Speaker 1: Welcome to read this arguably Australia's pre eminent podcast for
Speaker 1: interviewing Irish authors seriously. At some point I look back
Speaker 1: over our archive and amongst our brilliant cavalcade of guests,
Speaker 1: there is very healthy representation from the country of my grandparents,
Speaker 1: Kilan Hughes, Kolm Toybin, the two Pauls, Mariy and Lynch
Speaker 1: and Enwright, and our dream guest list for future episodes
Speaker 1: probably has another half dozen Irish writers. At least Kevin
Speaker 1: Barry or Claire Keegan would be a dream just for starters,
Speaker 1: and that's not even to mention Sally Rooney. The list
Speaker 1: is lengthy. There's something to be said for the breadth
Speaker 1: and depth and general robustness of contemporary Irish literature, smart
Speaker 1: government policies to support the arts and writers in particular,
Speaker 1: and a strong literary tradition that's well read and well understood,
Speaker 1: and maybe something mysterious about the way that country tells stories.
Speaker 1: A joy and a sense of play and play, a
Speaker 1: willingness to meander and digress, but to hone in with
Speaker 1: precision and clarity when required. Our guest this week is
Speaker 1: another Irishman who is indisputably part of that conversation. Niall
Speaker 1: Williams was studying in a university in New York when
Speaker 1: he and Christine Breen fell in love and made the
Speaker 1: decision to leave the Manhattan rat race and move into
Speaker 1: a two hundred year old cottage on the west coast
Speaker 1: of Ireland in a place called kil Tumpa in West Claire.
Speaker 1: As they put it, they wanted to find out if
Speaker 1: they had the creative talent to make their lives there.
Speaker 1: That was forty years ago this month, and spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: they had the creative talent. They co authored books together,
Speaker 1: they wrote books separately. They made art and gardened and
Speaker 1: raised a family and built four decades of life. And
Speaker 1: amongst those books, Nile's novels started to build this reputation
Speaker 1: for a skillfully deployed mix of warmth and joy. His
Speaker 1: first novel, Four Letters of Love, was celebrated as a
Speaker 1: modern Irish classic, and after years of development and speculation,
Speaker 1: later this year, will be made into a film starring
Speaker 1: Pierce Brosnan and Helena Bottom Carter. But his three most
Speaker 1: recent novels have seen his acclaim rise and rise further.
Speaker 1: In A History of the Rain, which was long listed
Speaker 1: for the twenty fourteen Booker. He introduced a fictional town
Speaker 1: as its backdrop. It was called Faha, and his subsequent book,
Speaker 1: This Is Happiness puts far Harf front and center. In
Speaker 1: that book, he tells the story of the nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: eight introduction of electricity to the town. The book attracted
Speaker 1: rapturous reviews. The word enchanting gets thrown around a lot,
Speaker 1: and upon finishing it, Niall Williams realized he wasn't done
Speaker 1: with the people of Faha, or perhaps more accurately, they
Speaker 1: weren't done with him. He visited Australia last month and
Speaker 1: as lucky enough to interview him at the State Library
Speaker 1: of Victoria. Before we started our conversation, he and christ
Speaker 1: And got a tour from staff through the building and
Speaker 1: the archives. His love of books and of the community
Speaker 1: of people that had devoted to them was palpable. We
Speaker 1: sat down in front of a devoted Melbourne audience to
Speaker 1: discuss his latest book, the latest Faha book, Time of
Speaker 1: the Child. It's now the early sixties and the focus
Speaker 1: has shifted to the town doctor Jack Troy and his
Speaker 1: oldest daughter Ronnie, and what happens when an abandoned baby
Speaker 1: girl is brought into their home. I'm Michael Williams and
Speaker 1: this is read. This a show about the books we
Speaker 1: love and the stories behind me.
Speaker 2: Thank you all.
Speaker 1: I did apologize when we're doing the sound check because
Speaker 1: it feels somehow disrespectful that Melbourne, of all cities, couldn't
Speaker 1: turn on the rain for the poet laureate of rain.
Speaker 1: This man can write a description of rain that rivals
Speaker 1: no other. Is that your natural weather mode? Are you
Speaker 1: most comfortable writing about it?
Speaker 2: Hello, everybody. Chris and I have lived in County Claire
Speaker 2: for forty years. In that time, we've had to come
Speaker 2: to an accommodation with the rain, and because it rains
Speaker 2: a lot, I have to come to a place where
Speaker 2: I could see the rain not as the enemy, not
Speaker 2: as something against me in some way. I finally came
Speaker 2: to grips with it when I wrote History of the Rain,
Speaker 2: where I began to understand the idea that the rain
Speaker 2: comes from the sky, goes into the river, which goes
Speaker 2: to the sea, which goes back into the sky, and
Speaker 2: that circular motion that happens. That traffic of rain and
Speaker 2: transitory noess seemed to me to become sort of some
Speaker 2: kind of metaphor for our own existence. And because that
Speaker 2: novel deals with Ruth Swain trying to find out where
Speaker 2: her dead father has gone, and so the Rain became
Speaker 2: part of that circularity as she searched for him.
Speaker 1: I'm very glad you brought up History of the Rain
Speaker 1: because it seems an appropriate book maybe for us to
Speaker 1: start out a conversation tonight. It's our first glimpse of
Speaker 1: Faha in your work, even if it's through a window
Speaker 1: barely scene, it's out there. But it is also a
Speaker 1: book very much concerned with the business of books, and
Speaker 1: given the building way in at the moment. Yes, I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could expand on Ruth's quest to find
Speaker 1: her father through books.
Speaker 2: Yes. So I never know where a book comes from
Speaker 2: until after I've written it. I have no plan. When
Speaker 2: I'm writing a book. I'm literally following one sentence and
Speaker 2: seeing what that sentence implies with the next sentence. It's
Speaker 2: only after I've written a book that I look back
Speaker 2: and see what was happening in my life at the
Speaker 2: time that I can trace back some things in my
Speaker 2: or our lives that have influenced the shaping and making
Speaker 2: of the book. When I look back at history of
Speaker 2: the Reign, I remember that my father had died, and
Speaker 2: as is the common way I think among Irish fathers
Speaker 2: and sons, if there was emotional material happening in your life,
Speaker 2: you didn't really speak to your father about it. So
Speaker 2: my father knew that I had written a novel called
Speaker 2: Four Letters of Love, so we definitely weren't going to
Speaker 2: talk about that. And so when I wrote the novels,
Speaker 2: I would bring them and give them to my father
Speaker 2: and he'd say sign that to me, and I would
Speaker 2: sign it to him, and he would take it and
Speaker 2: put on the shelf. And that was throughout the course
Speaker 2: of his life. Each book would go on a shelf,
Speaker 2: and we would never ever speak about it. But when
Speaker 2: my father died, he left a handwritten will, and in
Speaker 2: that will, the only mention that I get in that
Speaker 2: will is for nihle my books just that, and it
Speaker 2: was like a acknowledgment back to my life choice. And
Speaker 2: in turn, it was also in acknowledgment of the fact
Speaker 2: that my writing life began with my reading life, and
Speaker 2: that was that every two weeks my father brought us
Speaker 2: to the library, so he would come home from work
Speaker 2: and in the evening, and on Wednesday evenings the library
Speaker 2: stayed open until nine, and so by six thirty half
Speaker 2: past six, we would get in the car and drive
Speaker 2: to Ballsbridge in Dublin to the Pembroke Library. And when
Speaker 2: he let you in the doors of that library at night,
Speaker 2: he went to his section and you could go anywhere
Speaker 2: and you didn't have to gather back again until half
Speaker 2: past eight and sign out your books with him, and
Speaker 2: he would just look at your books, and I'd carry
Speaker 2: out my stack of books, he'd carry out his, and
Speaker 2: that was it. And then two weeks later we'd be
Speaker 2: back again in that situation. And it was my first
Speaker 2: experience of the idea that you can choose your own books,
Speaker 2: and what a freeing idea that was, because in school
Speaker 2: they said this is the textbook, everyone read this. But
Speaker 2: when you walked in the doors library, go anywhere and
Speaker 2: the books that you were picking become part of your
Speaker 2: own definition as to who you are. And for me,
Speaker 2: at age twelve, that was a sort of extraordinary free thing.
Speaker 2: You could pick anything. So when he died and I
Speaker 2: drove to Dublin from County Clare, so across the country
Speaker 2: to the nursing home, where he had died to collect
Speaker 2: his books, and I brought them home, something extraordinarly powerful
Speaker 2: happened to me, and that was the sense that even
Speaker 2: though these were not the books that I would have
Speaker 2: chosen myself, they were the books that my father had read.
Speaker 2: So his hands had held them, his hands had turned
Speaker 2: the pages, his eyes had been on each page. And
Speaker 2: so in some way that became the life spring of
Speaker 2: the book that became History of the Reign. Where Root's father,
Speaker 2: the poet has died, and he has routed his ill
Speaker 2: and doesn't leave the house, and she is in the
Speaker 2: room in the attic where all her father's books have
Speaker 2: been left, and she begins to read those books to
Speaker 2: find her father Nile.
Speaker 1: With that in mind, I can't let you rush past
Speaker 1: Pembroke Library. As a twelve year old, in the books
Speaker 1: that you were choosing, what was defining you then?
Speaker 3: What did you read?
Speaker 2: Almost nothing that was Irish based, because you were using
Speaker 2: books as a sort of doorway to the world, and
Speaker 2: you were very aware as a twelve year old that
Speaker 2: Ireland was a small place out on the edge of
Speaker 2: the Atlantic, and that the rest of the world will
Speaker 2: where all the adventures took place even in England. That
Speaker 2: so there was no Irish reading at that time. It
Speaker 2: wasn't until I was maybe thirteen and fourteen fifteen started
Speaker 2: reading short Irish short story writers Frank O'Connor and Daniel
Speaker 2: Corkory and of people like that transformative moment for me.
Speaker 2: In the moment, I think that is the book that
Speaker 2: made me want to be a writer was Charles Dickens's
Speaker 2: Great Expectations, which we had to read at age fourteen.
Speaker 2: Everyone in the country had to read it for your
Speaker 2: intersert exam, which is extraordinary to think of nowadays have
Speaker 2: every fourteen year old in the country reading Great Expectations,
Speaker 2: not abridged Great Explanations, to full Expectations. So the significant
Speaker 2: thing I've told it before was that mister Mason, our
Speaker 2: English teacher, he sat at the desk at the top
Speaker 2: and you opened Great Expectations, and the four long windows
Speaker 2: were steamed up with condensation, so you're inside a closed space,
Speaker 2: and he would say your name. He'd call out a
Speaker 2: name and that person would begin reading on the page,
Speaker 2: and everybody else in the classroom thirty two boys had
Speaker 2: to pay really close attention to what line what the
Speaker 2: person reading was allowed was on, because at any moment,
Speaker 2: even halfway through a sentence, mister Mason could call out
Speaker 2: your name, and then you would have to carry on
Speaker 2: from exactly where the person had stopped. And if you
Speaker 2: failed to carry on, you got to write out the
Speaker 2: page of Great Expectations that night, which seemed a lot
Speaker 2: of writing out. It was a better idea than giving lines,
Speaker 2: but it was intense. So as a result of that,
Speaker 2: we read Great Expectations attached by the Finger, and so
Speaker 2: I was inside the book through that finger portal and
Speaker 2: through watching it so carefully. So when Pip fell in
Speaker 2: love with Di Stella, I fell in love with di Stella.
Speaker 2: When she rejected him, she rejected me, and so that
Speaker 2: was the reason that I entered. I entered the book
Speaker 2: first fully. I think, then.
Speaker 1: It's a moment you give to know from memory, and
Speaker 1: this is happiness where he's trying to conjure up a
Speaker 1: havishm figure in his mind, and that connection with that
Speaker 1: novel is a really important one to.
Speaker 3: Him there and we'll come to it in a moment.
Speaker 1: But in the time of the Child, you have a
Speaker 1: character who is clearly doomed to be a writer. You
Speaker 1: make it clear that that's her fate and her future.
Speaker 1: Is that a cur through a blessing you're giving Ronnie
Speaker 1: in that book.
Speaker 2: Well, for me, it's a blessing. I make most sense
Speaker 2: to the world by being a writer. I'm a better
Speaker 2: person when i'm writing, unerstand the world better when i'm writing,
Speaker 2: and I can live better as a person writing. So
Speaker 2: I think for Ronnie in Time of the Child, it
Speaker 2: will be a kind of salvation as a writer. In writing,
Speaker 2: same as in reading, I think, is a way to
Speaker 2: conquer loneliness, and it's also that extraordinary thing. I think
Speaker 2: James Wood the Critic, spoke about it in his book
Speaker 2: The Nearest Thing to Life, and he talks about this
Speaker 2: idea that when you're reading a novel, there's a kind
Speaker 2: of communion that happens. Your own loneliness is banished, and
Speaker 2: you move towards the other, the person that is inside
Speaker 2: the pages, and that in turn comes back to deepen
Speaker 2: your own humanity. It's kind of circular gift that's given
Speaker 2: out and comes back to you through the experience of reading.
Speaker 2: So I think for Ronnie, especially as a woman writer
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixties Ireland, difficult, difficult, difficult, that will be
Speaker 2: her salvation and how she comes to accept who she
Speaker 2: is and how she is That.
Speaker 1: Strength and that community given by the experience of rating,
Speaker 1: I think is a really important thing and evident in
Speaker 1: your work that you do as you say you have
Speaker 1: the line about Ronnie. That added to this reserve was
Speaker 1: not only the screened lives of all the women in
Speaker 1: the parish at the time, but the marginal nature of
Speaker 1: all writers, that idea that a writer is inevitably outside
Speaker 1: the community that they're writing about.
Speaker 3: Do you feel that.
Speaker 2: I do, absolutely. I think probably I was a marginal
Speaker 2: person before I was a writer, but then found that
Speaker 2: that was a good place for a writer to be.
Speaker 2: So the writer should be in the margins and not
Speaker 2: in the center. And so I believe that profoundly that
Speaker 2: I'm trying to put another person on the page. It's
Speaker 2: not about me, it's other people, and other people are
Speaker 2: sort of endlessly fascinating because of this bizarre thing that
Speaker 2: everybody thinks they're normal. And how how bizarre that is
Speaker 2: when you think about it, that actually there's not two
Speaker 2: people on the planet who are the same, but each
Speaker 2: one thinks that they are normal. And that's just fantastic
Speaker 2: for a fiction writer. Because people keep revealing their oddity
Speaker 2: and their quirks in which they think is this is
Speaker 2: a normal thing to do.
Speaker 1: I think that's true in a sense, in an individual
Speaker 1: and human sense. It's also true of a place. You're
Speaker 1: right early in This is happiness. Farha was no more
Speaker 1: nor less than any other like place. If you could
Speaker 1: find it, you'd be on your way somewhere else. The
Speaker 1: country is filled with places of more blatant beauty. Good
Speaker 1: luck to them. Farha doesn't care. It has long since
Speaker 1: accepted the by dint of personality and geography, its destiny
Speaker 1: was to be a place passed over and gently wholly forgotten.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that place called far out the window
Speaker 1: of Ruth Swain's house, where she doesn't go.
Speaker 2: So Fao would be embarrassed that we're actually talking about it,
Speaker 2: and they talk about somewhere else, and the more beautiful places.
Speaker 2: There are more notable places, and you shouldn't if you're
Speaker 2: stopping in Fa, you're asking the way somewhere else. Part
Speaker 2: of the attraction for me in the place, for how
Speaker 2: I think in the making of it was ordinariness. Because
Speaker 2: the longer I've lived, the more I've come to appreciate
Speaker 2: the extraordinary thing about ordinariness and the same thing that
Speaker 2: I just said about people feeling that they are normal
Speaker 2: and they are actually quite extraordinary. So sometime during the
Speaker 2: writing of This Is Happiness, something happened to me that
Speaker 2: hadn't happened before when I was writing a novel, And
Speaker 2: that is maybe two thirds of the way through, I
Speaker 2: realized I didn't want the book to end, that I
Speaker 2: want to stay in this world and with these people,
Speaker 2: and I was actually had fallen in love. I'd fallen
Speaker 2: in love with Christy and Noel and those people and
Speaker 2: the whole world of it. And I found that the
Speaker 2: more I wrote, more characters were appearing and that was
Speaker 2: an interesting character. And at this person pause a minute
Speaker 2: on the street and go in here, and this is
Speaker 2: an interesting So it was becoming larger the more I
Speaker 2: was in it. And so before I finished This Is Happiness,
Speaker 2: I knew that I was going to write another fan novel.
Speaker 2: I wanted to stay there, and the hard thing would
Speaker 2: be that it wasn't going to be a first person novel.
Speaker 2: I wanted to make each novel stand alone and not
Speaker 2: be not be a sequel as such, but still to
Speaker 2: create a series of novels that would be a continuum.
Speaker 2: And I think before even before I started Time of
Speaker 2: the Child, I realized that my aim would be to
Speaker 2: try to write a series of novels in the time
Speaker 2: between the coming of electricity and the coming of the Internet.
Speaker 2: I'll plot the second half of the twentieth century in
Speaker 2: one community, and what happens to church and community, and
Speaker 2: what happens to people, families, and all the change that
Speaker 2: occurs as to tell division comms and so on and so
Speaker 2: forth as things change in a community over that period
Speaker 2: of time.
Speaker 1: When we return, Nialla and I discuss why a doctor
Speaker 1: makes sense for the main character of Kind of the Child,
Speaker 1: and he also shares why there's only one reader of
Speaker 1: his work that really matters.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: So now you've undertaken, or you've been taken over by
Speaker 1: this project of her. There must have been a certain
Speaker 1: satisfaction in seeing the paths that you'd opened up to yourselves.
Speaker 1: And in particular, I'm thinking about doctor Troy as the
Speaker 1: central character of Time of the Child, because, as you
Speaker 1: make very clear, a doctor and a place like Faha
Speaker 1: is privy to everything.
Speaker 2: Yes, when I was writing this is howiness where the
Speaker 2: doctor first appears. I didn't think he would be the
Speaker 2: next major character of time of the Child, But I
Speaker 2: think there were a few things that informed that decision
Speaker 2: as to how that came about, again only in hindsight.
Speaker 2: So first of all, there was an extraordinary moment, and
Speaker 2: this was a moment that we all lived through when
Speaker 2: COVID first began, And there came a moment when everybody
Speaker 2: was asked at a certain time to go outside and
Speaker 2: applaud healthcare workers bang pots and pans if you were
Speaker 2: in cities, and applaud them a specific moment in time,
Speaker 2: like it was six o'clock and everybody did it. And
Speaker 2: so that sense of what it was to be in
Speaker 2: healthcare and going out and dealing with ill people all
Speaker 2: the time made me think in my microcos fictional world
Speaker 2: of the doctor in a village where every single person
Speaker 2: is his patient. So I thought it was an extraordinary
Speaker 2: thing that first of all about doctors, and then this
Speaker 2: idea in a community where he knows all the secrets
Speaker 2: of everybody, the corporal secrets of everybody, and what would
Speaker 2: it be like if he had a secret, because he
Speaker 2: can't tell any of those people. And that has created
Speaker 2: that dynamic of that character.
Speaker 1: One of the crucial things you reveal about him, though,
Speaker 1: is that he has been thwarted in He has lost,
Speaker 1: as he says it, the opportunity for love a second
Speaker 1: time in his life, and for the second far hard
Speaker 1: book in a row. You have a man who's in
Speaker 1: love with any Money.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're all. We're all in love with any Mooney.
Speaker 3: So I'm curious about this.
Speaker 1: Is any Mooney going to be the kind of stob
Speaker 1: that goes across decades in this town.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe go back to us selling gra victations. I
Speaker 2: don't know to any Mooney. Yes, is the doctor was
Speaker 2: in love with any Mooney, but it was undeclared love.
Speaker 2: And just as he was about to declare it, we
Speaker 2: find out in this novel, was when Christian this his
Speaker 2: happiness had arrived back who was her first love. So
Speaker 2: the thing about the doctor is at the start of
Speaker 2: the novel his love didn't happen, and he has fallen
Speaker 2: out of love with the human race, and he has
Speaker 2: a profound melancholy and he doesn't believe anything in this
Speaker 2: life is going to shift it. So we have to,
Speaker 2: over the course of the novel move the doctor back
Speaker 2: into humanity, and it comes in a most shocking way
Speaker 2: to him, which is that he witnesses his daughter fall
Speaker 2: in love with a baby, and that was not something
Speaker 2: he could have expected, but that in turn becomes the
Speaker 2: bridge to get him back into humanity.
Speaker 1: Could you have written Time of the Child without having
Speaker 1: become a grandfather yourself?
Speaker 2: No, certainly not so. Our daughter Jirdre gave birth to
Speaker 2: Esme Willow during the time when I was writing this,
Speaker 2: and it was an extraordinary thing. When I first held
Speaker 2: Esme in my arms. Nothing had quite prepared me for that.
Speaker 2: It was a shock to feel how much feeling I
Speaker 2: felt rushed through me in that moment, and for my daughter,
Speaker 2: and seeing my daughter in a completely different light as
Speaker 2: a mother. Suddenly, in an instant she was a mother,
Speaker 2: and that was just so profoundly moving. And I was
Speaker 2: sort of, I think, surprised by joyous Wordsworth. I was
Speaker 2: surprised by love pulls through me. And it seemed to
Speaker 2: me that when writing the novel, you know, maybe because
Speaker 2: in our life, and for Christ and I life, we
Speaker 2: have the chosen family. As such, we chose to adopt
Speaker 2: the children and that and there was a burden of
Speaker 2: responsibility that comes with that, but also the thing of
Speaker 2: loving a stranger. You know, that is one of the
Speaker 2: central tenements of Christianity, I think, but actually of humanity
Speaker 2: to love the other person who is not connected to
Speaker 2: you in any way, who's put into your arms. And
Speaker 2: the measure of what it would be to have a
Speaker 2: child to put in your arms that was not connected
Speaker 2: to you, That the child in this novel is not
Speaker 2: connected to or doctor Troy, but it's put into their arms,
Speaker 2: and how you respond to that at that moment.
Speaker 1: I understand you write one sentence at a time, which
Speaker 1: seems like a stupid phrase now I say it out loud, but.
Speaker 3: You let it pull you along.
Speaker 2: Liked. Yes, I write one sentence out of time. So
Speaker 2: no so because I don't plan out anything and I
Speaker 2: just get a first sentence. I can only start a
Speaker 2: book when I have a first sentence. I get a
Speaker 2: first sentence, and I then try to figure out what
Speaker 2: is the next sentence. I have no idea where it's going,
Speaker 2: but I have a maybe foolish belief, but a belief
Speaker 2: nonetheless that has stood me is that the book exists
Speaker 2: out there and it's coming towards me. If I call
Speaker 2: towards it and I mustn't force it. So I've described
Speaker 2: it as my sense is that when I get a
Speaker 2: first sentence, it's like the tip of an invisible thread
Speaker 2: of which only the tip is visible. And that's that
Speaker 2: first sentence. And if I tease it out a little
Speaker 2: more all the time, it'll keep coming. Don't yank it,
Speaker 2: don't force it, don't look at it too carefully. Just
Speaker 2: follow the sentence, follow the sentence, and at the end
Speaker 2: over here is a coat, in this case, a book
Speaker 2: that has been always there, implied by that first sentence.
Speaker 2: So it's coming towards me. I'm just trying to pay
Speaker 2: attention to what's happening on the page. So that's how
Speaker 2: I write. I write each sentence out loud, and I
Speaker 2: say it out to myself because I'm sorry to tell you,
Speaker 2: but I'm just writing the book for myself. You're an
Speaker 2: added bonus, but really I would be doing it for
Speaker 2: myself because it's the writing gives me the greatest pleasure
Speaker 2: and profound joy. Beauty of language, rhythm, cadence, music, these things.
Speaker 2: And I feel, in some again maybe invented way, that
Speaker 2: I'm connected in some way to artist traditions of oral
Speaker 2: storytelling and so when Chris and I first moved to
Speaker 2: County Claire in nineteen eighty five, all our neighbors were
Speaker 2: older people, and the entertainment was we went to their
Speaker 2: houses in the evening. You'd go in the back door.
Speaker 2: You didn't need to be invited. You would just go
Speaker 2: in and sit down and have tea and they would
Speaker 2: ask you about your day and so on. And we
Speaker 2: were there in entertainment because we were trying to manage
Speaker 2: four cows and we didn't know anything about cows and
Speaker 2: finding out how to live in a place, and so
Speaker 2: story was a way to pass the evening and no
Speaker 2: television was on. There might be a radio on the
Speaker 2: background of some music. But basically story was a way
Speaker 2: to pass the evening, past the time. And therefore the
Speaker 2: point of a story was not to get to the
Speaker 2: end of a story. The point was not to get
Speaker 2: to the point. The point is to pass the time.
Speaker 1: How long did it take you to have the faith
Speaker 1: in that process in your books? You know, between you,
Speaker 1: you and Chris have written twenty books in the forty
Speaker 1: years since you moved to Ireland. How long did it
Speaker 1: take you to have the faith in your skills as
Speaker 1: a writer? To say, I'm going to delicately pull this
Speaker 1: thread and enjoy the process.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the truth is I don't have any faith
Speaker 2: in my skills as a writer, and I'm still a
Speaker 2: person who is constantly asking the question is this any good?
Speaker 2: And what seemed good today may not seem good tomorrow.
Speaker 2: So you're constantly working with doubt. And I think that's necessary. Actually,
Speaker 2: I've come not to resist it or worry about it.
Speaker 2: And if there are any writers listening anywhere, don't be
Speaker 2: afraid of doubt. Don't be afraid of thinking it's terrible
Speaker 2: today and it was good yesterday. I think that's a
Speaker 2: sort of necessary part of the creation.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to briefly touch on how much for
Speaker 1: you your writing career, your creative, imaginative life is inseparable
Speaker 1: from your marriage, from the life that you live in,
Speaker 1: the life that you and Chris have made for yourselves.
Speaker 3: And I've read an interview with you where.
Speaker 1: You said to the interviewer, I feel like the word
Speaker 1: wife doesn't say enough. It doesn't get to what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to describe about Chris. I guess i'd say she's
Speaker 1: my first rader, that the first rader is above all else.
Speaker 1: You're right together, your garden together, You've built this life together. Yes,
Speaker 1: do you have a sense of that as an extraordinary
Speaker 1: creative collaboration rather than because that's not normal. Just to
Speaker 1: be clear, my partner loves me, but she's irritated when
Speaker 1: I come in the kitchen when she's there.
Speaker 2: No, I never think of Christmas, my wife. I never
Speaker 2: think of that word. It seems very limiting. I think
Speaker 2: of Chris is the other half of my soul. And
Speaker 2: so we made that decision to be together from the
Speaker 2: moment we met each other, and the decision to get
Speaker 2: off the commuter train in Manhattan and go to this
Speaker 2: four room cottage in County Clare was a joint decision
Speaker 2: to see did we have any talent? And we make
Speaker 2: each other's talents. She makes me a better person, and
Speaker 2: I hope I make her a better person. That's how
Speaker 2: it's beIN And when we adopted the two children, that
Speaker 2: was part of that same thing. So to say, Chris
Speaker 2: is my first reader. Chris is the only reader that counts.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry everybody, She's the reader that counts. And the
Speaker 2: last thing I'll say is just quickly, so when I finish,
Speaker 2: when I'm working on a novel, and she knows I'm
Speaker 2: working on a novel. In that time, there's no other income,
Speaker 2: so our savings are diminishing. And for two years that's happening.
Speaker 2: And everything depends therefore on us being able to sell
Speaker 2: that novel at the end, and that gives us another
Speaker 2: two years to live and carry on like that. So
Speaker 2: it goes like this, So everything depends upon it. But
Speaker 2: at no time during that does Chris say, show me
Speaker 2: some pages. I want to know, is this any good?
Speaker 2: So for two years I'll write the novel and she'll
Speaker 2: know I'm writing the novel, and at the end, I'll
Speaker 2: give it to her and I'll get it printed out.
Speaker 2: It's a full manuscript, and it's there on the table
Speaker 2: and I see then after about two or three days,
Speaker 2: this many pages have turned over and they're like that
Speaker 2: on the table. But she doesn't say anything. And then
Speaker 2: a few more pages go over each day, and so
Speaker 2: on and so forth, and for maybe a week she's
Speaker 2: reading the novel, but she's not mentioning it, and I'm
Speaker 2: not asking her. And that's how it is. But everything
Speaker 2: depends upon it. And we gardened together, we worked together,
Speaker 2: cooked dinner, or she cooks dinner and whatever, and that's
Speaker 2: how it is. And now the last page is over
Speaker 2: and the manuscript is upside down, and that was the
Speaker 2: case with the Time of the Child. And she finished it,
Speaker 2: turned the last page over, and she said nothing at all,
Speaker 2: nothing nothing, not out of cruelty, because she wants to
Speaker 2: be honest. She has a compulsion to be honest and true,
Speaker 2: and she wants to exactly think what it is that
Speaker 2: she wanted to say. So I waited, and normally the
Speaker 2: writer is waiting for the person that wants the person
Speaker 2: to say, oh, it's wonderful, and then the writer goes, yeah,
Speaker 2: but how wonderful, and I got really wonderful or really
Speaker 2: really wonderful and so on, and she's too honest to
Speaker 2: do any of that. And she didn't do any of that.
Speaker 2: And what she did in the end was she turned
Speaker 2: to me and said, well, it's pure Nile Williams. And
Speaker 2: at the time you go, oh, okay, is it wonderful
Speaker 2: not Williams or bad not Williams. And in the end
Speaker 2: I realized that actually that was the best thing any
Speaker 2: writer can ever hear, because what all writers are trying
Speaker 2: to do is essentially just make their signature. That's it.
Speaker 2: It's that same moment that I began this discussion with
Speaker 2: when I said, you go and what are the books
Speaker 2: that you choose in the library, because they are actually you.
Speaker 2: They're telling you who you are because they are the
Speaker 2: books you choose. So in the same way when she
Speaker 2: said it's pure Nile Williams, that actually is better than
Speaker 2: it's wonderful, because that's the goal, to create something that
Speaker 2: is actually your own spirit that has now come outside
Speaker 2: you and is now in the physical binding of a book.
Speaker 3: Please join me in thanking the very nile wilderness.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you for ma.
Speaker 3: Niall.
Speaker 1: Williams's latest novel, Time of the Child is available at
Speaker 1: all good bookstores now, and if you're in Melbourne, get
Speaker 1: along to the State Library Victoria. They have a new
Speaker 1: exhibition that kicks off on the sixteenth of April. It's
Speaker 1: called Make Believe Encounters with Misinformation. It's free to the
Speaker 1: public and it's all about the many ways in which
Speaker 1: misinformation has shaped our lives and our culture. It's playful,
Speaker 1: curious and terribly terribly timely. Before we go, I wanted
Speaker 1: to tell you what I've been reading this week, and
Speaker 1: former read this guest, Kate Grenville has a new book
Speaker 1: of nonfiction out. It's a terrific book and well worth reading,
Speaker 1: and dives into the story behind the writing of her
Speaker 1: classic The Secret River. It's called Unsettled, a journey through
Speaker 1: time and place, and she grabbed with both her ancestry
Speaker 1: and the complicated, forgotten, denied history of this country. It's
Speaker 1: a terrific greed.
Speaker 3: You can find it and all the others.
Speaker 1: We mentioned at your favorite independent bookstore. That's it for
Speaker 1: this week's show. If you enjoyed it, please tell your
Speaker 1: friends and rate and review us. It does genuinely help.
Speaker 1: Next week, I'm read this and another Irish writer, but
Speaker 1: this one calls Australia home. It's Chris Flynn.
Speaker 4: That opening scene of the book is exactly what happened
Speaker 4: in my dream. I live in a small regional time
Speaker 4: and I was there on the footy ground watching it
Speaker 4: all happen. And when I got up the next morning,
Speaker 4: I brought it down and it's the opening scene of
Speaker 4: the book. Almost forbid him as like as it happened
Speaker 4: in my dream. And then over the next hour the
Speaker 4: rest of it all just appeared. So the whole book
Speaker 4: was there right to the ending, right from the beginning,
Speaker 4: and I thought, oh, bloody hell, now I'm going to
Speaker 4: have to write the friggin thing.
Speaker 3: Read.
Speaker 1: This is a Schwartz Media production, made possible by the
Speaker 1: generous support of the our group.
Speaker 3: The show is.
Speaker 1: Produced and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing this week
Speaker 1: from Zalton Fetcher, who also provides our original compositions. See
Speaker 1: you next week.