Speaker 1: So because I simply can't get enough of sharing books
Speaker 1: I'm excited by with other readers. One of my side
Speaker 1: hustles is a monthly page in the Quantas in Flight
Speaker 1: magazine recommending books. Even if I'm not jumping on a
Speaker 1: plane quite as often as I'd like, there's something deeply
Speaker 1: satisfying about being able to steer the reading selections of
Speaker 1: weary travelers. I like to imagine people getting off their planes,
Speaker 1: dusting crumbs off their lap, and popping into that airport
Speaker 1: bookstore off the back of my recommendation. Anyway, last month
Speaker 1: I wrote one such review for a book called Orpheus nine.
Speaker 1: It's the latest novel from Irish born Melbourne based writer
Speaker 1: Chris Flynn, and it was an enthusiastic recommendation. But something
Speaker 1: strange happened. The editor of the Quantus mag came back
Speaker 1: to me and she gently asked if I might swap
Speaker 1: it out for a different book. We worry the content
Speaker 1: is too graphic, was the message, And while I was stumped,
Speaker 1: I was not surprised because the driving PREMI behind this
Speaker 1: novel is a particularly bleak kind of horrifying. One day,
Speaker 1: while watching their primary school aged children playing a game,
Speaker 1: of football. The people of the small Australian town of
Speaker 1: Gatten see all the nine year olds on the field
Speaker 1: suddenly die a gruesome death after simultaneously chanting some lines
Speaker 1: from King Lear in Latin. Something supernatural or other worldly
Speaker 1: is afoot, and it's a global phenomenon across the world.
Speaker 1: One hundred and thirty million children die on that first day,
Speaker 1: and in the weeks and months afterwards, any child who
Speaker 1: turns nine likewise dies horribly. It's maybe not that surprising
Speaker 1: in hindsight. The quandas had doubts about whether that was
Speaker 1: the kind of vibe airborne commuters were craving. But the
Speaker 1: ensuing book is surprising. It's a page turner, and it's
Speaker 1: even blackly funny. Amongst its achievements, Flynn sets the whole
Speaker 1: thing in small town Australia, following three former schoolmates. Now
Speaker 1: adults are affected by the phenomenon in different ways. While
Speaker 1: it's a global, even other worldly set of stakes, it's
Speaker 1: understood through the lens of a single community. For anyone
Speaker 1: who's read Flynn before, the sense of humor and agile
Speaker 1: play won't come as a surprise, but the ambition and
Speaker 1: the utterly fearless, play with the monstrous. Find him in
Speaker 1: New Territory. This is an Australian Stephen King novel, horror
Speaker 1: and social commentary and more than anything, deeply gripping.
Speaker 2: So fasten your child's seatbelt.
Speaker 1: Before your own, stole your trade table and snacks, and
Speaker 1: get ready for a bumpy flight. I'm Michael Williams and.
Speaker 2: This is read.
Speaker 1: This a show about the books we love and the
Speaker 1: stories behind them. My own question to you seems self evident. You,
Speaker 1: Chris Flynn, no one, No one hurt me.
Speaker 2: Were you bullied as a nine year old?
Speaker 3: I was relentlessly bullied as a child because I was skinny,
Speaker 3: milinky long legs, as my mum used to call me.
Speaker 3: She said, I've seen better legs hanging out of a
Speaker 3: bird's nest.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: That's a hard one to come back from. And my
Speaker 3: dad was a former bodybuilder, so I was the weakling
Speaker 3: who's constantly abused for not being able to lift huge
Speaker 3: fence posts that he could lift.
Speaker 4: With one hand.
Speaker 3: But I have nothing against kids personally.
Speaker 4: I grew up in.
Speaker 3: A foster family in that my mom and dad were
Speaker 3: foster parents when I was in my early teens and
Speaker 3: my sister was four years younger than me, and so
Speaker 3: throughout my teenage years we had kids in the house,
Speaker 3: over one hundred little.
Speaker 4: Kids, all young.
Speaker 3: They're all seized by the social services for various reasons,
Speaker 3: sometimes for a few weeks, sometimes months, and a couple
Speaker 3: of cases we had them for years. So I had
Speaker 3: all these little brothers and sisters, and my sister and
Speaker 3: I were pseudo parents. In fact, we'd often walk around
Speaker 3: the housing estate in Belfast pushing the buggy and people
Speaker 3: would assume we were the mum and dad because there's
Speaker 3: so many teenage pregnancies of these kids, and we were horrified.
Speaker 3: Or we would sometimes say no, no, we're brother and sister, which.
Speaker 4: Would freak people like them.
Speaker 1: That's very reassuring, that's what you want to hear about
Speaker 1: those teen parents.
Speaker 4: That's right, we're brother and sister. On top of that.
Speaker 3: So I sort of grew up being a parent to
Speaker 3: absolutely loads of little brothers and sisters. But I mean,
Speaker 3: the beautiful thing about fostering is that you're giving them
Speaker 3: stability and then the kids move on. They either would
Speaker 3: go back to their natural parents, who sometimes would have
Speaker 3: dependency issues and were sorting them some things ourselves out
Speaker 3: so they'd get the kids back, or they'd move on
Speaker 3: to an adoptive family. And the thing was you were
Speaker 3: never allowed to see them ever again, or have any
Speaker 3: contact with them whatsoever. If you saw them in the
Speaker 3: shopping center.
Speaker 4: You were told. My mom and dad were told walk
Speaker 4: the other way.
Speaker 3: And partly it's for the good of the kids, because
Speaker 3: they don't want to introduce confusion into their lives, like
Speaker 3: who are you? Why do you know me? You know,
Speaker 3: you assume that they'll just forget you. But there's a
Speaker 3: sadness to that too, and I had never really processed it.
Speaker 4: I don't think very well. And I think part of.
Speaker 3: The reason behind this book was that for some reason
Speaker 3: it just came up. My sister and I never had
Speaker 3: kids of our own, and we always wonder, is it
Speaker 3: because some sort of paternal instinct or maternal instinct was
Speaker 3: satisfied in us, something some switch was flipped and we
Speaker 3: never felt compelled.
Speaker 1: To or you associated it with an impermanence as well,
Speaker 1: like that, you know that you invest in it, it's
Speaker 1: an important thing in your life, but it's not something
Speaker 1: that you then hold on to. It's not an ongoing thing.
Speaker 3: Could be yeah, yeah, and we obviously obviously all those
Speaker 3: kids are now in their forties. I don't know what
Speaker 3: happened to them. Some of them will be alive, some
Speaker 3: not probably, but they don't know me, Yeah, they don't.
Speaker 3: They probably don't remember that I was a figure in
Speaker 3: their lives. But I wonder if maybe one of the
Speaker 3: reasons behind this book subconscient was me trying to sort
Speaker 3: of because all those kids, they might as well be
Speaker 3: dead to me, you know, and this this book my
Speaker 3: way of sort of copying with that.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: If it's a coping mechanism, it's a deeply unhealthy one,
Speaker 1: and I suggest you get some therapy.
Speaker 2: That's all I say.
Speaker 1: I mean, the reason I start there is that when
Speaker 1: the advanced reading copy of this book arrived, the publisher
Speaker 1: basically sold it in the advanced reading copy as Chris
Speaker 1: Flynn was standing at a kid's football game and basically
Speaker 1: had a vision.
Speaker 3: Yes, So what happened to me was I drove myself
Speaker 3: seven thousand kilometers around Australia, staying in murder motels, visiting
Speaker 3: over one hundred book shops. And I wanted to do
Speaker 3: it because it was twenty twenty two and I hadn't
Speaker 3: got to do that with Mammoth, which is twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: because everything was locked down and it was an adventure.
Speaker 3: But when I got back, the last thing I wanted
Speaker 3: to think about was books are writing. I got home thought, okay,
Speaker 3: I do want to be bothered with this, and I
Speaker 3: had to dream like a few days later, in which
Speaker 3: that opening scene of the book is exactly what happened.
Speaker 4: In my dream.
Speaker 3: I was standing there alongside these parents. I live in
Speaker 3: a small regional town, and I was there on the
Speaker 3: footy ground watching it all happen. And when I got
Speaker 3: up the next morning, I wrote it down, and it's
Speaker 3: the opening scene in the book almost forbade him as
Speaker 3: like as it happened in my dream. And then over
Speaker 3: the next hour, the rest of it all just appeared.
Speaker 3: And so the whole book was there, right to the ending,
Speaker 3: right from the beginning, and I thought, oh, bloody hell,
Speaker 3: now I'm going to have to write the freaking thing,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: And it was the start of the summer.
Speaker 3: I was intending to take some time off, and I
Speaker 3: ended up just giving up my summer to sit on
Speaker 3: my computer every day and watches this thing appeared before
Speaker 3: my eyes.
Speaker 4: So who knows where that came from.
Speaker 1: You do something that I particularly love, and I think
Speaker 1: it's what makes the book work as well as it does,
Speaker 1: which is you take this kind of speculative, fantastical premise
Speaker 1: has global ramifications, but then you write about it in
Speaker 1: an intensely local way rather than canvas and here's how
Speaker 1: it's rolling out in Paris and Tokyo and New York
Speaker 1: and whatever. You bring it right in and you go
Speaker 1: very small and very intimate, kind of essentially with three
Speaker 1: protagonists who are all relating to this global tragedy in
Speaker 1: their own different ways. And a town called Gatton, which
Speaker 1: is kind of seven and a half thousand people small
Speaker 1: population was the town? I mean, are you just writing
Speaker 1: about where you live? And it's thinly veiled and every
Speaker 1: nasty person in the book is one of your neighbors.
Speaker 4: A little bit.
Speaker 3: I have to be careful so I don't get hung
Speaker 3: drawn and quartered. I tend to not reveal the time
Speaker 3: that I live in so that.
Speaker 1: I nearly said it that be nice, Michael Brandon.
Speaker 3: But obviously if I'm speaking to anyone local, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: it's clearly somewhere else, some horrible place in Queensland. That's
Speaker 3: got nothing to do with where I live, but the
Speaker 3: general framework of the time is is very similar.
Speaker 4: To where I live.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the local thing I think is important for this
Speaker 3: kind of story. I'm not a big fan of those
Speaker 3: sort of apocalypse books where it's like we've got to
Speaker 3: get on the cargo plane and fly to Paris next
Speaker 3: and to talk to a scientist and then he sends
Speaker 3: us to you know, Cape Town, like boring, Like how
Speaker 3: on earth can a person relate to that? And it
Speaker 3: just seemed a very relatable story from the beginning, a
Speaker 3: very intimate story from the beginning. And although the premise
Speaker 3: it's a premise heavy book, but the premises, as you say,
Speaker 3: has gotten out of the way at the beginning, and
Speaker 3: then it's very focused on a local level on how
Speaker 3: people respond to your disaster because it all happened to us,
Speaker 3: all right, you know, there was a global disaster and
Speaker 3: we all had to deal with it in our own,
Speaker 3: very localized way because we were actually trapped in our
Speaker 3: own homes to that sort of degree, in your neighbors,
Speaker 3: the street you were in, you became very intimate with that.
Speaker 3: So it made sense to approach it in those terms.
Speaker 1: Thinking in particular as Melbourne based person who went through
Speaker 1: the COVID lockdowns here, in many ways it has the
Speaker 1: beats of a pandemic novel that actually, if you take
Speaker 1: away the more fantastical elements and you take away some
Speaker 1: of the more kind of overt body horror stuff, what
Speaker 1: you have at the heart is a society that's assumptions
Speaker 1: about itself and how it operates irretrievably fractured and trying
Speaker 1: to find some version of normalcy after that. And in particular,
Speaker 1: the relationship with Salt is very reminiscent of many of
Speaker 1: the responses to COVID and the anti vaxx crowd and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Were you aware of it as
Speaker 1: a kind of COVID allegory or is that just something
Speaker 1: that's easy to impose on it afterwards?
Speaker 3: It was imposed a little bit as I went along.
Speaker 3: I'm not so interested in COVID as I am in
Speaker 3: hope people's opinions. Everyone's got an opinion about everything. Now
Speaker 3: we're expected to be experts on all matters, matters of science,
Speaker 3: matters of medicine, everything. And I don't know if that's
Speaker 3: a bit of an allele from COVID, where suddenly we
Speaker 3: all become very opinionated and experts, but of course none
Speaker 3: of us are experts in anything, and so I think
Speaker 3: that's what fascinated me more about the COVID thing was
Speaker 3: how all of a sudden, everyone's a scientist. All of
Speaker 3: a sudden, everyone's choosing to believe certain things they read
Speaker 3: on the Internet whilst ignoring other things because it suits
Speaker 3: their personal narrative, or it's there a coping mechanism, And
Speaker 3: that became the focus of the book was how you
Speaker 3: can have neighbors, friends who know each other, who are
Speaker 3: suddenly because of something that happens, all sent in various
Speaker 3: different directions, all believe certain things, and all believe they're correct,
Speaker 3: whereas they're probably all partially correct but also partially wrong,
Speaker 3: but not wanting to listen to what the other person's
Speaker 3: point of view might be.
Speaker 1: Part of how that rolls out, then, in the context
Speaker 1: of Alpheus nine, is that the overlay of those neighborly
Speaker 1: disagreements in the face of something bigger than themselves is
Speaker 1: all the history and baggage and stories that are not
Speaker 1: bigger than themselves, the ways in which they have come
Speaker 1: up together in this town. They have had romances and
Speaker 1: let each other down and secrets and betrayals and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. How do you get the stakes
Speaker 1: right in a book like this where you know you're
Speaker 1: open with a cataclysmic thing. How do you find the
Speaker 1: space for character staff for comedy, even when you're killing
Speaker 1: off kids on page three?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, Well, the killing of kids thing will probably
Speaker 3: put people off, but you sort of get past that,
Speaker 3: and it probably will be a bit of an issue
Speaker 3: for some people. They'll be put off by the idea
Speaker 3: of it. And I certainly have parents of nin yeurals
Speaker 3: particularly who've said to me, I'm not reading this, whereas
Speaker 3: other parents of non YURLs said I'm definitely reading this
Speaker 3: because my kid does my head in. But yeah, how
Speaker 3: do you sort of get away from that? Is it's
Speaker 3: unavoidable that I have to bring up the premise at
Speaker 3: the beginning and set it up once people are past
Speaker 3: those initial pages. I think they'll find something very different
Speaker 3: on folding, because I don't dwell on that in fact,
Speaker 3: it's not really mentioned at all after the initial incident.
Speaker 4: But yeah, how do you develop those characters?
Speaker 3: The characters were standing next to me on the sidelines,
Speaker 3: and it's sort of you get this creepy feeling in
Speaker 3: the back of your neck as an author whenever this happens,
Speaker 3: because you're like, that seems like quite a complete person.
Speaker 3: There Where did they come from?
Speaker 1: That?
Speaker 3: An aspect of my personality is that sort of an
Speaker 3: amalgamation of people I know? Who is this this woman
Speaker 3: standing next to me that suddenly I know everything about,
Speaker 3: including her life as a teenager. It's hard to pin
Speaker 3: down where that comes from, but I guess that's kind
Speaker 3: of the juice for me, is being presented with these
Speaker 3: characters wherever they're coming from, and exploring them and not
Speaker 3: really knowing whether anyone will care, but hoping that they do.
Speaker 3: But also I love the idea of the premise sends
Speaker 3: people's lives in a very specific direction. But no one
Speaker 3: is all bad and no one is all good in
Speaker 3: this world. And too often in fiction things written in
Speaker 3: those black and white terms, those binary terms, and that
Speaker 3: doesn't please me. And so I saw an opportunity here
Speaker 3: is like these characters, you will like them at certain
Speaker 3: points in the book, and other times you will not
Speaker 3: like them, and then maybe you'll like them again because
Speaker 3: you will understand why they've made the choices that they've made,
Speaker 3: and so it is basically a character study of these
Speaker 3: three characters in the book. And that's probably going to
Speaker 3: also disappoint some people because they'll think it's a sort
Speaker 3: of womb bamb slam pandemic book about there's been a disaster,
Speaker 3: you know, when's the SWAT team coming in to sort
Speaker 3: all this out?
Speaker 1: When we returned, Crisis finds why a sense of mystery
Speaker 1: is so important to this book, and he shares the
Speaker 1: Holy Trinity of books he grew up will be right
Speaker 1: back amongst the many mysteries in Orpheus nine. The reciting
Speaker 1: of the passage from King Lear gives it an element
Speaker 1: of the supernatural or the other worldly that takes it
Speaker 1: from Oh, this could be a viral contagion, This could
Speaker 1: be whatever to something truly freaky.
Speaker 2: Did you.
Speaker 1: Did you have ideas about what that freakinness was?
Speaker 3: So right from the beginning, I knew exactly what this
Speaker 3: was and I know how this happened, but I have
Speaker 3: not revealed that in the book, and some may find
Speaker 3: that frustrating, but really, early on, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: reveal why this is happening, although I know why it's happening,
Speaker 3: partly because you can only really disappoint by having a
Speaker 3: resolution of people say oh it's aliens. Okay, oh that's
Speaker 3: that's a disappointment. You're only going to disappoint people. So
Speaker 3: I chose to avoid the reveal. But you're right, there's
Speaker 3: also that mysterious supernatural thing with the kids. Before they
Speaker 3: swell up full of salt, they recite a passage from
Speaker 3: King Lear in Latin, which introduces that creepiness to it
Speaker 3: where you're like, there's no way they could know that,
Speaker 3: why is that happening? So it gives that tension to
Speaker 3: the narrative right from the beginning, where you're reminded periodically, Okay,
Speaker 3: so we're dealing with people in a small town her
Speaker 3: living with the aftermath of a disaster. They've got their
Speaker 3: own problems to solve, but also there's this other thing
Speaker 3: looming over them the whole time that no one's ever
Speaker 3: really resolving either. And I think that just it gives
Speaker 3: you a through line of the books that you don't
Speaker 3: forget and you don't get bogged down in domestic politics.
Speaker 3: You have that constant reminder, that sort of eeriness that
Speaker 3: casts a shadow over the whole book.
Speaker 4: And so that was all done on purpose.
Speaker 1: And I think it's very effective because it means that
Speaker 1: the dual impulses of the book pull in different directions.
Speaker 1: It's a very grounded, very realistic book. If you let
Speaker 1: yourself forget what's laid the carters to where they are.
Speaker 1: Everything else about it is society in disarray, small town
Speaker 1: worrying about kind of who's in charge. You know, they're
Speaker 1: getting topperware from big w you know, yeah, very domestic,
Speaker 1: very kind of grounded. Do you read a lot of
Speaker 1: speculative fiction? Do you read a lot of that kind
Speaker 1: of more fantastical stuff.
Speaker 4: I sure do.
Speaker 3: In fact, I always did as a young reader, and
Speaker 3: I moved away from it a little bit and got
Speaker 3: into more literary world, you know, in my twenties and thirties,
Speaker 3: But I've gone back to it, and I find a
Speaker 3: lot more satisfaction in sort of speculative and sci fi light,
Speaker 3: fantasy light. I love that sort of black mirror Twilight Zone.
Speaker 3: I've seen so many episodes of the Twilight Zone growing up,
Speaker 3: and I think that probably influenced me more than I
Speaker 3: care to acknowledge, that idea that this is a very
Speaker 3: recognizable world in this story. But there's something off, and
Speaker 3: we can't quite put a finger on what it is,
Speaker 3: but we.
Speaker 4: All know there's something off, and you know, you could
Speaker 4: argue that that is our reality.
Speaker 3: You know, we all live in a world where we
Speaker 3: think we have certitude, but we don't really. We don't
Speaker 3: really know what's around the corner. As we all learned
Speaker 3: a harsh lesson with COVID. We never saw it coming
Speaker 3: and suddenly it affected us dramatically, and none of us
Speaker 3: really know what lies around the corner or where things.
Speaker 3: We live in an age of uncertainty, but we desperately
Speaker 3: yearn for certainty. So I think there's a really interesting tension.
Speaker 1: There having an answer to what's happening in Orpheus nine
Speaker 1: and withholding that answer from your readers, does that mean
Speaker 1: it's conceivable there's a scenario where this is a world,
Speaker 1: or a context or a premise that you would return to,
Speaker 1: Because it does seem to me that pick a different town,
Speaker 1: pick a major city, pick a different context in which
Speaker 1: they're responding to the same thing, and there's endless stories
Speaker 1: that may come out of that.
Speaker 3: What you're talking about is what I call the flu
Speaker 3: the flint literary universe. You know, good magic where the
Speaker 3: TV show comes out, and then there's an offshoot show
Speaker 3: set in another country from a different point of view.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got the branded drinking mug, but otherwise I
Speaker 1: haven't followed all the rest of it.
Speaker 3: So because I know what happens, I have had a
Speaker 3: completely bonker's, totally left field idea for a continuation of
Speaker 3: the story that would drive people up the wall. But
Speaker 3: I'll be tempted if this book does well. I mean,
Speaker 3: I've got a lot of few other things in the pipeline,
Speaker 3: but if this book does well, then I would consider
Speaker 3: tackling that. It wouldn't be easy to do, and there'd
Speaker 3: be a bit of a leap of faith people would
Speaker 3: have to take with me, and people would probably be like,
Speaker 3: what the hell what's happening now?
Speaker 1: I can see in your eyes though not only is
Speaker 1: that not off putting to you, but I suspect that's
Speaker 1: what gets you up out of bed and writing in
Speaker 1: the morning is not easy.
Speaker 2: Confounding readers and.
Speaker 1: Make them come and meet you halfway, and a sense
Speaker 1: of play, it is they the.
Speaker 2: Things that get you going.
Speaker 3: It totally is, and I've started to get into a
Speaker 3: bit of a flow state now whenever I'm writing, and
Speaker 3: then it appears. I'm like, okay, so I'm obviously onto something.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to question this too much. My favorite
Speaker 3: part of the whole writing process. I love it all,
Speaker 3: even the promotion stuff, which a lot of people hate.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 3: I guess I'm a former stage actor when I was young,
Speaker 3: and I'm a bit of a natural showman maybe, But
Speaker 3: I really love the moments when the thing is being
Speaker 3: created and I am laughing at myself, thinking what's wrong
Speaker 3: with me? Where is this coming from? Because it's a
Speaker 3: mystery to me. Every time it comes to writing a book,
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm starting from scratch, and because the
Speaker 3: ideas are often unusual and the execution of them is
Speaker 3: very different each time. But that's the joy in it
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 1: You know, apart from your own childhood and that kind
Speaker 1: of presence of lots of kids in your life. Such
Speaker 1: an important thread through this book is about parental grief,
Speaker 1: parental sense of responsibility, that kind of bond. Did you
Speaker 1: workshop this with friends with kids? Did you like pick
Speaker 1: up the scab of How would you respond to this?
Speaker 1: How would you deal with it? Or is it entirely
Speaker 1: inactive imaginative empathy.
Speaker 4: No, I did not.
Speaker 3: I don't let anyone read my work at all whilst
Speaker 3: I'm working on it. I sort of have a horror
Speaker 3: of that workshopping of things, maybe incorrectly, maybe I should,
Speaker 3: but I'm not from an academic background, so i just
Speaker 3: have no history of that in me. So I've always
Speaker 3: sort of been a loner, solitary writer who just does.
Speaker 4: His own thing.
Speaker 3: And for years I was writing books in my twenties
Speaker 3: and thirties that sometimes I would send it to publishers
Speaker 3: and you get pretty form rejections. To give you credit,
Speaker 3: you're one of the first people to ever throw me
Speaker 3: a bone in the literary world, because my first book,
Speaker 3: Tiger Needen, which came out in twenty twelve. You read
Speaker 3: a really early draft of that, which very different to
Speaker 3: the finished book, and then you met up with me
Speaker 3: for a coffee and you didn't really know me, and
Speaker 3: gave me some very pointed, kind but also firm advice
Speaker 3: about what worked and what didn't work. And I was
Speaker 3: very grateful for that. And then when I you know,
Speaker 3: over the following months, I just thought about it, and
Speaker 3: I think one of the things you said to me
Speaker 3: was about the voice, because you had heard me speak,
Speaker 3: and you said, I just don't see you in this,
Speaker 3: and it made me think, oh, is it okay to
Speaker 3: put me into it, not as a character, but as
Speaker 3: to channel a voice that comes from my head. And
Speaker 3: I ended up going away months later writing that book
Speaker 3: in the voice of a character who was a very
Speaker 3: similar to the guys I grew up with, but not me,
Speaker 3: and laughing whilst.
Speaker 4: I was doing it.
Speaker 3: Playing but for an autodidact, you know, someone who doesn't have,
Speaker 3: you know, a formal education, really, and there was no
Speaker 3: books in our house growing up. We only had three
Speaker 3: book in our house going up, because my parents are
Speaker 3: functionally illiterate, you know. The three books were and it
Speaker 3: sort of says a lot of the Illustrated Bible. The
Speaker 3: house would Pooh Corner by AA Milton and William Peter
Speaker 3: Blood is The Exorcist excellent.
Speaker 1: So those are the first three bits of three that's
Speaker 1: the Holy Trinity.
Speaker 3: But it probably explains a lot of my work.
Speaker 1: The main characters in all three were a top but
Speaker 1: no pants at some point.
Speaker 2: Probably it's a little lonely, but there you go, there
Speaker 2: you go, you go.
Speaker 3: But for someone from that background, I sort of dope
Speaker 3: working class Irish kid. You know, it meant a lot
Speaker 3: to me that you did that, because it set me
Speaker 3: on a path that I had never considered before. And
Speaker 3: isn't that the beauty about being in the arts and
Speaker 3: taking a risk sometimes and you know, having a feeling
Speaker 3: and sometimes it's those things that make all the difference.
Speaker 1: Well, it's yeah, it's the most satisfying part of working
Speaker 1: book adjacent and look abvious nine is magnificent. It deserves
Speaker 1: to do terribly well, and I hope it does. I
Speaker 1: hope people don't get scared away by the concept and
Speaker 1: they get lured in for your chicanery and trickery which
Speaker 1: is there on every page. But it's been great to
Speaker 1: chat to you today.
Speaker 3: Thanks for coming in lovely to see you, Michael.
Speaker 1: Orpheus nine by Chris Flynn is available at all Good bookstores.
Speaker 1: Before we go Two small Things One. Reading Orpheus nine
Speaker 1: reminded me of one of my favorite television programs of
Speaker 1: recent years. It's The Leftovers, which is based on a
Speaker 1: novel by Tom Parrotta.
Speaker 2: The novel is good.
Speaker 1: Parota is the guy who wrote Election, amongst other things,
Speaker 1: but the TV series is transcendent. It's about the rapture happening,
Speaker 1: and a sizeable percentage of the world's population one day
Speaker 1: disappearing without a trace. It has the same elements of
Speaker 1: mystery to it, but also kind of existential questions about
Speaker 1: who we are and what we believe. It's a great
Speaker 1: show and I recommend pushing through this somewhat.
Speaker 2: Bleak first series. And as for what I've.
Speaker 1: Been reading this week, I wanted to mention a crime
Speaker 1: novel by Scottish writer Christopher Brookmeyer. It's called The Cracked
Speaker 1: Mirror and it has alternating chapters. One from the perspective
Speaker 1: of a Miss Marple style character, written very much in
Speaker 1: the style of Agatha Christie, and then the alternating chapter
Speaker 1: is a hard boiled la detective written in the style
Speaker 1: of Michael Connolly. The two different modes of crime shouldn't
Speaker 1: work together, but the two intertwine as the characters meet
Speaker 1: each other and the ensuing book is weird, surprising, and
Speaker 1: a great one for lovers of crime fiction.
Speaker 2: You can find it and all the other books.
Speaker 1: We've mentioned today at your favorite independent bookstore.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week's show.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed it, please tell your friends and rate
Speaker 1: and review us. This week, I read This, I'm joined
Speaker 1: by James Bradley to discuss his latest novel, Landfall.
Speaker 5: My initial idea was that I wanted to find a
Speaker 5: way of writing something which put kind of climate migration
Speaker 5: at the center. Like I'd already written several books with
Speaker 5: kind of climate in them, but I wanted one that
Speaker 5: was more explicitly engaged with kind of questions of justice
Speaker 5: and questions of dislocation and refugees and those kinds of issues.
Speaker 1: Read this is a Schwarz Media production made possible thanks
Speaker 1: to the generous support of the AAR Group. The show
Speaker 1: is produced and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing and
Speaker 1: original compositions by Zolten Fletcher. Thanks for listening, See you
Speaker 1: next week. Thro