Speaker 1: Hi there, It's Daniel James and I'm back to share
Speaker 1: another episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast.
Speaker 1: Hosted by Editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features
Speaker 1: conversations with some of the most talented writers from Australia
Speaker 1: and around the world. This week, Michael is chatting with
Speaker 1: best selling debut author Kelly Anne Bradley. As always, Michael
Speaker 1: is here to tell me a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the episode. Hello Michael, Daniel, Hello again. So Michael. Your
Speaker 1: guest on today's episode is Kelly Ane Bradley, whose debut
Speaker 1: novel The Ministry of Time became an absolute sensation when
Speaker 1: it was released last year. Why do people fall in
Speaker 1: love with this book?
Speaker 2: Look, I'm gonna say right from the outset, I'm a
Speaker 2: sucker for a time travel narrative, whether it's TV, movie
Speaker 2: or book. I love a good time travel story. Kate
Speaker 2: Atkinson's life after Life is terrific. Time traveler's wife is brilliant.
Speaker 2: Like anytime there's what doctor who refers to as whibley
Speaker 2: wobbly timey wymy stuff, I'm there for it. And so
Speaker 2: I was immediately curious to see what the Ministry of
Speaker 2: Time had on the cards. And part of what's so
Speaker 2: good about it is that it's delivered pretty straight. You know,
Speaker 2: it accepts its reality. Here's what's possible in terms of
Speaker 2: time travel, and here's how government bureaucracy acts as a
Speaker 2: kind of overlay over the whole thing. Plus it's a
Speaker 2: spy book and a romance novel and a book for
Speaker 2: people who are horny about Arctic explorers. So really, if
Speaker 2: that doesn't tick one of your boxes, I don't know
Speaker 2: what I can say.
Speaker 1: And for those of us who perhaps have the ministry
Speaker 1: of time and our not stands, but haven't had the
Speaker 1: chance to dive in, can you briefly set it.
Speaker 3: Up for us?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no worries, although, as with all things time travel,
Speaker 2: it's slightly complicated. But the book centers on a young
Speaker 2: woman who's a civil servant and she's been offered a
Speaker 2: chance to move across to a new government ministry, and
Speaker 2: there they gather people who are kind of unstuck from
Speaker 2: time through this new technology. They're appearing in the present day.
Speaker 2: They're named for the period that they came from, and
Speaker 2: they're referred to as ex pats. And this civil servant's
Speaker 2: job is to be a bridge she has to live
Speaker 2: with and monitor. One of those expatriates. He's eighteen forty
Speaker 2: seven and his actual name back before he time traveled
Speaker 2: to was Commander Graham Gore, a Victorian polar explorer, and
Speaker 2: he has made the move to the present day and
Speaker 2: he has to make sense of everything from Spotify to
Speaker 2: washing machines to feminism. He chained, smokes inside and kind
Speaker 2: of gets grumpy trying to discover the new world, and
Speaker 2: as inevitably happens, the two of them get drawn to
Speaker 2: each other in a range of ways. It's really a
Speaker 2: great fun read, and Calayanne explains in this conversation the
Speaker 2: ways in which it originated out of basically a thought
Speaker 2: exercise with her friends. We've seen a historical figure, we
Speaker 2: think he's sexy. Let's write a story that lets a
Speaker 2: bit of wishful film and happen.
Speaker 3: And it goes from there.
Speaker 1: Coming up with just a moment hoot and holler for Kellyanne.
Speaker 2: Bradley, tell me about your relationship with time travel, because
Speaker 2: it seems to me that as far as a storytelling
Speaker 2: convention or a genre trope goes, it is one that
Speaker 2: is peculiarly characterized by its need for rules and structure
Speaker 2: and rigidity, and I'm interested in whether that's something that
Speaker 2: appeals to you and whether it created a challenge for
Speaker 2: you right out of the gate.
Speaker 4: I mean both things. Really, it appealed to me because
Speaker 4: I think a lot of the stakes don't work without
Speaker 4: a certain amount of rigidity and without certain rules. I
Speaker 4: also think this is true of things like human relationships,
Speaker 4: community interaction, like these things depend on those agreed rules
Speaker 4: and certain level of stakes. So that definitely appealed to
Speaker 4: me when I first started writing, because I was more
Speaker 4: interested in the kind of after effects of having time
Speaker 4: traveled than the science of time travel. So I was
Speaker 4: being a bit vague about exactly how the rules worked,
Speaker 4: and I got I think it was almost one thousand
Speaker 4: words from one of my editors in a marginal note,
Speaker 4: like you have to explain how this works because otherwise
Speaker 4: it doesn't matter. You can hop back in time and
Speaker 4: anything could happen, and you could you know there's a timeline,
Speaker 4: whether everyone is just a flying monkey and everything's absolutely fine.
Speaker 4: So even though I did, the rules really appealed to me.
Speaker 4: I was also messing around with the rules until someone
Speaker 4: poked me with a stick to make me set them
Speaker 4: up properly.
Speaker 2: It's such a funny thing because the rules matter in
Speaker 2: an idea's sense, but they matter even more in a
Speaker 2: narrative sense. Like, as you say, you have to set
Speaker 2: up the rules so you know where the stakes are.
Speaker 2: But the other thing that you need to do, and
Speaker 2: I think all time travel literature to a certain extent
Speaker 2: has to do, is find its own limitations. How do
Speaker 2: we ring fence this off so that it doesn't become
Speaker 2: completely weightless?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, because also I think narrative demands a certain amount
Speaker 4: of linear focus, and I think that things like character progression,
Speaker 4: narrative progression, emotional progression requires a certain amount of as
Speaker 4: you say, ring fencing of the timeline. So if you
Speaker 4: were just throwing people around chaotically, there's nothing really for
Speaker 4: a reader to hook into. You want to be following
Speaker 4: someone watching them bounce around. I mean, maybe Calvino would
Speaker 4: disagree with me, but certainly for a book like this.
Speaker 2: It strikes me that when we talk about rules or
Speaker 2: structural stuff, the other way to talk about that is
Speaker 2: the language. Settling on what the kind of a grade
Speaker 2: language is for an imaginary thing goes a long way
Speaker 2: to rendering it real. How quickly did the language of
Speaker 2: the bureaucracy around time travel come to you?
Speaker 4: I'm so embarrassed to say very fast. I would say
Speaker 4: maybe the language of bureaucracy and the language of governmental
Speaker 4: rules came faster than the big idea stuff about how
Speaker 4: time travel works and therefore what affect emotional psychological it
Speaker 4: has on characters. I don't know, there's something dark inside
Speaker 4: me that is really drawn towards bureaucracy. This is like
Speaker 4: with John McCarey thing I read. I started being John
Speaker 4: lacay very very young, before I really understood even the
Speaker 4: political context. And when you read something like Tinker Taylor
Speaker 4: Soldier Spy, where he's just refusing to explain what he
Speaker 4: means by the lamp lighters and the scalp punters and
Speaker 4: circus and the cousins, didn't know what was happening until
Speaker 4: a second re read when I was much older. But
Speaker 4: still is having a great time, just a great time.
Speaker 2: I think, And I'm glad you mentioned that because it
Speaker 2: is and you know that's one of the other genre
Speaker 2: conventions that you play with in this book. But the
Speaker 2: spy novel is always great for that is the if
Speaker 2: it asserts a world with a language that feels authoritative
Speaker 2: enough you go along as a reader. It doesn't matter,
Speaker 2: you know. It was only listening to an interview with
Speaker 2: Mick Hare and I discovered that most of his terminology
Speaker 2: is completely his own fabrication.
Speaker 3: The park is not real.
Speaker 2: They don't talk about seconds, none of that stuff that
Speaker 2: he created entirely for the world of the book and
Speaker 2: just still lives it straight faced enough that it feels
Speaker 2: like something true.
Speaker 4: You've walked into a room where people are talking like this,
Speaker 4: and you're like, well, I better not a long otherwise
Speaker 4: they're going to kick me out.
Speaker 2: Don't embarrass myself. If I'd be like, oh, I didn't
Speaker 2: know they were called the dogs.
Speaker 3: Then it's just a lie.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, it's so good.
Speaker 2: There is something about that that's nice. But leaving aside
Speaker 2: the human element for a moment and leaving inside the
Speaker 2: polar explorer element for a moment, the kind of overlay
Speaker 2: of time travel, bureaucracy, and the spy novel in this book.
Speaker 2: The interplay is a linguistic one. You know, the ways
Speaker 2: in which you allow those three things to make sense
Speaker 2: and function relies entirely on that shared language and that reasoning,
Speaker 2: and maybe no more acute than the idea of the
Speaker 2: people who are out of their own time zones being
Speaker 2: talked about as expatriates.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, so that's a very deliberate political choice on the
Speaker 4: part of the ministry to call them expatriates instead of refugees.
Speaker 4: And I do think what the ministry are very insistent
Speaker 4: on doing. One the first things they start doing is
Speaker 4: making sure the experts are using correct language, both to
Speaker 4: describe the world around them but also in terms of
Speaker 4: politically correct language. And I think there's two things that
Speaker 4: play for me there. One is like the quite hopeful,
Speaker 4: I think and quite positive idea that we create communities
Speaker 4: by having a shared understanding of the world we're living
Speaker 4: in in a vocabulary that we can all easily refer to.
Speaker 4: And so as a result, our sense of self is
Speaker 4: kind of built out of these words that were given
Speaker 4: for ourselves. So there's the ex about Maggie Margaret Kemball,
Speaker 4: who's from the Great Plague of London, who is given
Speaker 4: for the first time in her life the word lesbian,
Speaker 4: and it's wonderful for her, it's really liberating and really affirming.
Speaker 4: Then there is also institutional language, which is often taking
Speaker 4: the language of radical systems, radical responses to injustice, and
Speaker 4: institutionalizing and defanging them. So it becomes about language that
Speaker 4: is correct rather than language that is empathetic. And I
Speaker 4: find there's an exciting contrast for me there, because in
Speaker 4: one case, you've been given new language and new taxonomies
Speaker 4: that are really liberating, and then you're being given new
Speaker 4: languages and new taxonomies that are actually quite deadening and
Speaker 4: are encourage you to think of yourself as ticking boxes
Speaker 4: rather than actually thinking about the reality of the people.
Speaker 4: And that for me is like the big tension in
Speaker 4: the ministry and the big tension for the narrator.
Speaker 2: It is, I mean, the easy temptation is to look
Speaker 2: to or Well for that example of the way in
Speaker 2: which an institution imposes language to deaden but also to
Speaker 2: other I think that relationship between those who are of
Speaker 2: the project, whether it's the colonial project, whether it's the
Speaker 2: corporate project, those who belong and those who don't, and
Speaker 2: to create an outsider status through language.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, And I really like the all Wel comparison
Speaker 4: because the Ministry of Truth is obviously one of the
Speaker 4: reasons this book is called the Ministry of Time is
Speaker 4: because I was thinking about that. It's never actually called
Speaker 4: the Ministry of Time in the book. It is just
Speaker 4: the title of the book.
Speaker 2: Espe they will play it against Sam thinks they've heard it.
Speaker 4: It's not that they haven't heard it. They haven't heard it.
Speaker 2: So how then do you build a protagonist as you
Speaker 2: have with the Bridge, who is part of that system?
Speaker 2: How do you find the human elements of a character
Speaker 2: who chooses to speak and chooses to kind of live
Speaker 2: in a system that kind of sends off the corners
Speaker 2: of that humanity.
Speaker 4: She was such an interesting character to develop because when
Speaker 4: I first started writing the book, she was nobody. She
Speaker 4: was nothing, She was just a cipher. And in fact,
Speaker 4: the whole first version of the book was written in
Speaker 4: the second person, so that my friends who were reading it,
Speaker 4: it was just as if they were they were experiencing
Speaker 4: this funny game about living with a polar explorer from
Speaker 4: nineteenth century. First of all, my agent said, I'm begging
Speaker 4: you not to write a book in the second person.
Speaker 4: I can't.
Speaker 3: I'm not coward to sell Your agent's a coward. I'm
Speaker 3: going to say it right now.
Speaker 4: Chris, if you're listening, please don't fire me. But he
Speaker 4: also pointed out that like a love story where one
Speaker 4: half of the love story is just a nothingness, and
Speaker 4: a story about complicity where one half of that is
Speaker 4: just nothing, it's just a blank space. It's just not
Speaker 4: very satisfying. So when I started to write her, I
Speaker 4: started to think about what in her past would mean
Speaker 4: that First of all, she's attracted to the idea of
Speaker 4: Victorian man, which is very separate to falling in love
Speaker 4: with the person Graham Gore. He is a person, he's like,
Speaker 4: you know, he's a full human being. But attracted to
Speaker 4: the idea of this Victorian hero, this dashing Victorian explorer.
Speaker 4: And then what in her background would make her interested
Speaker 4: in both afraid of and attracted to the kind of
Speaker 4: control the ministry promises. And I often use the word
Speaker 4: control rather than power, because I don't think it's so
Speaker 4: much that she wants to wield power as she wants
Speaker 4: to be in control. She wants to be in control
Speaker 4: of a narrative. She wants to be in control of
Speaker 4: the way the language that about her is used, and
Speaker 4: in control of any given situation that she enters. So
Speaker 4: when I was writing her, and I was thinking about
Speaker 4: the fact that Graham Gore is entering a world where
Speaker 4: the British Empire has collapsed, and that was for him
Speaker 4: his kind of driving force. It's a background, that's all.
Speaker 4: It's not worth acknowledging because it was just it would
Speaker 4: have just been over the Navy like a tea cozy.
Speaker 4: I thought maybe it would be interesting for her to
Speaker 4: be British Bermese or British Indian, someone who has family
Speaker 4: who were formerly colonized subjects and was a mixed race,
Speaker 4: white passing person as I am, and therefore has like
Speaker 4: a complicated relationship both to how they're perceived, how they're
Speaker 4: talked about, and how they might be received by structural power.
Speaker 4: And then I thought this, I'm just being really disingenerous.
Speaker 4: I'm just getting in my own way here. I'm British Cambodian.
Speaker 4: I know that's not like a former British imperial colony.
Speaker 4: It's a French was part of the French Empire. But
Speaker 4: it just seems like I am trying to make things
Speaker 4: difficult for myself when I know what I could write
Speaker 4: well is a British Cambodian person.
Speaker 2: Do you think that trying to make things difficult for
Speaker 2: yourself was about assuring a raid that projected autobiographical angst
Speaker 2: or kind of personal storytelling, and it deliberately loathe to
Speaker 2: open the door to that kind of reading.
Speaker 4: That is exactly exactly why I was getting in my
Speaker 4: own way like that, because yeah, I didn't want the
Speaker 4: bridge to be She obviously isn't me. I've never alas,
Speaker 4: I've never lived with her.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, the element of wish fulfillment
Speaker 2: means that as soon as the bridge is rades you
Speaker 2: at all, it's like, oh, well, this is just a
Speaker 2: personal fantasy.
Speaker 4: This is just a personal fantasy where I get to
Speaker 4: be complicit with the British cum which I love doing. Obviously,
Speaker 4: we all love doing.
Speaker 3: It as sacred drain. We're a Straylan's that's.
Speaker 1: All we live.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was. I was really really resistant to that.
Speaker 4: And over the course of the like the editing the
Speaker 4: book because of what it was published, was I think
Speaker 4: draft nine of all the edits, there was putting things
Speaker 4: in about Cambodia, taking things out, working out what of
Speaker 4: my family story I wanted to draw on what I
Speaker 4: really didn't what should be completely fictionalized. My mother occasionally says,
Speaker 4: you know, it didn't happen to me like this. It's like, yes,
Speaker 4: I know, it happened to like this to a fictional character.
Speaker 4: This isn't you.
Speaker 2: After the break Callayne chairs the audience she writes for
Speaker 2: and explains why Terry Pratchett is so important to both
Speaker 2: her reading and her writing life.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: I read another interview with you where you mentioned that
Speaker 2: one of the talkings to you got from your editor
Speaker 2: was that you needed to take yourself, you needed to
Speaker 2: take the work more seriously. I want to know what
Speaker 2: that is and what that lack of seriousness was. Was
Speaker 2: it a confidence thing or was it a defense mechanism
Speaker 2: that as long as you were playing on the page
Speaker 2: the stakes were lower. As long as you were trying
Speaker 2: to do something serious there was something at risk.
Speaker 4: This is such a good question. It's something that I've
Speaker 4: been asking myself quite a lot over the course of
Speaker 4: you know, I'm here for the Melbourne It's Festival, the
Speaker 4: Sydney Writers Festival, the Opening Writer's Festival. You know, I
Speaker 4: go up on stage in front of all these people
Speaker 4: who I've been seeing much bigger audiences than I've ever
Speaker 4: had in the UK, and I talk as if I
Speaker 4: shouldn't be there, or I'm slightly embarrassed to be there,
Speaker 4: and my imposter syndrome is just like coming out of
Speaker 4: my ears. And each time I do it, I think,
Speaker 4: I don't know why I keep doing this. It doesn't
Speaker 4: make people like me more. It's actually very unnecessary, but
Speaker 4: I can't stop doing it at the moment, and I
Speaker 4: keep on trying to pull it back. It was the
Speaker 4: same with the book that I was insistent, partly because
Speaker 4: it came out of such a place of joy and
Speaker 4: a kind of playfulness, and I was writing a playful
Speaker 4: thing that became serious for friends who I didn't feel
Speaker 4: would tell me that what I was doing was cringe
Speaker 4: and silly to take this game seriously and to start
Speaker 4: thinking more seriously about what the stakes were. As soon
Speaker 4: as I started to professionalize, what was that a game
Speaker 4: just for friends again, I had that immediate instinct like, Oh,
Speaker 4: someone's going to find this a bit silly. Someone's going
Speaker 4: to think fantasy wish performent, this is really boring, this
Speaker 4: is silly. I don't need to hear what this woman
Speaker 4: wants to do with this frozen dead guy. But each
Speaker 4: time that I kind of ran across that in me mentally,
Speaker 4: I was being received by people who were interested, who
Speaker 4: were interested in the work, who were interested in how
Speaker 4: it might develop.
Speaker 2: Well's I mean, That's why I fixate on the You
Speaker 2: described the ways in which this book's origins were a
Speaker 2: shared game with friends, kind of shared pursued, and so
Speaker 2: those readers weren't an abstract group of readers or of
Speaker 2: faceless readers. There were people you knew, who, presumably you
Speaker 2: were trying to delight and amuse.
Speaker 4: That's the only thing I want. I wanted them to
Speaker 4: hoot and holler. That was my entire intention for the
Speaker 4: first draft.
Speaker 2: Doesn't seem like you've unlocked something slightly important. I think
Speaker 2: from a ridally perspective, is about the reality of that reader,
Speaker 2: rather than the abstraction of that reader.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the abstraction of the reader who might receive this
Speaker 4: well or might receive this badly, rather than the friend
Speaker 4: who is going to read me in good faith and
Speaker 4: trusting me. I had an interesting conversation with Tory Peters,
Speaker 4: author of stag Dance and De Transition Baby. I was
Speaker 4: talking about my second book, which I've panned in and
Speaker 4: which has been quite a painful process, and which has
Speaker 4: received quite severe notes as severe as a you know,
Speaker 4: no editor is ever going to tell there are authors
Speaker 4: that they're an idiot and that nothing they've written is worthwhile.
Speaker 4: But it has had to have its publication date moved
Speaker 4: so that I can do edits. But I was saying,
Speaker 4: you know, it's just been I was doing it again.
Speaker 4: They're like, oh, it's terrible. I'm just a very silly person.
Speaker 4: And she said, from what I understand, you wrote the
Speaker 4: first book for friends, and now it sounds like you've
Speaker 4: been trying to write the second book to please this
Speaker 4: abstract idea of the follow up reader for ministry. I
Speaker 4: think you need to go back and write it for
Speaker 4: friends again. And it's sort of ridiculous if it hadn't
Speaker 4: occurred to me to just think of it like that,
Speaker 4: Because it's true. I think I need to go back
Speaker 4: to just thinking about the maybe five people who I
Speaker 4: would show it to in the first place, rather than
Speaker 4: the people who may or may not be disappointed by
Speaker 4: a second book.
Speaker 2: Now, arguably the most scandalous thing you've done in Ministry
Speaker 2: of time is you've written a book where you've made
Speaker 2: smoking sexy again. Ah, Like, decades of people being right,
Speaker 2: no it's not sexy, it's not cool, you shouldn't do it.
Speaker 3: And then you're like, Okay, so I've got this charming.
Speaker 2: Arctic explorer who is just relentlessly smoking and it's kind.
Speaker 4: Of hat Also, I wrote it during so in twenty
Speaker 4: twinty one, where you know, we were still more or
Speaker 4: less in lockdown in the UK, and I, yeah, I
Speaker 4: really wanted a cigarette. It's one of those fascinating things
Speaker 4: that is both terrible and might kill you. And there's
Speaker 4: no such thing as like you can't have a neutral
Speaker 4: amount of nicotine. You gotta have a neutral amount of
Speaker 4: tar in your lungs. Also, it's great if you are
Speaker 4: at a party and you know, no one really smokes
Speaker 4: indoors anymore, if you just want to be like, I've
Speaker 4: got to go outside and have a cigarette and then
Speaker 4: you don't have to talk to people for the length
Speaker 4: of the cigarette except for other people in the smoking
Speaker 4: area who are your kindred spirits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like we've really broken important ground on
Speaker 2: this podcast. Absolutely, But it does, Like as much as
Speaker 2: that's a very funny, very specific thing, it does get
Speaker 2: to the heart of something I really love in this
Speaker 2: book that is very deliberate which is thinking about different
Speaker 2: social moras in different times and the ways in which
Speaker 2: they land so differently. It's one thing to think of
Speaker 2: an idealized Victorian hero who's a particular kind of stoic
Speaker 2: and kind of soulful and all these things at once,
Speaker 2: but then to think about the politics of the day
Speaker 2: and the way they probably played out, and the assumptions
Speaker 2: and the baseline chauvinism and racism and unthinking bigotry that
Speaker 2: is bolted on. How important was it to you that
Speaker 2: you weren't actively ahistorical.
Speaker 4: It was so important. It's actually quite funny to remember
Speaker 4: how important it was to me, and how deranged I
Speaker 4: became desperately trying to imagine what it would have been
Speaker 4: like for this, for Graham Gore specifically, but to lesser
Speaker 4: extent also the other characters, how it would have been
Speaker 4: like to experience the twenty first century. Like I was
Speaker 4: really taking this experiment very seriously, taking this game very seriously.
Speaker 4: I was, you know, I was doing things like reading
Speaker 4: this enormous book about the Victorian home because I wanted
Speaker 4: to just imagine what the curtains would have looked like,
Speaker 4: what the flooring would have looked like, and just how
Speaker 4: a house would have felt different to a man walking
Speaker 4: out of Victorian England into twenty first century London, just
Speaker 4: how his body would have reacted differently to the weight
Speaker 4: of the clothes. Clothes used to be much heavier and
Speaker 4: much denser, it was colder, and they didn't have kind
Speaker 4: of modern innovations with textiles. But also things like being
Speaker 4: interested in British polar expiration as I was, as I
Speaker 4: am does eventually mean you have to admit to yourself
Speaker 4: that what you're interested in is an imperial project. There
Speaker 4: is no good reason for those men to have been
Speaker 4: in the Arctic or Antarctic. There's no good reason for
Speaker 4: them to have landed in the Inuit homelands and died
Speaker 4: there in droves, just like for stupid reasons, for stupid
Speaker 4: reasons that were never useful in fact for the Empire,
Speaker 4: because the Northwest Passage was not traversible, was just a
Speaker 4: racist project. When you are confronted with that, I think
Speaker 4: you can either say, well, I'm different, I'm different and
Speaker 4: my interest is actually really good, or you can be
Speaker 4: willing to interrogate why you might be interested and where
Speaker 4: the friction lies. I spent a lot of time thinking
Speaker 4: about how I would be received by these people who
Speaker 4: I was studying with deep fascination and thinking of as
Speaker 4: fully rounded humans who had different responses to being in
Speaker 4: the Arctic, for whom their deaths were tragic. They were
Speaker 4: completely preventable. They shouldn't have been up there, but it
Speaker 4: was tragic. It's tragic when someone dies in awful circumstances. Nevertheless,
Speaker 4: and the idea of a Victorian man being presented with
Speaker 4: a mixed race woman who has a job, he still
Speaker 4: would have done some real spicy microaggressions.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know.
Speaker 4: Of course, the narratu of the Bridge also gets it
Speaker 4: wrong because she's so institutionalized, and again her ideas are
Speaker 4: more about being correct than being empathetic, and so she's
Speaker 4: teaching himself that isn't quite right. And he's like, I don't,
Speaker 4: I don't really understand, because what you're saying things to
Speaker 4: contradict the world were actually in Yeah, that was a
Speaker 4: lot of fun. Yeah, I just don't think it would
Speaker 4: have been interesting to me to have Graham Gore, as
Speaker 4: you know, turning off to me like I actually have
Speaker 4: always sort of feminism was brilliant in my heart. It's
Speaker 4: always been the case.
Speaker 2: But also as far as romance genre, trope Sky, you
Speaker 2: actually need that person with whom you disagree or you
Speaker 2: have a fundamentally different worldview. Part of the friction of
Speaker 2: that kind of mounting desire comes precisely from the ways
Speaker 2: in which he is alien.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And I think this is this is the thing
Speaker 4: about romance, right, There has to be a reason that
Speaker 4: they don't immediately make out. Now that now that we're
Speaker 4: in a in a world where it is possible to
Speaker 4: just swipe right on someone, meet them immediately, like them,
Speaker 4: that's it. There was There was no friction, there was
Speaker 4: no tension, there was no difficulty to sustain a romance novel.
Speaker 4: There does have to be that. There has to be
Speaker 4: something in the way of them.
Speaker 2: You've worked in publishing for years. There is clearly an
Speaker 2: intimate relationship between your reading and your writing. Tell me
Speaker 2: why Terry Pratchett is such an important writer to you? Wow?
Speaker 3: Where do I begin?
Speaker 4: So? I first started reading Pratchett entirely by accident when
Speaker 4: I was nine or ten, because I picked up a
Speaker 4: copy of Interesting Times actually, which is for anyone who
Speaker 4: isn't familiar with the Discord series, And Terry Pratchett is
Speaker 4: quite late on in the Discworld series, talks about characters
Speaker 4: who have already been established very much earlier on in
Speaker 4: the series, and is the kind of in the middle
Speaker 4: of a storyline kind of book. But I was very
Speaker 4: attracted to the bright colors and of the cover I
Speaker 4: started reading it. I didn't really understand what's going on.
Speaker 4: But he's just he's so funny. He doesn't patronize a reader,
Speaker 4: he doesn't talk down to them, but he does expect
Speaker 4: you to keep up. He expects you to be in
Speaker 4: on the joke, make the joke, and he expects you
Speaker 4: to be in on it. And that's such a deliciously
Speaker 4: welcoming thing, especially when you're a ten year old girl.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I do remember one time I met him to get
Speaker 4: the truth his twenty fifth Discworld novel signed, and he
Speaker 4: just knew exactly how like a slightly cookie I think
Speaker 4: it would have been twelve by the twelve thirteen, how
Speaker 4: a slightly kooky teenager wanted to be spoken to. He
Speaker 4: was just a very like empathetic man. The thing I
Speaker 4: like about the Discworld series is both that they are
Speaker 4: like just very funny. He was very, very funny. He
Speaker 4: used a humor like a you know, he could play
Speaker 4: a humorous joke like a trumpet, and he could use
Speaker 4: it to make a very serious point. I liked that
Speaker 4: they were funny. I liked that they were also very serious,
Speaker 4: which is not to say that they were not funny
Speaker 4: in places, but rather than that, he took his characters seriously.
Speaker 4: He took his characters seriously and their realities and the
Speaker 4: responses that they would be engendering in a reader. And
Speaker 4: I think he took his readers very seriously as well.
Speaker 2: Actually, what, as a rioter do you you've taken from him,
Speaker 2: given that he was such a formative writer.
Speaker 4: For you, partly that a sense of joy is going
Speaker 4: to compel both the reader but also the writer. I
Speaker 4: really think he enjoyed writing his books. I really hope
Speaker 4: so that joy is a perfectly valid and perfectly brilliant
Speaker 4: way to be launched into a story. And also the
Speaker 4: funniness can be serious, that humor can be serious, and
Speaker 4: that it isn't lesser and you don't have to apologize
Speaker 4: for being a humorous writer. You can, in fact have
Speaker 4: something serious to say and still be very funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I think that's right, And I think for me,
Speaker 2: the other thing to come back to the structure of time.
Speaker 3: Travel or whatever is.
Speaker 2: He was very good at having set up an entire
Speaker 2: world with its own internal logic, its own traditions, and
Speaker 2: presenting them in a way that was matter of fact.
Speaker 2: If he wasn't interested in an element, he wouldn't over
Speaker 2: explain it, but he would set up the rules have
Speaker 2: them be there as the underlying reality. There's no imposter
Speaker 2: syndrome in Approachet book.
Speaker 4: No, absolutely not. He knows what he's doing, and he
Speaker 4: knows that you're in. You know you're in. You feel
Speaker 4: like you're in safe hands with the Pratchet book. Actually,
Speaker 4: this is something I think about with magic, the way
Speaker 4: he dealt with magic, which feels like a really pragmatic
Speaker 4: and thoughtful series of limitations, because quite often he says
Speaker 4: that they used to be raw magic, when sorcerers existed
Speaker 4: and anyone could do anything, just throwing fireballs across the world.
Speaker 4: In fact, now in what is contemporary discworld, magic is
Speaker 4: very limited. There's a limit that you can do with
Speaker 4: it because it is a depleting resource. And there is
Speaker 4: like a very clear parallel to the way we use
Speaker 4: technology in the way we think of technology with the way
Speaker 4: he treats magic. It has unfortunately slightly changed the way
Speaker 4: I read other books with magic, and because every time
Speaker 4: I see someone who's just a wizard doing magic, I'm like,
Speaker 4: where is where is that energy coming from? Like, what's
Speaker 4: going on? What are the rules with magic in your
Speaker 4: in your universe? Explain it to me?
Speaker 3: And like in a bureaucred it's just swinging into action.
Speaker 3: All that a pin and a pair. Then you like,
Speaker 3: well this won't do.
Speaker 4: Sorry, we have to tax this and there are tarifs
Speaker 4: on this one.
Speaker 2: Sorry, you are misbehaving and we are going to ride
Speaker 2: you up. It's the only way. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for joining us today.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2: Cally Ane Bradley's best selling novel, The Ministry of Time
Speaker 2: is available everywhere now.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening to another special episode of
Speaker 1: Read This. As always, if you want to dive in
Speaker 1: further into the show, you can search for it wherever
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