Final Draft - Great Conversations

Today I’ve brought you in a novel that completely surprised me. There’s just something about the concept and the realisation... I ultimately came to view the narrative as… well maybe I won’t tell you too much just yet, suffice to say it skirted through so many ideas and narrative twists that the true nature of Inga Simpson’s The Last Woman in the World really crept up on me

Inga Simpson's first novel Mr Wigg came out in 2013. Her second novel Nest was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize. Inga’s latest novel is The Last Woman in the World and it takes us to a place both familiar and shockingly different.

Rachel leads a reclusive life on the land. She has an art studio where she blows exquisite collectors pieces. Her daily needs are delivered to her and the isolation is both a boon and a protection from a world that has become too overwhelming.

Rachel has cut herself from the daily news cycle of fire, flood and disease. It’s an unchanging litany of destruction that she cannot bear and while the world seemed hellbent on destruction she didn’t expect anything to suddenly change.

Rachel is content in her isolation until one night a young mother and her child come knocking. They shouldn’t be there and their mere presence shatters Rachel’s peace. When Hannah reveals they are on the run that it is all gone, Rachel realises the world has seemingly self-destructed…

First off I’d say that Rachel’s retreat may seem very familiar to all of us who have experienced lockdown recently. It surprised me a little when I interviewed INga that this story came from before Covid and was seeking to explore the destruction of the fires as much as any pandemic chaos.

Rachel and Hannah must somehow come together to save Hannah’s baby Isaiah who is sick and far from medical help.

As the three venture out into the world they find the landscape of the high country relatively untouched. It is only when they are around populated areas that they feel the true horror of what the world has become.

When I spoke with Inga Simpson for this week’s Final Draft she told me about the pleasure of the unseen and its ability to truly terrify us by reflecting our own fears…

Inga Simpson’s The Last Women in the World is many things. The untouched landscapes of the early novel are something of a travelogue for the Snowies and set up a strange state of calm. Rachel’s unfolding story offers insight into the toll the world can have on our mental health. As we approach the towns though the true horror emerges and grips the reader with the terror of unknown possibility

But perhaps it is in showing us a world that may just be that the Last Woman in the World serves as a warning and an opportunity to glimpse how close we have come to catastrophe.

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features part two of the conversation with Mark Smith discussing his new novel If Not Us and just a warning there are some spoilers for the plot of If Not Us coming up

Today on the show...

The beautiful coastal town of Shelbourne is full of contradictions.

For seventeen year old Hesse it’s the only home he knows. Hesse lives for the waves that break off the myriad banks and reefs along the coast. Hesse works at the local surf shop and doesn’t need much else.

But just outside the town is the Hadron open cut mine and power station. Hadron employs most of the town and they fund all the local sports teams and the surf club.

Hesse hadn’t given much thought to the power station and what it’s putting into the air. His mum’s a nurse and she knows that there’s more than the usual amount of respiratory disease in the local area. Imogen’s also a part of the local climate action group and Hesse is about to learn first hand the dangers to his beloved coast.

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

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

https://2ser.com/final-draft

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Mark Smith discussing his new novel If Not Us

Today on the show...

The beautiful coastal town of Shelbourne is full of contradictions.

For seventeen year old Hesse it’s the only home he knows. Hesse lives for the waves that break off the myriad banks and reefs along the coast. Hesse works at the local surf shop and doesn’t need much else.

But just outside the town is the Hadron open cut mine and power station. Hadron employs most of the town and they fund all the local sports teams and the surf club.

Hesse hadn’t given much thought to the power station and what it’s puting into the air. His mum’s a nurse and she knows that there’s more than the usual amount of respiratory disease in the local area. Imogen’s also a part of the local climate action group and Hesse is about to learn first hand the dangers to his beloved coast.

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

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

https://2ser.com/final-draft

Mark Smith is the award winning author of the Winter Trilogy of novels. In these books Mark established himself as a writer of exciting and insightful young adult fiction. The collection spans a post apocalyptic Australian coastline. Finn must continue surviving after the breakdown of society following a devastating virus… and ok, this isn’t a discussion about The Road to Winter and it’s follow ups but you can already see that Mark Smith has his eye on a far too close for comfort tale..

Mark’s new novel is If Not Us and it follows in the Winter Trilogy’s footsteps of smart storytelling focussed on the resourcefulness of his young protagonists and the sort of hope we can place in future generations.

The beautiful coastal town of Shelbourne is full of contradictions.

For seventeen year old Hesse it’s the only home he knows. Hesse lives for the waves that break off the myriad banks and reefs along the coast. Hesse works at the local surf shop and doesn’t need much else.

But just outside the town is the Hadron open cut mine and power station. Hadron employs most of the town and they fund all the local sports teams and the surf club.

Hesse hadn’t given much thought to the power station and what it’s puting into the air. His mum’s a nurse and she knows that there’s more than the usual amount of respiratory disease in the local area. Imogen’s also a part of the local climate action group and Hesse is about to learn first hand the dangers to his beloved coast.

The first thing If Not Us hits you with is the small town vibe. Hesse biking to the beach and back is all I needed to feel the sand between my toes and know that this is one of those special places. Through Hesse’s naive perspective we almost come to believe that life could be a little bit of work and lots of waves.

When Hesse lines up that first wave you could just imagine one clean ride straight in to the beach. That’s until a local drops in on him and knocks him out for his trouble. The peace of the ocean can’t account for human damage and Hesse knows if he wants something he has to fight for it.

If Not Us works to frame the fight between the locals employed by the mine and the environmental group as something more than simply bad vs good. Hesse is friends with kids whose parents work at the mine. Everyone in town is touched in some way by the prosperity the mine’s employment brings.

The story doesn’t try to save the world, so much as look at how individuals can act and how those actions resonate locally and globally.

When Hesse meets the new exchange student Fenna he starts to see what is happening in his town from a bigger perspective. He knows he’s just one kid, but Fenna shows him how kids across the world are doing big things.

Mark’s writing is fast and punchy (really punchy - surfing is dangerous) He weaves his tale around just a few short weeks and opens up a world that will be familiar to most Australians. His setting and its inhabitants remind us that this problem is both simple and complicated; we know what we have to do to reduce emissions but if we don’t do it together people get left behind. If Not Us shows us that if no one is going to lead the way there’s an incredible group of young leaders who aren’t going to wait to be invited…

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Kay Kerr discussing her new novel Social Queue

Today on the show...

Zoe life is looking up. High school’s over and she’s landed her dream job, interning at online media company Bubble.

Getting here took work though. High school left Zoe burnt out, she was bullied because she’s autistic, and even without the bullying sometimes it was all too much attention, too much misplaced sympathy for her neurodiversity.

Zoe knows she missed out on some stuff. So when the opportunity comes to write about navigating the world of online dating Zoe can barely imagine what’s in store for her!

Embarking on a series of dates to unlock the social secrets of modern love, Zoe is challenging herself to really think about what she wants in a friend and a partner.

Join me as we discover Kay Kerr ’s Social Queue...

Usually I’m bringing you the best new Australian fiction to brighten your day, help bolster your beach reads and update you on the important stories. But stories are everywhere in our culture.

Over on Final Draft through November I’m doing a special series on the ways storytelling works in our daily lives. I’m taking new books and speaking to their authors; journalists, historians and commentators, and getting their insight into the ways we tell stories to shape our reality. And we do this for a few reasons;

The right story can help justify your position, it can shout down your opponent and legitimise a platform. Stories can even be encapsulated in a single word. As we’ll explore through the series, something as simple as ‘larrikin’ can soften the edges of power and make it look appealing.

Today I’ve brought you The Brumby Wars - The Battle for the Soul of Australia by Anthony Sharwood

Anthony is a Walkley Award-winning journalist. He loves the high country and his 2020 book From Snow to Ash, is a love letter to the Australian High Country. The Brumby Wars is his third book and it takes in the history and scope of the ongoing battles between supporters of wild horses in the Australian Bush and those who see the destruction they cause to fragile ecosystems.

The book takes an open approach to the debate, trying to hear all sides. Sharwood confronts the challenges of confronting and contrasting the scientific and ecological understanding of feral horses with the cultural understanding of Brumbies. With 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 in this space, a battle that literally plays out on Mountains and in the halls of political power, Sharwood sounds a warning against tilting towards extremes.

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…

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Karen Manton discussing her debut novel The Curlew's Eye

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Greta and Joel have a good life travelling with their boys, they go where the work is and enjoy the adventure of the road.

As they return to the land where Joel grew up Greta looks forward to a more stable existence, perhaps somewhere they can settle. The homestead is on an isolated property in the Northern Territory, a burnout house surrounded by the skeletons of old cars. Joel’s there to build and to prepare the land for sale, and he seems to want to ignore the tragedy that happened there in his childhood.

Greta too is avoiding her own hometown and secrets. But in this new place she’s conscious that she is an outsider in the landscape; she has her stories, but the land has its own.

Join me as we discover Karen Manton ’s The Curlew's Eye...

Kay Kerr is a former journalist and newspaper editor from Brisbane. Her debut novel is the widely acclaimed Please Don’t Hug Me.

Social Queue introduces us to Zoe.

Zoe has Autism and that means her everyday can be tough. Social spaces aren’t designed for her and this forces her to navigate a world of noise, bustle and crowds that leaves her exhausted. Worse, people just expect her to be ok with these things and that adds another layer of exhaustion as Zoe must choose to explain her discomfort or hide until she can feel safe.

But now Zoe’s finished school and landed her dream internship at Bubble, an online media company. After the hell of high school, this is Zoe’s chance to greet life on her terms.

And her first story pitch is a huge success!

Dating was a non-event for Zoe at school and when she writes about all the missed opportunities, she’s overwhelmed with likes; including a few secret crushes.

Zoe embarks on a fact finding mission. By talking to each of her secret crushes she’s hoping to piece together exactly how love and dating is supposed to work and who knows, maybe love is still on the cards with someone?

There’s a moment in Social Queue where Zoe is trying to figure out why things can’t just be a bit easier for her, and she talks about the social model of disability. The social model of disability is a theoretical framework that respects people’s individual differences and identifies disabilities as the product of barriers in society.

When a wheelchair user requires the modification of a ramp, it’s no different to a non-wheelchair user requiring the modification of stairs. We’re all trying to get to the next level, it’s just some of us have the privilege of having barriers removed without us even being aware of it.

In Zoe’s case she has to puzzle over the potential cues and signals she missed from crushes. Her life at school was a swamp of sensory overload and bullying that meant she didn’t have the emotional energy for much else. But now as she revisits old friends and even bullies who claim they really liked her she must negotiate the toxic world of what we do, or say we do, in the name of love.

Zoe is an extraordinary character to travel along with as she takes this journey. Kerr’s writing is such that we feel instantly connected moving from her internal to external world effortlessly. As Zoe meets up with friends, bullies and passing acquaintances we are confronted by the ways that we all try to negotiate love and affection. There’s a particularly effective scene where a old crush describes a series of innocuous actions he took to get her attention. She is baffled, as I suspect you would be too dear reader, that somehow these amounted to a declaration of love. Zoe may have missed the cues, but the question we all are left asking is how anyone ever falls in love if we’re going to be this obtuse.

The reader's connection with Zoe is of the type that we might feel that we relate to Zoe’s experience. This felt deliberate on Kerr’s part. Our closeness to Zoe invites us to share and relate to her experience but also challenges us to recognise that these are barriers thrown up against her as an Autistic person (Zoe’s preferred language).

Throughout the novel Zoe works with her colleagues at Bubble, as well as with friends and her newly discovered old crushes, to educate them about the way disability is framed in society. We see the real emotional burden she shoulders and the toll it takes on her.

Social Queue invites us into Zoe’s world and gives us privileged access to her life. We see her triumph and also her suffering but are asked to understand not pity.

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Maxine Beneba Clarke discussing her new poetry collection How Decent Folk Behave

Today on the show...

Maxine Beneba Clarke is an author of short fiction, non fiction and poetry. She won the Victorian Premier’s literary award for poetry in 2017 for her collection Carrying the World,

Her short story collection Foreign Soil, masterfully captures voices from marginalised communities, winning the ABIA for Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2015 and the 2015 Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction.

Maxine Beneba Clarke’s new collection of poetry, How Decent Folk Behave, once again highlights Clarke’s ear for voices and ability to tell stories with empathy and insight.

I cannot wait to share this conversation with you. Maxine has even generously agreed to share a poem from the collection

Join me as we discover Maxine Beneba Clarke ’s How Decent Folk Behave...

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

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

https://2ser.com/final-draft

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Maxine Beneba Clarke discussing her new poetry collection How Decent Folk Behave

Today on the show...

Maxine Beneba Clarke is an author of short fiction, non fiction and poetry. She won the Victorian Premier’s literary award for poetry in 2017 for her collection Carrying the World,

Her short story collection Foreign Soil, masterfully captures voices from marginalised communities, winning the ABIA for Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2015 and the 2015 Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction.

Maxine Beneba Clarke’s new collection of poetry, How Decent Folk Behave, once again highlights Clarke’s ear for voices and ability to tell stories with empathy and insight.

I cannot wait to share this conversation with you. Maxine has even generously agreed to share a poem from the collection

Join me as we discover Maxine Beneba Clarke ’s How Decent Folk Behave...

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

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

https://2ser.com/final-draft