Final Draft - Great Conversations

I had a pretty terrific stay down the Snowy Mountains last weekend and amongst some spectacular views, incredible animal spotting and good times with mates it also got me thinking about my reading.

One book in particular sprang to mind, but before I get to that I wanted to reflect on this whole reading thing we do and why I love spending so much time reading, reporting and sharing books.

Books are wild when you think about it. These portals to other times, other worlds, other people's thoughts and perspectives. They’re so wondrous that I think sometimes it washes over us and we don’t take note of what’s happening to our little gray cells.

But this weekend as I wandered the high country and discovered mountain streams and platypus dens a book I had read was recalled to me and I suddenly had a whole lens to look at what I was discovering.

All this information came flooding back to me and as I recalled I shared with my friends. In this act of sharing I had to come to terms and reframe what I had understood and then have that understanding interrogated. My perspectives mingled with the writer’s and were challenged or agreed on by my friends.

Together we took this information and compared it with what we were experiencing. My mates are great conversationalists but having this extra dimension just took it to another level. Reading had transformed our interaction.

So what was the book?

The Brumby Wars - The Battle for the Soul of Australia by Anthony Sharwood

Anthony Sharwood is a Walkley Award-winning journalist. He loves the high country as evidenced in his 2020 book From Snow to Ash, and his 2021 book The Brumby Wars. 

The Brumby Wars chronicles the history of the ongoing battles between supporters of wild horses in the Australian Bush (known as Brumbies) and those who see the destruction they cause to fragile ecosystems and want to see them controlled. 

The book takes an open approach to the debate, as Anthony tries to hear all sides. We begin with the challenges of confronting and contrasting the scientific and ecological understanding of feral horses with the cultural understanding of Brumbies. With some surveys noting that 78% of Victorians didn’t know that Brumbies were listed by Parks Victoria as pests Sharwood comes to the conclusion that “Mythology has become reality” and the power of storytelling has overtaken the reality of what is happening in the landscape.

But this is a battle that literally plays out on the Mountains and in the halls of political power. With passionate, often extreme supporters on both sides Sharwood sounds a warning against tilting towards these extremes. 

In the year since the books was published we’ve seen one of the Brumby’s biggest supporters John Barilaro leave politics, a plan to manage Brumby populations in Kosciusko was established by the NSW government and protestors have filmed themselves dismantling Brumby trap yards. It’s apparent that even when settled the issue remains alive for so many. 

The Brumby Wars is a fascinating look at modern Australian culture. It takes in thousands of years of Indigenous History and the extraordinary damage done in the relatively short period since invasion. 

The book even questions the ways stories can be co opted to the cause. One mythology that is central to the story of brumbies in the high country is the work of Banjo Patterson and particularly his poem The Man From Snowy River. In the book Sharwood uncovers scholarship that suggests the eponymous ‘Man’ may have been Indigenous. This may seem an historical footnote to the everyday destruction of hooves on fragile ecosystems but it speaks to the lengths that storytelling may go to shape reality to its own ends.

This is just a taste of what you’ll find in The Brumby Wars. It’s no hyperbole when the subtitle proclaims this The Battle for the Soul of Australia. Do yourself a favour and check it out…

The Final Draft Great Conversations 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.

Today I’m joined on the show by Sulari Gentil. In her new novel The Woman in the Library Sulari Gentill is crafting a new novel about bestselling Australian crime author Hannah Tigone, who is crafting a new novel about neophyte Australian crime writer Winifred Kincaid who just might be crafting a novel about yet another crime writer except that she’s gotten herself stuck in a real life mystery!

Join me as we discover Sulari Gentil’s The Woman in the Library...

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 

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“The day my daughter went missing, we were at war”

Abbie isn’t a bad mum. Like so many parents she is exhausted, overworked, trying her best when one day someone takes advantage and steals her daughter Sarah from a busy street market.

Six years later and Abbie has another life. She can never move on from that tragic day but she is trying. That is until a phone call offers the tantalizing hope; knowledge of Sarah.

All Abbie has to do is blow up her life…

Vikki Wakefield is a celebrated author of young adult fiction. After You Were Gone is her first foray into ‘adult’ fiction and fans of her writing will recognise the tense realism and sharply drawn characters that infuse her work.

The novel ostensibly unfolds dual narratives; Before and After the day that Sarah disappears. Within these stories we meet two very different versions of Abbie; one young and recklessly trying to define her life, the other cautiously rebuilding barely believing she might ever be whole.

Drawing these two Abbies together is the mysterious caller. Someone who knows what has happened to Sarah. Someone angry and who won’t stop until Abbie acknowledges some intangible piece of the past.

After You Were Gone is an expansive story about the ties that bind us together and what happens when we start to lose sight of those closest to us.

Abbie feels her life defined by her family and the close community she has grown up in. Most particularly she feels the claustrophobic weight of her mother’s expectations. 

It is against these expectations that Abbie flees to the city and it is despite these expectations that Abbie returns pregnant and unsure of what her life now holds.

Bonds between mother and daughter run throughout the narrative and the title; After You Were Gone serves as a lament to the dream of a parent watching their child grow from dependence into their own self.

After You Were Gone also works as a challenge to identity. Throughout the novel Abbie must fight to define herself; against her mother, her best friend, her small town’s limited expectations of a young single mother. As these identities are stripped away she must struggle to recognise herself anew.

Then when she finally feels she might be free of the past, her mysterious antagonist strikes out at the very thing she has fought so long for; a new sense of self.

After You Were Gone is a gripping mystery. There is a real thrill in racing to try and uncover the mystery and I got the sense Wakefield understands this as she throws false turns and twists in the reader's way.

More than the mystery though, it is the journey of Abbie as she moves along something of a twisted distortion of the hero's quest to find her long lost daughter. There is a sense of tragic inevitability, we know she won’t like the answer. But we are compelled, like Abbie to see this out and face the shocking truth.

After You Were Gone is not what you think it is and the novel glories in rocketing the reader onto its conclusion. This is not a book to start late at night, you won’t be getting any sleep!

The Final Draft Great Conversations 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.

Today we're joined on the show by Paul Daley. Paul is a Walkley Award winning journalist, author and essayist. 

His new novel Jesustown is a compelling narrative that forces a lens up to colonial and contemporary attitudes towards First Nations Peoples. 

As Patrick Renmark lands in the remote former mission town of Jesustown, he is a broken man. He accepts he is the author of his own destruction; an affair that blew up into the public eye has caused a cascade of events that have destroyed his entire world.

With nowhere else to turn, Patrick begrudgingly accepts the commission to tell the story of his Grandfather Nathaniel Renmark. A commission that sees Patrick returning to Jesustown and facing another shame that drove him away decades before. 

Join me as we discover Paul Daley’s Jesustown...

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 Great Conversations 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.

Today I’m joined on the show by Maryam Master. Maryam is a screenwriter, playwright and author and she is joining us with her new novel No Words 

Year Six is meant to be a time of change; taking on new challenges a conquering. Hero has always struggled to live up to her name, but this time she has to remind herself it’s not about her. Her friend Aria is being bullied by the biggest doofus in the school and it’s up to Hero and Jaz to help him. 

Aria can’t talk, at least he doesn’t talk at school and that means there’s a lot Hero doesn’t know about him yet. Aria’s past is a part of the reason. He arrived in Australia having lost so much. There’s nothing Hero can do to change the past but maybe together they can all conquer the future.

Join me as we discover Maryam Master’s No Words...

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/ 

I have been having a tremendous amount of fun with my reading lately. It’s a necessary evil of what I do that there’s often more than one book on the go and while this presents some challenges in keeping it all straight in my head, it also means that I can lean into the book that most fits my mood on the day.

Today I’m going rom-com because after finally seeing a bit of sun over the weekend it’s looking like the rain and cold might be setting in again. And so what better to remind us that despite the rain there’ll be sun again than a genre that always has the sun come out at the end.

Nina Kenwood’s Unnecessary Drama is the exact right balance of the aforementioned drama and dappled sunshine to see me through till the next five minutes of spring.

As Brooke arrives in Melbourne and into her first share house she is ready for life. She’s planned for every eventuality and has a list to back up her plan in case the worst still happens.

Best of all she’s hours away from her hometown and everyone who knows she’s the sensible, listmaking girl. Even better, she's a whole world away from her old life and THE event that defined her whole life in high school.

Yep, Brooke is really going to make something of her new life. That is until she meets her new housemate Jesse and suddenly high school comes rushing back to find her.

I don’t think Unnecessary Drama is trying to hide its intentions when it throws Brooke and Jesse together in the same share house. In fact I know it’s not trying to hide it as we are privy to Brooke’s cripplingly anxious POV as she tries to navigate this seeming;y impossible situation.

Instead Unnecessary Drama does what it says on the box, or more appropriately it challenges the notion of the aforementioned unnecessary drama.

The title comes from one of the few and ill defined house rules that Brooke, Jesse and Harper live by: no pets, no house romance, and no unnecessary drama. The idea of unnecessary drama is so loose that it sends Brooke spiraling wondering at how she might break it while at the same time we learn about Jesse’s past misdeeds and it left me wondering if Brooke’s drama might be necessary after all.

Unnecessary Drama is full of people and behaviors that are really not ok. More than the bad behaviors is the quiet acceptance that allows them to flourish. 

In Brooke we meet a character who is simultaneously loving and cripplingly anxious. She wants so much to care for others that she blinds herself to what she actually needs (and ends up putting up with a lot of shit along the way). Brooke’s so afraid of unnecessary drama that she avoids all drama and really a little bit of drama would do her the world of good. 

So as readers we’re left to wonder; if rom-com conventions tell us that Brooke and Jesse will be thrust together how can we overcome our distaste at Jesse’s misdeeds?

What is acceptable behavior? What is forgivable?

It’s really terrific to explore these behaviors and as we watch the inevitable love mishaps question whether the outcome we think we want is the right one.

The phrase Know Your Worth is absolutely relevant here and I’m not sure how much we’re spinning Lizzo here on 2ser but I reckon Brooke could do with rinsing 2Be Loved until she takes that message to heart.

I’m going to say stuff the weather and prescribe Nina Kenwood’s Unnecessary Drama for everyone’s weekends, whether it’s reading on the beach or under the doona in the cold November rain.

The Final Draft Great Conversations 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.

Holden Sheppard’s debut novel Invisible Boys was an absolute sensation and today he’s joining us with his new novel The Brink.

School’s out and Perth’s leavers are descending on the coast.

Leonardo doesn’t love that he’s found himself in the back of Jared’s 4WD. They haven’t been friends since high school started but since Leonardo’s so-called friends ditched on him he hasn’t got much choice. So now he’s stuck with Jared, Mason, Valentina and just about every other person who made his life hell at high school

When their holiday accommodation decides to turn Leavers away, the group are in search of a new place to party. 

The Brink is an isolated community, famous for its insularity and not known for welcoming outsiders. When Ryan gets them in with a guy called Machete Max, who rents them some cabins, it all seems too good to be true; a week on Brink Island. No adults, no rules, no consequences.

But you know what they say about things that are too good to be true…

And there are always consequences.

Join me as we discover Holden Sheppard’s The Brink...

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/ 

Angela Meyer is an author, book industry professional and teacher of writing and publishing. Her debut novel A Superior Specter was met with critical acclaim garnering a slew of prize shortlists including the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. 

Now if you haven’t discovered Angela’s writing yet, let me tell you she has an incredible power to write incredibly human stories that explore the fantastic within our world and challenge what it means to live 

…and let’s face it, the world these days feel like we live on constantly shifting sands, so feeling connected through stories is a powerful thing  

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In Moon Sugar… Mila was mourning the life she thought she’d have; house, family, the whole suburban dream, when Josh arrived to shake up her world.

Josh has this way of transfixing everyone he meets. Good look and with an easy manner that invites you to open up. Mila meets Josh through SugarMeetMe and though their relationship begins in a financial transaction it opens up into something so much more. Together they explore art and music and take part in a clandestine study to make some extra money.

Kyle is Josh’s best friend and he understands how special that makes him. Sure he often feels like a sidekick but because of Josh he’s growing, getting ready to explore the world.

When Josh goes missing in Europe Mila follows him to try and uncover what has happened and what she has lost. There she meets Kyle, and together the two follow in Josh’s footsteps and try to make sense of his final days… 

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Moon Sugar takes an exploded view of our world and seeks to understand the ways we are all connected. 

In the central relationship between Mila and Josh we are shown a seemingly incongruous relationship of love and respect. Mila seeks out a companion after the breakdown of a relationship. She has come to realize how much she had given over to her partner and what that has meant for her understanding of herself and what she finds pleasurable. Josh is an escort and a sex worker who seeks to honour the people who seek out his companionship.

As Mila and Josh come together they explore what it means to be damaged by our experiences but also how we can heal. We see that people can open themselves up and provide space for others.

You’ll see descriptors like genre defying or genre bending associated with Angela Meyer’s work and I have to acknowledge that there is a hole in my description of Moon Sugar. Meyer explores human connectedness through the triangle of Mila, Josh and Kyle but she accelerates this, taking it to new levels and understandings.

I don’t want to give away spoilers here but just imagine if our digital world could truly live up to its promise of world wide connectivity. If instead of just viewing a glimpse of all those lives we could come to understand each other a little better.

Of course that sort of power of connection would not go unnoticed. Powerful forces would seek to control it, and there’s still the central tension of Josh’s disappearance to unravel.

Moon Sugar is a beautiful expansive novel of love, both for others and ourselves, that melds the corporeal with the fantastic in a way we should all hope to discover.

The Final Draft Great Conversations 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.

Tom Taylor is an award-winning author who has written for Suicide Squad, Spider-Man and X-Men. 

Jon Sommariva is the artist for such bestselling comics as Batman, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, and the Avengers.

Neverlanders introduces the reader to a group of homeless kids, the Lost Ones, who are about to have their whole world change when they meet Paco. The Lost Ones are canny and self reliant, they can look after themselves but there’s no sense that their lives are moving forward. Paco wants to offer them a deal; a world just for them, a place where they can thrive. But it’s a world under threat and the Lost Ones will have to learn pretty quickly whether have what it takes to save it…

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 I have brought in something evocative and troubling. A novel that exposes the wounds of the past and reminds us these scars are only ever held just below the surface.

Eliza Henry-Jones’ Salt and Skin

Luda has arrived with her children Darcy and Min, to the storm-bruised islands of northern Scotland. The family have fled Australia in a storm of grief and recrimination seeking to find a new home and purpose to their lives.

Luda, a photographer, has been employed to document the impacts climate change is having on the islands. She almost immediately alienates herself from the local community when she publishes a photograph depicting a family's unimaginable tragedy in a landslide accident.  

Settling on the tidal island of Seanney the family are fascinated to discover an ancient history of witchcraft and religious intolerance. The island was supposedly home to witches and it’s said that in the evening light scars are revealed to those who have known tragedy in their life. 

The darker history of the islands is almost too close to the surface they realise, as they come to know the foundling Theo who was washed ashore as a child and whom the locals believe to be a selkie. Theo also exists both in and outside the community and must navigate acceptance as one who does not truly seem to fit in.

I was absolutely transfixed by the narrative of Salt and Skin. I love it when my reading leads me to one of those reading cliche moments and I’m pleased to be able to say that as I finished the final page of Salt and Skin I found myself turning back and then flicking forward, scarcely believing that the book was at an end. Always leave them wanting more is a showbiz adage and ELiza Henry-Jones succeeded in keeping me and then leaving me hanging on the last page.

Is it a satisfying review if I acknowledge that there may in fact be too much to discuss about Salt and Skin? I could highlight the themes of environmental decay and destruction, of violence against women, the constant tension between rural communitiers and the modernism that both threatens and offers them a lifeline. I could start there and still only be scratching the surface.

In Luda, Min and Darcy we have a satisfying trio of protagonists who then fracture into their own plotlines that twist and turn back onto each other. The family do what they can to settle into their new home and in their varying degrees of success the story moves forward and drags us backwards into the near and distant past.   

Salt and Skin is a novel that deals with the supernatural, or perhaps more correctly the unexplained in our lives. And while this may be a theme that borders on the genre specific, Salt and Skin is satisfyingly oblique in its dealings with the topics of witches and ghosts that seem to occupy the millenia old landscape of the islands. 

The narrative weaves centuries old stories of witches with the experience of Luda becoming a pariah before she even begins in the town. We see that the women of the islands have always done what they could to survive and live and protect what they have. It brings forward an uncomfortable truth that fitting in may be very different to doing what is right and that neither may matter when there are stronger forces at work.

Salt and Skin is a story about place and while its action occurs on remote islands a world away from our lives in Australia, it is also firmly grounded in our experience of the dislocation of environmental tragedy. Through the evolving stories of Luda, Min, Darcy and Theo we see our own connections and must confront that we don’t live apart from our world but are in fact there in it, even as it crumbles beneath us.