Final Draft - Great Conversations

This week we've checked out the first episode of Holden Sheppard's Invisible Boys.

Invisible Boys is the award winning debut novel from Holden Sheppard and is now a smash hit series on Stan.

Holden even pops by to talk about pioneering queer storytelling and adapting his show for the screen.

Loved this review?

You can get more books, writing and literary culture every week on the Final Draft Great Conversations podcast. Hear interviews with authors and discover your next favourite read!

Book Club is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 

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The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Ashley Kalagian Blunt is the author of Dark Mode, shortlisted for the 2024 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year. Her new novel is Cold Truth.

Ashley is in conversation with Felix Shannon

Harlow Close has made a career as an influencer uncovering the secrets of Winnipeg, dubbed ‘North America's strangest city’. The region is renowned for its sub-zero temperatures, dropping to minus 40 degrees – sometimes for months at a time. Yet, it’s not just the frigid winters and geographic seclusion that render Winnipeg peculiar.

When Harlow’s father mysteriously disappears amid a brutal cold snap, suspicions of foul play arise. It’s not like Scott to miss phone calls – and he’s been even more cautious since that time he was catfished by a romance scammer. Unhappy with the pace of the police investigation, Harlow launches her own search, enlisting her sister Blaise’s reluctant help.

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

In a special, bonus episode, Andrew welcomes Felix Shannon as a regular on the Final Draft podcast.

Felix is the renowned host of Death of the Reader and joins us with fresh ideas and a unique way of reading and discovering books.

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Karina is the author of Duck a l’Orange for Breakfast (April 2023), which was longlisted in the Indie Book Awards for Best Debut Fiction, and Never Ever Forever. Karina, alongside her friend and author Clare Fletcher, is the founder and co-host of the successful That Rom Com Pod.

Karina’s joins Andrew today with her new novel That Island Feeling.

Andie is determined to help her best friend Taylor through her divorce. A week on Pearl Island is just the beginning and Andie has an itinerary planned to help forget men and all their dramas.

Andie certainly hasn’t prepared for double booked bucks parties and she definitely hasn’t planned for handsome, barefoot boat captains…

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Sean Wilson is the author of Gemini Falls. He has been shortlisted for the Patrick White Playwrights Award by Sydney Theatre Company. 

Sean’s new novel is You Must Remember This.

On a warm autumn evening Grace decides to go for walk. It must be autumn judging from the temperature, and Grace was going to… she’s well, surely it will come back to her.

Hours later, and with her family panicked Grace will be helped home by the police.

Grace's daughter Liz assures her she’ll like her new room, but nothing feels quite right and Grace is sure things keep going missing.

As Grace searches for a foothold in her new home she finds that the past and the present seem to blur. Moments of time blend into memories and Grace is thrown back across her life trying to make sense of it all.

I’m going to start with a strong recommendation because You Must Remember This is a novel that brings heart, intelligence and literary verve to the topic of dementia.

Ranging across Grace’s life, You Must Remember This is a story of love and family and the struggle to hold onto your very sense of self in the face of failing memory. 

The reader travels with Grace through her life and through the stylistic device of a melange of chapters we are given some insight into Grace’s experience of the world. Between the pages Wilson has created a linear narrative and then parsed it erratically to try and capture Grace’s own sense of confusion and the unsettling nature of memories blurring. The overall effect is less of memory loss, than of the overwhelming sense that all of life is happening in an unfiltered and uncontrolled way.

The figure of Grace is alluring for her vulnerability but also for her strength. As her past unfolds we learn about her childhood and come to see what shaped the woman she is. This story engages deftly and with compassion the issue of making Grace a whole person and not simply an object of pity. As we move between generations of mothers and daughters, always with Grace as our anchor we are shown how that life has worked on so many others.

Novels have a tricky way of trying to impose order onto events and create these things we call stories. They give us hope that we will find meaning in a sequence of moments. This is very much something that Grace finds is slipping from her, ever more, the harder she tries to grasp it.

In Wilson’s hands we are shown how Grace works through this and also how sometimes she simply must experience life in its jumble. It’s humbling as a reader to have our expectations overturned and then work to discover a new way of seeing through Grace’s eyes.

You Must Remember This is a slim book that came to occupy an outsized space in my thoughts. It offers compassion and the opportunity to understand through the character of Grace and perhaps in the way we carry our experience of reading back into our everyday lives.

Loved this review?

You can get more books, writing and literary culture every week on the Final Draft Great Conversations podcast. Hear interviews with authors and discover your next favourite read!

Book Club is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Lech Blaine is the author of the memoir Car Crash and the Quarterly Essays Top Blokes and Bad Cop. His new work is Australian Gospel.

Australian Gospel is a family saga, it’s Lech's family saga, detailing the lives of his mum & dad, and his foster siblings. It’s also about the lives of Michael and Mary Shelley, the biological parents of three of Lech's brothers and sisters and the religious zealots who hounded their existence.

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Esther hails from Cork, Ireland and lives in the North West of Tasmania. Esther is the author of Leaving Ocean Road and The House of Second Chances. She’s joining us today with her new novel The Writing Class.

We’d all like to believe we’re the authors of our own story, but when Vivian’s husband Dave abandons her, she learns the hard way there are some twists she wouldn’t have plotted for herself.

Back home in Tasmania, Vivian is at a loss for what to do with herself until a chance encounter sees her teaching a writing class. Amidst the diverse students Vivian learns discovers new things about herself, and about the power of raising up your voice when you have something to say.

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Here are my End of Year Picks and a few recommendations for buying Xmas Gifts for the book lover in your life!

‘A Family Saga’. Australian Gospel tells the story of Lech’s siblings. It’s a big family and Lech’s mum and dad Tom and Lenore fostered five children in the years before Lech was born. Three of those children, Lech’s brothers and sisters, happen to be the biological offspring of Michael and Mary Shelley. 

Buy it for - Anyone looking for a good Aussie Yarn

Across a single day we are thrown into the life of Winona Dalloway. From the moment she wakes, stealing a few precious moments before her time is not her own, to the dinner party that looms over her calendar, the reader follows Winona as she tries simply to be herself…

Buy it for - Lovers of literary fiction who are looking for a gorgeously written, stimulating read

The Sunbird tells the story of Nabila Yasmeen. As a six year old she and her family were expelled from their village in Palestine. Now in her eighties and living in Sydney, Nabila stills feels the weight of this trauma in her daily life…

The Sunbird has been included in a reasoning pack being sent to Australian MPs by a group of authors including Tim Winton, Charlotte Wood, JM Coetzee, Anna Funder, Michelle de Kretser, André Dao and Rosie Batty. Their goal is to educate our leaders in the history of Palestine and the Israel/Gaza conflict

Buy it for - Anyone who wants (or needs) to learn a little more about Gaza

In the fractured kingdom of the Yue, Xishi is regarded as a peerless beauty.

Her beauty is famous across her homeland and leads her to be sought out by the advisor to the king. The Yue have suffered terrible defeats at the hands of the Wu. This humiliation and the threat of ongoing war has lead the king to try a desperate plan. With Xishi’s help they will infiltrate the Wu king’s court, win his heart and overthrow his tyrannical rule. 

Thrust deep into the heart of the enemy Wu kingdom, Xishi must use all her skills, not only to survive but to bring justice for her people.

Buy it for - Lovers of historical fiction 

Honourable Mention Emily Maguire’s Rapture

Max waits in the London flat he shares with Hannah. He’s had little to do but wait since he died. He’d never given much consideration to being a ghost and even still it’s not living up to the hype.

Buy it for - Lovers of Ghost Stories, humour and love alike

Scarlet Friday is a truth teller in a hyper connected world. Her job is to explore archives and provide context for the official narrative of history. But the past is never truly buried and outside Scarlett’s archives the rest of the world is teetering on the brink. As systems shut down around the world, Scarlet finds herself on the run. Unwelcome in England, she is now a refugee seeking safe passage back to Australia.

Buy it for - Lovers of Speculative Fiction 

Honourable mentions Alice Robinson’s If You Go and Jordan Prosser’s Big Time

Xiang is working as a translator at Sydney’s Chinese Consulate when it’s discovered he really doesn’t speak much Chinese. This is considered a less than desirable outcome and Xiang is both fired and culturally shamed for his lack of national pride. 

Xiang is quickly whisked off to the Ghost City of Port Man Tou, where he is set to star in the city wide production of Baby Bao’s simulation of reality. A movie within a city within a movie that is aiming to create an economy so circular it might just get vertigo. 

Buy it for - Anyone with Eyes! Probably my book of the year

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Emma Grey is a writer, novelist and photographer. Her novel the Last Love Note was a global bestseller and today she’s joining us with her new novel Pictures of You.

At sixteen years old Evie Hudson feels too young to be married, let alone a widow. And that’s the problem, Evie’s not sixteen but the accident that killed her husband Oliver also stole her memory.

Now she believes she’s a teenager. Thrown back to a time when she felt safe.

But safe from what? 

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Lech Blaine is the author of the memoir Car Crash and the Quarterly Essays Top Blokes and Bad Cop. His new work is Australian Gospel.

Australian Gospel has the subtitle ‘A Family Saga’. It takes only a cursory glance at the back cover synopsis to understand why Australian Gospel works to reassure readers that this is a very real, very true story. The story contained between the covers and the ride Lech Blaine is about to take you on, well if it wasn’t true, you absolutely would not believe it.

Lech Blaine was born in 1992 and by the time he came along the story of Australian Gospel was already many decades old.

Australian Gospel is the story of Lech’s siblings. It’s a big family and Lech’s mum and dad Tom and Lenore fostered five children in the years before Lech was born. Three of those children, Lech’s brothers and sisters, happen to be the biological offspring of Michael and Mary Shelley. 

Michael and Mary Shelley were charismatic Christians, or itinerant and chronic god botherers. The definition really depended on which side of their charms you happened to find yourself on and whether you were standing between them and something they wanted.

The Shelley’s wrought havoc across Australia and the Tasman throughout the 70’s right through till the 2000’s. Thanks to the kindness and good heart of his parents, Lech and their extended family find themselves in the Shelley’s crosshairs as they seek to reclaim the children who were removed for their safety.

Australian Gospel is a wild ride. In his prologue Lech hints at the mammoth task of research an interviews he undertook to bring the story to the page. As a result we are transported to an Australian growing out of the post war period and transforming into the modern country that likes to think it can take on the world (and most of the time can at least give it a shot in sports).

Lech’s prose is spare and as such is able to embrace the competing interests of a sprawling historical narrative and tense domestic fare. It’s a remarkable feat that the narrative can seamlessly jump between a bush prophet’s screed and a domestic drama with nary a blink.

And that could be it for this review; Australian Gospel is worth your time for its fascinating story and Lech’s engaging style. This is a cracking yarn, but it’s also more than just a cracking yarn.

Brimming beneath the surface of Australian Gospel and cleverly hinted at in its title is another, perhaps deeper reason to pick up a copy. Between the fanatical Michael Shelley  preaching his own narcissistic version of the bible and Tom and Lenore Blaine’s quiet (and sometimes loud) search for the great Australian idyll, Australian Gospel gives us competing views of what the so-called lucky country could be.

Where Shelley derides Australia’s love of beer and sport, Tom Blaine embraces these as part of life’s purpose. Where Shelley coaxes and gulls all and sundry to get them to see him as the second coming, Tom Blaine gets on with the job and finds himself quietly adored by his children and community alike.

This is a fascinating book about a bizarre chapter in Australian history told through the eyes of a child (now man) who knows it as his family’s story. It’s a story about fear and hope that goes to the heart of who we are and how we love the people around us so that they feel more of the latter.

It is a family saga and in the telling it’s about the triumph of that family and the incredible story that got them there.