Final Draft - Great Conversations

Today I am finally bringing in for you, Sulari Gentill’s The Woman in the Library. I don’t often bring in mystery fiction, because, well frankly if you want mysteries there are much better qualified people here at 2ser to talk to (more on them later).

As we get started though, know that this isn’t your typical book club. I haven’t finished the book yet for one (again more later) and two, because Sulari is something of a master of metafiction. I want today’s book club to get a little meta…

Every week I begin my show Final Draft with a little riff on how great a privilege it is to read and speak with incredible Australian authors. It is. But often it also means I am mired in tough, challenging topics. That’s the power of literature that we get to go into these spaces and find out about our world from the comfort of our armchairs.

Every now and then though I carve out a little bit of time for something that will just energise me, and sure that book might involve a gruesome murder but as Flex and Herds over on Death of the Reader would point out, there’s a reason it’s called cosy crime.

Sulari Gentill’s The Woman in the Library takes us into the fictional world of Hannah Tigone, bestselling Australian crime writer. And Hannah Tigone takes us into the fictional world of Winifred Kincaid, Australian writer in residence in Boston, working hard to plot out her new novel.

Winifred is in the Boston Public Library when a blood curdling scream throws her into the path of Cain, Whit and Marigold and together they form a bond that just might throw them into the path of a killer.

Hannah is meanwhile crafting Winifred’s story in correspondence with Leo, a super fan of dubious social acumen.

Keeping up so far?

Sulari’s whodunnits are delightful riffs on crime conventions and an absolute blast to try and figure out. They take us into the world of the writer and often blur (or perhaps I should say cross) the lines between where the story ends and reality begins. And this is where we get a little meta. Because our book club is diving into another book club of sorts…

Because whilst the Poirots and Holmes of the world seem to work best alone, where would they be without their Watsons (or Hastings). Now if only I had a dedicated Scooby Gang to help me unravel the mystery!

But in a way I do!!

Flex and Herds broadcast on 2ser every Sunday evening as Death of the Reader. Each week they take you on a world wide murder mystery tour, breaking down incredible whodunnits over three episodes so you can read along and try to solve the mystery with them.

I’m reading The Woman in the Library alongside Flex and Herds, following on through the Death of the Reader podcast. It’s like having two good friends arguing over the top of you as you wonder naively if perhaps the butler might have done it after all.

So far I’m a third of the way through The Woman in the Library and I don’t have a strong suspect. I’m not even sure if the murder we think we are solving is the real killing, such are Sulari’s twists and turns. My running theory is that there is some slight of hand at play and it all relates to the way we are told the story through this strange email correspondence.

My lack of clear direction is nothing to worry about though as Herds has some theories of his own. I quite like the organised crime angle even though I don’t know if the text supports it. Meanwhile Flex is beguiling us with clever misdirection.

So today on our book club I want to recommend Sulari Gentill’s The Woman in the Library but I strongly suggest you listen along with Flex and Herds and tune in to Death of the Reader every Sunday night from 9am.

Discover Death of the Reader on 2ser 107.3

Book Club is produced and presented by Andrew Pople<

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.

Things We Bury transports the reader to the town of Pent, where Matthew offers up a portrait of life in a regional town through his central family, the Hardings.

It’s a sad fact that tragedy brings us together.

Dane, Jac, and Josh don’t get together as much as they should. Spread out across the country; Jac in Sydney, Josh all over the country as his TV work takes him and Dane, who never left Pent. It just never seems like there’s enough time.

Now the siblings must converge on their hometown after their father is in a car accident that leaves him in a coma.

It’s not just the accident. Each of the siblings has their own drama eating away at their peace. The reunion isn’t destined to go smoothly. Pent is no longer the same town they grew up in, but the ghosts of the past still rest there.

While their father remains in a coma, questions emerge that have them wondering if there is more to his accident that they first assumed. What had been happening in their dad’s life that could lead him to do something desperate?

Join me as we discover Matthew Ryan Davies’s Things We Bury...

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’ve brought in a delightful and thought provoking novel for younger readers. All Four Quarters of the Moon is from Shirley Marr. Shirley is a first-generation Chinese Australian author of young adult and children's fiction, including YA novels Fury and Preloved, and children’s novels Little Jiang, A Glasshouse of Stars.

All Four Quarters of the Moon is her new novel and it takes us into the world of Peijing as she and her family prepare to migrate to Australia for her father’s work.

In Singapore Peijing understood how everything worked; her Ba-Ba worked hard seven days a week, her Ma-MA worked to raise the family and her Ah-Ma worked at making delicious mooncakes. Peijing and her little sister Biju worked at creating their little world and populating it with animals both real and mythological, and telling fantastic stories about the animals' lives.

In Australia things seem upside down to say the least. Ba-Ba now goes to work for only five days and is wearing a polo shirt. Ma-Ma needs Peijing to translate and is not happy that she is not allowed to bring her daughters lunch at school. And Ah-Ma seems confused and is always asking Peijing her name. Peijing must be strong and honourable for her family but that is not always easy when everything is so new.

All Four Quarters of the Moon is told alternately through Peijing’s first person narration and vignettes of Peijing and Biju telling each other tales of mythology and their little world.

Through Peijing’s eyes we are treated to an exploration of Australia as a new world that contains strange and wonderful potential as well as claustrophobic prejudice and intolerance.

We see that even at a young age Peijing feels the responsibility of looking after her family as a kind of linchpin between their family home and the new home they are building in Australia.

Peijing’s story helps the reader understand the responsibilities that fall to children of migrants. Peijing becomes a translator for her family in both the practical sense of translating language across a range of social interactions but also translating culture. Peijing finds herself torn between her parents' desire that they observe and respect home culture and wanting to fit in with her new school environment. When her mother arrives for school lunch with baskets of delicious cooked foods, Peijing finds herself longing for simple sandwiches.

The world between home and school becomes something of a minefield that Peijing must navigate. As her mother struggles to adjust to their new home, Peijing tries to strike a balance introducing new ideas into their lives. Food, friends and study are all potentially fraught as Ma-Ma tries to hold on to the life she has always known.

As family members experience racism, both casual and overt, Peijing works to soften the blows of language hurled against them.

When Peijing finds a friend at school she comes to understand that the intolerance she faces is not reserved for her being from another country. He new friend Joanna suffers similarly at the hands of other children because her family is poor and Joanna does not always have new clothes.

All Four Quarters of the Moon offers up a spell-binding tale of love and resilience in the face of world defining change. Peijing is at times heart-breaking in her efforts to always be the backbone of her family despite her tender years. She’s a truly wonderful heroine searching for a magical world where she can be as creative as her mind tells her she can be.

This is a book geared at middle grade readers, the group aged between 9-13 years old and it deftly explores transition, a topic so fresh for children whether it is changing countries or moving between primary and high school.

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.

Georgina Young’s debut novel Loner won the Text Prize for Young Adult novels, was commended by the CBCA as a notable book for older readers, and was shortlisted for a Prime Minister’s Literary Award.

Now Georgina is back with her new novel Bootstrap and she’s joining us today on the podcast.

Ginsborough’s famous for its chicken and leek pies and not much else. Down the road in Koornang all they’ve got is Al’s Takeaway and Jackson Sweeney is doing his best to sour that reputation.

Sweeney’s not languishing in Koornang per se. Languishing sounds way more active than what Sweeney is doing. With nothing but Hooley Dooley’s on a Friday to look forward to (and Sweeney’s pashed most of the available blokes there) life is looking dire.

That is until a tall, dark and very out of place bloke named Bootstrap splits into Sweeney’s life saying he’s come to see the night that Sweeney becomes a hero!

Join me as we discover Georgina Young’s Bootstrap...

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/

James O'Loghlin is a comedian, television and radio host. You might know him from shows such as The New Inventors but James is also the author of ten books, including six novels for children.

James was also a lawyer in a former life and his segued that experience into his new novel, our book club for this week, Criminals.

It seems like just another ordinary day...

Sarah is doing bar work at the club. A nice normal job while she’s on stress leaving from her job as a cop. She’s tending bar when a man walks into the club with a shotgun.

Mary is just trying to enjoy a quiet drink. She’s always enjoying a quiet drink and doesn’t appreciate the loud man in the balaklava interrupting her reverie. Daydrinking isn’t exactly a long term plan and so Mary decides to do something foolish.

And poor Dean. He can’t understand why everybody won’t just get down on the ground and give him the money. He needs this and one big score could set him up for a while.

In one brief flurry of activity Criminals throws Sarah, Dean and Mary’s lives together and sets them on a path to explore what it means to be a criminal and how life is more than simply a matter of Black and White.

Through each of his main characters James O’Loghlin explores some fundamental ideas about crime and criminality.

Sarah has always wanted to be a cop. Her single dad is her idol. A lifetime police officer she has looked up to him and all he represents. But Sarah’s also been disillusioned by her time on the force and is starting to wonder if following the letter of the law is the best way to understand people.

Dean went to school with Sarah. It’s an uncomfortable fact as he holds a shotgun in her direction but it also gets him thinking; he wasn’t always a junkie burglar waiting to graduate to armed robbery.

At school Dean was a footy star, but he relied on making it to first grade and when that didn’t happen he was lost. Drugs and petty crime helped Dean escape until they became the thing he has to escape from. Is it possible though that there is more to his life, and can he choose a different path before it’s too late.

Mary seems to have it all a middle class suburban life can offer. So why does she stand in front of the shotgun, daring the man in front of her. Mary’s struggling to make sense of her life and is starting to think that these men robbing the club with such abandon know more about how to live and maybe she could borrow a leaf from their book.

Criminals follows this small ensemble cast through the aftermath of the robbery and into their lives, such as they are. Questions of right and wrong loom large in each of their pasts and O’Loghlin challenges us to sort through our ideas of crime and criminality to understand how we live when these categories are not so clear cut.

The novel explores mental health and the ways it can shape, even steer lives and the consequences of not getting help. It’s a surprisingly nuanced look at a heavily scrutinized area and while no one book could pretend to have an answer, Criminals shows us that the conversation is essential and one we all must have.

Criminals is pacy and finds a balance between its action and the introspection of its protagonists. While each are, perhaps miles from the lived experience of the reader, the novel brings us into their lives and makes us appreciate they are more than their apparent stereotype might reveal.

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/

*WARNING SPOILERS*

This part of our conversation with Claire contains spoilers for Enclave. Definitely don't tune in until you've read Enclave!

What are you waiting for?

Go get a copy now!

Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar writer, from Western Australia, now based in Naarm. Claire’s debut novel is the award winning Terra Nullius. She is the author of the novel The Old Lie and Lies Damned Lies, an historical and cultural exploration of the ongoing impact of colonial invasion. Claire’s third novel, is Enclave.

In this special bonus of outtakes from the Enclave interview Claire talks about inspirations for the story, famous fans and the potential for her work to be adapted.

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.

Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar writer, from Western Australia, now based in Naarm. Claire’s debut novel is the award winning Terra Nullius. She is the author of the novel The Old Lie and Lies Damned Lies, an historical and cultural exploration of the ongoing impact of colonial invasion. Claire’s third novel, is Enclave.

Enclave takes us to the community of Safetown. There residents live a comfortable life, secure in the knowledge they are protected by ‘the wall’. Within that concrete edifice security patrol their streets and drones surveil the airway to ensure even the smallest transgression is met with swift consequences.

Christine has spent her entire life basking in the comfort her fathers wealth and Safetown’s security provide the daughter of an influential family. Sure her father is a distant figure, her mother a high functioning alcoholic, but they’ve just bought her an apartment and extended her a line of seeming unlimited credit.

Safetown was built to protect families like Christine and she should be happy with this safety. Except her best friend Jack is missing and Christine has begun to notice her servants, people who don’t look quite like her…

Join as we discover Claire G Coleman’s Enclave.

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 wanted to indulge us with some fun, thoughtful, edge of your seat, literary sci-fi. Now that may seem like I’ve just thrown a whole lot of adjectives at the wall to see what sticks (and in a way I have) but stay with me, I think I’m justified…

Georgina Young’s debut novel Loner won the Text Prize for Young Adult novel, was commended by the CBCA as a notable book for older readers, and was shortlisted for a Prime Minister’s Literary Award.

Now Georgina is back with her new novel Bootstrap and it is all the adjectives I mentioned above and more.

Ginsborough’s famous for its chicken and leek pies and not much else. Down the road in Koornang all they’ve got is Al’s Takeaway and Jackson Sweeney is doing his best to sour that reputation.

Sweeney’s not languishing in Koornang per se. Languishing sounds way more active than what Sweeney is doing. With nothing but Hooley Dooley’s on a Friday to look forward to (and Sweeney’s pashed most of the available blokes there) life is looking dire.

That is until a tall, dark and very out of place bloke named Bootstrap splits into Sweeney’s life saying he’s come to see the night that Sweeney becomes a hero!

Now I could tell you that Bootstrap is full of the most outlandish cast of characters you’ve met in a long time…

I could tell you that the book has more twists than the highway out of Ginsborough…

I could mention that this is a refreshing take on the sci-fi staple of messing with your own timeline…

All of that would be true but it still wouldn’t capture the enormous heart that Georgina Young has infused into the most unlikable, lovable rogue that is Sweeney and the strange and beguiling figure of Bootstrap.

Sweeney feels trapped in Koornang and that’s the central dramatic tension of the novel. He feels like nothing will ever happen to him and little changes when the entirety of the space time continuum seems to come crashing onto his doorstep.

In a lot of ways Sweeney is all of us when we are feeling the FOMO and getting down on our lives. In a much more real way he is a young gay man who is languishing in a town that doesn’t have enough to offer him and is actively trying to such the life out of him.

The arrival of his best friend Marnie and the enigmatic Bootstrap are still not enough to shake Sweeney’s stupor. He sees one as an excuse to get drunk and the other as a quick pash when he gets there. Marnie’s on her own journey into the doldrums and can’t quite seem to shake her own tendency to plant her food in her mouth. These are not the heroes we need but then again Bootstrap may not deserve saving…

I loved Bootstrap as much for its high octane adventuring as for its parodying small town charm (or was it desperation? Sweeney is really unsure about his nostalgia) In highlighting that regional Australia is a tough place to grow up it also shows us a world where every corner holds a memory. It’s all in stark contrast to the figure of Bootstrap who is a fugitive from his own past.

There’s an incredibly clever and thoughtful crop of mind bending speculative and science fiction popping up in Australia lately and I am here for it. Georgina Young’s Bootstrap is so grounded as to defy the notion that it literally opens up a whole new world of timey wimey adventuring for readers…

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 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.

Lauren Draper is a writer and marketing professional from Melbourne, her writing has appeared in publications such as Kill Your Darlings and Dumbo Feather.

Lauren joins Andrew on the show with her debut young adult novel, The Museum of Broken Things.

Reece is in limbo, and as far as it goes there are worse places to be stuck than the beachside town of Hamilton. But it’s not just the place Reece is stuck in her memories. Memories of The Terrible Thing Happened and the way it has basically put her life on hold.

Maybe she can ride out the last year of school, but fate and a resident shark named Bruce are determined to throw her in the way of Gideon and there’s a whole other set of secrets.

Join me as we discover Lauren Draper’s The Museum of Broken Things...

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/

Find Lauren Draper at laurendraperauthor.com

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.

Frank Moorhouse was an author, journalist and essayist. He is best known for his Edith Trilogy chronicling the life of Edith Campbell Berry and her time as a diplomat around the formation of the League of Nations. Frank was a terrific chronicler and interrogator of Australia and our way of life.

Frank died last week at the age of 83.

This episode features a conversation with Frank from 2017 where he discussed his essay on the writers life.

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/