Final Draft - Great Conversations

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.

Emily Spurr is the author of the gorgeous and surprising A Million Things and she is joining us today with the equally gorgeous and even more surprising Beatrix & Fred.

Beatrix is aggressive alone. If you were to quote Sartre’s Hell is Other People to her, Beatrix would probably remind you that you are one of those other people. 

Beatrix’s solitude is getting out of hand but adopting a stalker was not on her bingo card of ways to break out of her shell.

*This is the spoiler free version of our conversation with Emily. If you'd like to here more get in touch below!

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 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.

AJ Betts is a teacher, speaker and author of Young Adult fiction. Her books include Zac & Mia which has been adapted into a hit streaming series and today she’s joining us with her novel One Song.

Eva entered Unearthed High in Years nine, ten and eleven. Now in Year Twelve she’s got one last chance to break into music before she’s old and the world has left her behind. 

Eva has always been a soloist but Cooper Hunter has convinced her to form a band. Bands are good, bands can win, but how do you even begin wrangling three other teenagers to write music, especially when your muse is playing guitar next to you?

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 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/ 

Emily Spurr is the author of A Million Things. You have met her on Final Draft and on Book Club before. I’m a fan and that’s why I wanted to bring you in her gorgeous and surprising new novel Beatrix & Fred.

Beatrix is aggressive alone. If Hell is Other People then Beatrix is happy to sit on the committee for tormenting her coworkers. She wasn’t always like this but lately it just seems like life is going out of its way to annoy her. 

Beatrix’s solitude is getting out of hand but adopting a stalker was not on her bingo card of ways to break out of her shell.

Who is the mysterious elderly woman who seems to be appearing wherever Beatrix goes? Is she a figment of Beatrix’s imagination or a malevolent force in a sensible knit cardigan?

Even as I offer up this brief introduction to Beatrix & Fred, I’m practically bursting  with all the things left unsaid about this novel. For those of you that read Emily Spurr’s A Million Things, you’ll recall the absolutely jaw-dropping twist at the end… Well Beatrix & Fred leaves that in the dust for surprises.

For the first hundred or so pages I was convinced I was reading some sort of psychological horror, so creepy was the build up.

Told through entwined narratives; primarily led by Beatrix’s dark perspective on the world, but interspersed with short and sharp interjections from a strange observer. The novel works at least initially to keep you off-kilter, waiting for its moment.

This is by design and Spurr wants us to travel alongside Beatrix as she both questions her sanity and seeks out answers, anything that might help her to understand the strange turn her life has taken.  

Emily and I spoke for Final Draft (and that conversation will be up on the podcast next week) and she told me about the experience of trying to find answers in a medical system that is too-often not designed to support or even listen to women. Beatrix’s experiences may prove to be absolutely novel but she can’t even guarantee that the mundane will not be dismissed as some random act of female biology.

As Beatrix searches for answers she finds herself coming under closer scrutiny and feeling like her whole world is imploding.

I’m going to stop myself here, because what comes next in the novel is truly original and I would never take that surprise away from you. As luck would have it, when Beatrix & Fred landed in the world the news sought to show us exactly how strangely original it was with some timely weird science news. 

It is the heart in Beatrix & Fred though that sets this novel apart.

If I circle back to where we began and talk about Beatrix’s feelings of social isolation at the beginning of the novel, I’m reminded of how too often we only ever brush against each other’s lives. To her coworkers Beatrix may look like a nightmare but in Emily Spurr’s telling she is someone who cares but is also suffering. Through the darkness and strange emergences of the narrative we come to see how that loneliness is isolating but it doesn’t have to be a terminal condition.

All that’s left to say is go out and read Beatrix & Fred and then come back to me so we can talk about it together in all its strange glory!

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.

On today's show Andrew calls up Kate & Jol Temple, authors of the Bin Chicken books, The Underdogs and so many more, to say thank you for their support of 2ser.

Discover Kate and Jol's books and support their incredible work at katejoltemple.com

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 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.

Tegan Bennett Daylight is a writer, teacher and critic. Her books include The Details and Six Bedrooms which was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Tegan’s latest is Royals.

5.17pm on a day much like any other, in a shopping center in Western Sydney six teenagers find themselves alone. 

Shannon only glanced from her phone for a second, then when she looked back down her phone was frozen and the world had gone quiet. Surprise, then annoyance forces Shannon out into the mall’s concourse which is eerily still.

Fear then curiosity lead her to explore the mall where she finds Tiannah, Grace, James, Akira and Jordan; equally alone and equally confused. What has happened to the world and are they truly as alone as they believe?

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 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/ 

Today's book club is something for the younger readers...

Maxine Beneba Clarke is the author of Foreign Soil, The Hate Race, poetry collections Carrying the World and How Decent Folk Behave. 

Maxine is also the author of children's picture books including The Patchwork Bike and When We Say Black Lives Matter. Today we're discussing the absolutely joyful We Know a Place and getting excited about visiting our local bookstores!

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/

Radiothon is your chance to support Final Draft and Sydney stories, ideas and culture.

At 2SER we have BIG LOVE for our Subscribers and Donors. They are vital for the station – they help us maintain our independence and provide us with some stability in an ever-shifting cultural and economic environment.

If you'd like to support Final Draft and 2ser head over to 2ser.com for all the details.

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.

Cellnight is the new verse novel from poet John Kinsella

Cellnight takes us into a prison where a protestor sits having been taken in for demonstrating against nuclear warships. In the cells the protestor bears witness to abuses even as the sounds of the harbour wash in through the windows and the whole, the truth of the evening becomes a matter of remembrance. Of a clash between what occurred and what is chronicled in the official record.  

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 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/ 

Kirsty Jagger won the debut Heyman Mentorship award and has now published her debut novel Roseghetto.

Shayla’s working on an assignment for her newspaper when she returns to Westminster Way. She's exploring a new integrated housing development when she is confronted with the ruins of the suburb she grew up in. Shayla grew up in Westminster Way but despite her difficult past she wasn’t prepared to see the street and surrounding suburb leveled in preparation for shiny new homes. 

The destruction transports Shayla back to her childhood and how she and her mum had to survive each day together. It also leads Shayla to wonder did she get to where she is today because of these struggles or in spite of them.

I found Roseghetto to be an enormously affecting novel. I should note that while I’m not going to go too deep on all the novel’s plot points, this is a book that deals with violence; domestic and social. It’s a book that takes these topics seriously as problems that reverberate throughout lifetimes.

If you’re thinking of checking out Roseghetto be prepared and if these topics are upsetting for you, know that help is available through organizations like Lifeline on 13 11 14 or https://www.lifeline.org.au/ 

Roseghetto is searing in its portrayal of Shayla’s young life. We meet Shayla as a toddler and Jagger’s point of view storytelling compels us to understand the world through her young perspective.

Shayla is exposed to the world and becomes something of a moral compass in the story. While we are not always shown the worst of Shayla’s world we are forced to confront it through Shayla’s growing understanding. 

In this way the violence and neglect of the men in Shayla’s world is not just a series of terrible acts but subsequent and compounding betrayals of the trust Shayla at first puts in them and then is forced to endure as her mother finds herself with increasingly few options.

It feels like something of a cliche that narratives of domestic violence ask ‘why don’t they just leave’. Through Shayla’s eyes the answer is a world where women have little to no control or have it wrested from them by controlling men. We see duty and love for one’s family serving as both a source of hope and the reason you feel you have to keep going. 

The story offers something of a window into another world as Shayla dives deep into stories and books. It’s something of a truism in the Final Draft world that books are doorways to the world and through Shayla we see how important it is to be able to view life outside her own.

I don’t mind saying that Roseghetto got more than a few tears from me as it opened up Shayla’s world. It’s a book well worth your time as it strips back the veneer of daily life to tell a story too often unheard.

Be sure to check out my conversation with Kirsty for Final Draft on the podcast!

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.

Jane Harrison is a playwright & author descended from the Muruwari people. She is the author of the internationally acclaimed play Stolen and today I am going to introduce you to the novelisation of her most recent play The Visitors.

The Visitors takes us to Gadigal Land in January of 1788. On this sweltering day a strange sight appears in the harbour and immediately spurs the locals into action.

Messages are sent to the Nations of the coastal and river regions calling seven men, elders in their clans to congregate and decide what must be done now that The Visitors have returned.

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 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/