went to sleep, I would write something. Even if it
Speaker 2: was only for ten minutes. It didn't matter, because ten
Speaker 2: minutes are right now. Was better than no writing, wasn't it.
Speaker 2: If I took enough ten minute blocks and wrote in
Speaker 2: enough of those, then at some point in the future
Speaker 2: I would have a book, whereas if I didn't write
Speaker 2: at all, I would never have a book. So from
Speaker 2: that moment on, that's what I did. Luckily, she did
Speaker 2: turn out to be in the end a very good sleeper,
Speaker 2: and I could get a good hour and a half
Speaker 2: at most days of writing after she was sort of
Speaker 2: about eight months old. And that was just the practice
Speaker 2: I got into then, and it has been and I
Speaker 2: look back on that, trying to squeeze writing into those
Speaker 2: small chunks of time, and at the time it felt,
Speaker 2: you know, terrible and counterproductive, But now I look back
Speaker 2: and think it was the best thing I ever did,
Speaker 2: because it taught me disciplined and in fact, writing is
Speaker 2: so much about the discipline of sitting down and getting
Speaker 2: the words out. You can have all the ideas about
Speaker 2: scenes and dialogue and characters when you're out running, when
Speaker 2: you're washing the dishes, when you're in the shower, when
Speaker 2: you're driving, but those ideas don't mean anything unless you
Speaker 2: take the time to sit down and write them into
Speaker 2: sentences and paragraphs and chapters. So that's that's what I
Speaker 2: learned from that time.
Speaker 1: I heard you say in an interview that you're writing
Speaker 1: Thrives in Chaos. Can you explain that for me, please?
Speaker 2: Yes. So I'm a very organized person. I think with
Speaker 2: three children, you have to be. When you've got three
Speaker 2: kids and working full time. If you're not organized, your
Speaker 2: life becomes chaos. Then I can't tolerate that. I'm a
Speaker 2: bit of a control forak. I have to say. I
Speaker 2: love a good list. So when I sat down to
Speaker 2: write my first book, I just assumed that my writing
Speaker 2: would be like that. I'd read about all these writers
Speaker 2: who planned out their books before they started to write them.
Speaker 2: They had a chapter by chapter outline, and then they
Speaker 2: took that outline and they sat down and they just
Speaker 2: kind of filled in those chapters and every time I
Speaker 2: sat down to write an outline or a plan, nothing
Speaker 2: would happen. I didn't know what to write. And luckily,
Speaker 2: because I was writing my first book as part of
Speaker 2: my university degree, I had this lovely supervisor who just said,
Speaker 2: just write anything, any scene that comes to you. Doesn't
Speaker 2: matter if it isn't the start of the book, it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter if you don't know where the scene goes.
Speaker 2: You just got to write aho lot of scenes and
Speaker 2: eventually you'll start to get a feel for the shape
Speaker 2: of the book. So I was a bit skeptical, i've
Speaker 2: got to say, because that seemed like a weird thing
Speaker 2: to do, just write a scene that could go at
Speaker 2: the end of the book first, like, that's not what
Speaker 2: an orderly person would do. But I took her advice,
Speaker 2: and it turns out she was very wise and she
Speaker 2: absolutely knew what she was talking about. So it is
Speaker 2: it's this chaos of just writing down scenes out of order,
Speaker 2: not knowing whether you'll ever use them, whether they'll ever
Speaker 2: go into the book, really where the book is going,
Speaker 2: but just learning to be comfortable with that very chaotic
Speaker 2: creative writing process. So that's what I have learnt to
Speaker 2: do over the course of you know, nine or so books.
Speaker 1: Now, so where do you store these random tracks of prose?
Speaker 2: A lot of them are in little notebooks, so on
Speaker 2: my desk, I have, you know, a million and one
Speaker 2: note books lying around. But then I also use a
Speaker 2: writing program called Scrivener, which lets you just kind of
Speaker 2: record them into little blocks of scenes. So that is
Speaker 2: really helpful. I think that was designed for chaotic writers.
Speaker 2: And I'm thankful that I discovered that, you know, quite
Speaker 2: a few years ago now.
Speaker 1: So you never sit down and write the book from
Speaker 1: start to finish.
Speaker 2: Never, never. Yeah, And I was really fascinated. I was
Speaker 2: lucky enough to interview Michael Robotham a few years ago,
Speaker 2: and because he writes, you know, crime stories which have
Speaker 2: clues and so you'd think you'd plan those out right.
Speaker 2: And I was very heartened when he said to me
Speaker 2: that no, he did exactly the same thing that I did.
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, well, if it was good enough
Speaker 2: for Michael Robotham, then it's good enough for me then.
Speaker 1: But you have another two more children. I mean, I
Speaker 1: cannot get my head arount this. Like, I know how
Speaker 1: busy it is for mothers with the kids and a husband.
Speaker 1: Probably not a demand. He doesn't have to be a
Speaker 1: demanding husband, but he's got needs. I mean, I just can't.
Speaker 1: I just can't work out how you can still maintain
Speaker 1: a writing career throughout that.
Speaker 2: Well. I think it's one of those cases that you
Speaker 2: learn to let some things go. So I will never
Speaker 2: win an award for housewife of the Year because looking
Speaker 2: after the house is not something that I will. I
Speaker 2: realized I was never going to get to my deathbed
Speaker 2: and think I wish i'd back into the health more
Speaker 2: so I have. There are some things that you let go.
Speaker 2: I will never be the kind of mum who turns
Speaker 2: up at school with a plate of freshly baked ape
Speaker 2: or anything like that. But there are other mums who
Speaker 2: are really good at that, and thank God for them
Speaker 2: because I am not that person. So you learn to
Speaker 2: just let God the things that you can't do and
Speaker 2: look after the things that you can, which for me
Speaker 2: priorities are you kids and writing, and so long as
Speaker 2: they survive into adulthood, which they are getting there so
Speaker 2: that's good, almost a tick for that one, and so
Speaker 2: long as the book gets written, then I'm pretty happy
Speaker 2: with that those outcomes.
Speaker 1: Natasha Lestra's my guest folks were speaking to her in
Speaker 1: Perth the lad This book is called them Mademoiselle Alliance,
Speaker 1: one of there must be ten or eleven books so far.
Speaker 1: We're talking a little bit more about a couple of
Speaker 1: those after the break. Thank Shorty, Welcome back to conversations.
Speaker 1: We're speaking with Natasha Lester, who's joined us from Perth. Natasha,
Speaker 1: I've seen photos of you in your garden promotional it
Speaker 1: you wear the most beautiful dresses in the most beautiful setting.
Speaker 1: Is it true you have a collection of vintage gowns?
Speaker 1: Is that true?
Speaker 2: Yes, I do. I've become a bit of very conscious
Speaker 2: of sustainability over the last few years. Australians are the
Speaker 2: second largest consumers of textiles in the world, would you believe?
Speaker 2: And I'd like to do whenever I can to not
Speaker 2: contribute to that statistic. And also I'm obsessed with fashion history,
Speaker 2: so if I can combine sustainability and my love of
Speaker 2: fashion history, then I think that's wonderful. So I do
Speaker 2: spend a bit of time scouring the internet for beautiful
Speaker 2: vintage pieces of clothing, and I collect a little bit
Speaker 2: of it. I wear as much of it as I
Speaker 2: can because I find it really beautiful. And yeah, those
Speaker 2: they're just a bit unique and a bit special. And again,
Speaker 2: being very interested in history and stories, I always feel
Speaker 2: like every piece that you buy comes with its own
Speaker 2: kind of story, and I like to think about who
Speaker 2: might have owned that gown, on what their life was
Speaker 2: like when I'm wearing it.
Speaker 1: Well, who did own some of those gowns?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I will never know because I
Speaker 2: was by them from sort of third party sellers. So
Speaker 2: I'd love to buy one one day that came with
Speaker 2: a secret cash of letters or something like that. That's
Speaker 2: the thing. Only a novel that's a dream of.
Speaker 1: Right, Which leads me to a question about a book
Speaker 1: you're owd in or published in twenty twenty three, The
Speaker 1: Three Lives of Alex and Pierre. Now, having watched that,
Speaker 1: I was captivated by the Was it netflix the Christian
Speaker 1: to your many? Yes? Many?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yes? The new look You tapped into that of course
Speaker 1: with that book, the Three Lives of Alex san Pierre?
Speaker 1: What was it about? Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: that book.
Speaker 2: So I was drawn to fat that book because there's
Speaker 2: a very iconic photo of Christian Dure taken just after
Speaker 2: his first collection, and he's sitting on the grand staircase
Speaker 2: that the meson Christian Dure and the grand staircase of
Speaker 2: this beautiful, well known, lovely staircase. And he's sitting there
Speaker 2: surrounded by his senior management team. And if you look
Speaker 2: at that photo, almost all of them are women. There's
Speaker 2: only like two men in that photo. And I thought, wow,
Speaker 2: that's so unusual for nineteen forty seven for a man
Speaker 2: to be surrounded by so many women in senior management positions.
Speaker 2: And I want to want to find out more about
Speaker 2: those women. How did that work? Who were they, what
Speaker 2: did they do? And I realized that he's, in fact,
Speaker 2: he's four of his most senior positions, so the director
Speaker 2: of his of sales, the director of his aelier, the
Speaker 2: director of his studios, and he is assistant designer. They
Speaker 2: were all women. And I wanted to write about this
Speaker 2: man who had found these incredible women who are sadly unknown.
Speaker 2: You know, everybody knows the name Christian Dull, but nobody
Speaker 2: knows the names of the women who surrounded him and
Speaker 2: who I kind of argue in the book as much
Speaker 2: as you can present an argument in a novel. You know,
Speaker 2: he wouldn't have been as successful as he became without
Speaker 2: those women around him. So again it was a case
Speaker 2: of trying to bring to light some women that perhaps
Speaker 2: have been left out of the pages of the history books,
Speaker 2: and perhaps who shouldn't have been left out of the pages,
Speaker 2: whose names maybe should have been on the awning.
Speaker 1: Besides Christian Duws, he seemed I don't know what you
Speaker 1: engage from a mini series, but he seemed a really
Speaker 1: nice guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was. His staff loved him, he would He's
Speaker 2: very kind, very generous, the very quiet, unassuming kind of man,
Speaker 2: not at all the kind of person you would think
Speaker 2: of when you look at sort of contemporary fashion designers
Speaker 2: who are all kind of ego and mania and you know,
Speaker 2: crazy temperament.
Speaker 1: Amongst that collection of dresses that you have, is there, Christian, Yes,
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: I've got two do your pieces? One is actually more contemporary.
Speaker 2: It's from raf Simon's was one of the creative directors
Speaker 2: of the House of Due around twenty twelve, and I
Speaker 2: thought his work for Duel was beautiful and I had
Speaker 2: long dreamed of owning one of his pieces, and I
Speaker 2: was lucky enough to pick that up a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago. In fact, when the three Lass of Alexanpierre
Speaker 2: came out and I wore it for my book launch,
Speaker 2: which I thought was a perfect kind of moment. It
Speaker 2: was meant to be. And I've got another beautiful nineteen
Speaker 2: sixties red door mini dress from the East Saint Laurent
Speaker 2: years which is pretty fabulous.
Speaker 1: Where did you get that? How did you pick that up?
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of vintage selling happening on the
Speaker 2: internet right now. So I follow a lot of people
Speaker 2: on Instagram who do that. One of them, her shop
Speaker 2: is called Timeless Vixen. She's a woman based in the US,
Speaker 2: and she actually dresses a lot of celebrity four things
Speaker 2: like the Oscars, but she also sells pieces to just
Speaker 2: you know, nobody's like me. And as soon as I
Speaker 2: saw it on her website, I was like, right, that
Speaker 2: is mine.
Speaker 1: Well what sort of money do you pay? Do you
Speaker 1: pay a premium price for it compared to what they
Speaker 1: would have sold initially?
Speaker 2: No? Not really, And depends on how iconic the piece is.
Speaker 2: How like, if it's been photographed on someone famous like
Speaker 2: Nicole Kidman, for example, then you would absolutely pay a
Speaker 2: premium and I wouldn't be able to afford those kinds
Speaker 2: of pieces. They go for tens of thousands of dollars,
Speaker 2: but just you know your average kind of do your
Speaker 2: you know, you could probably get for a couple of thousand,
Speaker 2: which you know it's not cheap obviously, and you wouldn't
Speaker 2: buy a lot of those. But if it's something that
Speaker 2: you really love, then I don't mind having a bit
Speaker 2: of a splurge every now and again.
Speaker 1: I did read to research the Three Lives of alex
Speaker 1: san Pierre. You had to do the Swiss train trip.
Speaker 1: Was that absolutely necessary?
Speaker 2: My gosh, absolutely necessary. My husband has this joke that
Speaker 2: I choose the places to set my books in based
Speaker 2: on I want to travel to next And I always say, well,
Speaker 2: you know, why wouldn't you if you had the choice.
Speaker 2: So I did go over to Europe with my husband,
Speaker 2: so he got to come along as well and my
Speaker 2: three children, who I call my intrepid researcher system, and
Speaker 2: we did the beautiful train ride in the snow in
Speaker 2: winter through Switzerland and into Italy, which was just spectacular,
Speaker 2: one of the best experiences of my life in fact.
Speaker 1: And you obviously speak the language makes it easy.
Speaker 2: Well, it certainly helps.
Speaker 1: Yes, Do you have writers who have been your inspiration.
Speaker 2: Definitely, so Margaret Atwood, the Canadian writer, who I think
Speaker 2: it was a bit of a goddess. There's definitely been
Speaker 2: a huge inspiration for me throughout my lifetime. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'll never write a book anywhere near as good as
Speaker 2: a book like hers. Like a Blind Assassin, which won
Speaker 2: the Book of Prize, one of my favorites of hers.
Speaker 2: But I always think that if you have writers whose
Speaker 2: sentences and story and techniques that you was buyed to
Speaker 2: try to achieve, that can only help to make you
Speaker 2: a better writer. So she's one of them. Joan Didion,
Speaker 2: the American essayist, is another favorite of mine. She just
Speaker 2: writes these perfect sentences, so for prose style, she's someone
Speaker 2: I absolutely admire, and closer to home, Australian Kate Morton.
Speaker 2: She's made it an amazing career out of writing these epic,
Speaker 2: sweeping kind of novels. So I really admire the way
Speaker 2: that she writes and the way that she's been up
Speaker 2: at a Ford cheer career in Australia.
Speaker 1: You did give a big plug to Barbara Kinsolvers. Tell
Speaker 1: us why Demon Copperhead. It's the name of a person
Speaker 1: I thought it must have been a snake.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, it sounds a bit like that, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: But what she's done is she's taken David Copperfield, so
Speaker 2: Dickens's book and written a contemporary kind of version of
Speaker 2: that with this who starts out as the boy and
Speaker 2: becomes a man called Demon Copperhead, and she uses it
Speaker 2: to explore the opioid Cristis in America, which sounds quite
Speaker 2: brim and certainly there are places of the book that
Speaker 2: are quite dark and quite heavy going, but it's very detailed,
Speaker 2: moving portrait of this one man's life and these moments
Speaker 2: when someone could have stepped in and changed things and
Speaker 2: made his life very different. And though everyone's life is
Speaker 2: full of those moments where you make a choice and
Speaker 2: it might be the wrong choice and because of that
Speaker 2: your life goes down a certain path. So definitely will
Speaker 2: quite recommend. And I love the fact that because the
Speaker 2: book's done so well, she used the money to open
Speaker 2: a rehab center in America to help people going through
Speaker 2: drug treatment programs. So an amazing woman who's you know,
Speaker 2: out there making a difference in the world, which you know,
Speaker 2: given that those are the kinds of women I write about.
Speaker 2: That's the kind of personalized as well.
Speaker 1: Now, Natasha, I'm reading all these places which you're appearing
Speaker 1: doing talks and bookshops and all these all over Australia,
Speaker 1: but none in South Australia. I know, what can you
Speaker 1: explain that?
Speaker 2: So we wrote hate dates in and out for each tour.
Speaker 2: So last tour I came to South Australia and I
Speaker 2: loved that because it was the first time I'd been
Speaker 2: to South Australia on tour and we didn't go to
Speaker 2: Queensland on the last tour. So this time Queensland is
Speaker 2: in and South Australia is out. But next book I
Speaker 2: will definitely be in South Australia.
Speaker 1: Paul, great chat, Natasha. I hope the book goes really
Speaker 1: well for you. I mean it's obviously you're big in America.
Speaker 1: That must that must be pleasing for you as well,
Speaker 1: so it's hard selling books these days. I hope it
Speaker 1: goes extremely well for you.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's really
Speaker 2: lovely to chat to you.
Speaker 1: Natasha. Lester was my guest. Folks. The book is called
Speaker 1: The Mademoiselle Alliance the Paris Code. You'll be absorbed in
Speaker 1: there's no doubt about it. So Natasha, thanks so much,
Speaker 1: thank you, and thank you for joining us folks.