Final Draft - Great Conversations

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

Today's episode features part one of Eileen Chong discussing her new collection A Thousand Crimson Blooms

Today on the show...

Eileen Chong is an Australian poet of Chinese descent. She is the author of eight collections of poetry and her work has been listed for more prizes than a half hour show like ours could possibly list but I’ll just mention the likes of the The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and the PM’s Literary Award. Her first collection Burning Rice is taught as part of the NSW HSC Syllabus and today we will be talking about her new collection A Thousand Crimson Blooms.

Emily Maguire is the author of fiction and non-fiction. Her 2016 novel An Isolated Incident garnered short list noms for the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin. It explored the reverberations within a community around a horrific act of violence against a young woman.

Maguire is a master of closely drawn character and the population of her novels feel almost like a neighbour or a workmate in the ways they jump off the page.

Her latest novel Love Objects takes us into Sydney’s Inner West where Nicole has lived pretty much her entire life. It’s a modest house but Nic has always said her family has a bed there if they ever need it.

Nicole hasn't had much in the way of family after her mum died and her sister moved to Brisbane. When Michelle left she took Lena, Nic’s niece.

Lena and her brother Will grew up worshipping their Aunty Nic. Her house was an escape from home and she supported their every endeavour unconditionally. When Lena moved to Brisbane Nic was devastated.

Now Lena’s back in Sydney studying and every Sunday she and Nic meet up for lunch. When Aunty Nic misses their date one Sunday, Lena goes in search of her aunt. Only to make a shocking discovery…

It’s hard to know whether to leave this synopsis on that click baity cliffhanger. The shocking revelation is designed to garner quick response, even judgement from the reader and then complicate those initial impressions.

As I mentioned earlier Emily Maguire is masterful in her realisation of character. Nic is simultaneously close and relatable, then at turns completely foreign in her thinking. MAguire’s brilliance is to bring us so close into her life that we are able to sit with the discomfort of knowing there are no easy answers for Nic in her life.

A key understanding of the dynamic of Love OBjects is in the relationships between Nicole, Lena and Will. MAguire wants to explore what the ethicist Peter Singer would call our expanding circle.

Within their dynamic we have a love that looks like that within the typical nuclear family (for whatever value that term still holds) Nic has always viewed Lena like a daughter and was thrilled to have her back in Sydney. The events of the novel challenge both of their perceptions of this relationship as actions are perceived as betrayals and the ties that bind start to look more tenuous.

Will returns to the family after an absence that began with a stint in prison that has impacted his ability to feel at peace. Will exemplifies an open secret that becomes almost a barrier to his inclusion anywhere. Try as he might to just be, he is always vigilant that he will only be judged by a single action.

I’ve skirted nicely around the central tension of Love Objects and left out some key plot points because that is a part of why we read; to be surprised and challenged by what we find on the page. Suffice to say that in its exploration of love, community and connection Love Objects is the perfect book to challenge our world as we look to a post covid normal.

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 Emily Maguire discussing her new novel Love Objects

Today on the show...

Nicole has always looked out for family. When her sister Michelle packed up and left Sydney for Brisbane Nic was devastated. Nic had always treated her niece Lena like her own and to be separated was unbearable.

Now Lena’s back in Sydney studying and every Sunday she and Nic meet up for lunch. When Nic misses their date one Sunday, Lena goes in search of her aunt. What she finds changes everything and Lena will have to confront the lengths she will go to for someone she loves…

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

Today's episode features part one of Emily Maguire discussing her new novel Love Objects

Today on the show...

Nicole has always looked out for family. When her sister Michelle packed up and left Sydney for Brisbane Nic was devastated. Nic had always treated her niece Lena like her own and to be separated was unbearable.

Now Lena’s back in Sydney studying and every Sunday she and Nic meet up for lunch. When Nic misses their date one Sunday, Lena goes in search of her aunt. What she finds changes everything and Lena will have to confront the lengths she will go to for someone she loves…

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 Claire Thomas discussing her new novel The Performance

Today on the show...

Three women attend a staging of Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days. Inside the theatre is air conditioned to a chill, while outside bushfires rage outside the city.

On the stage a woman is trapped to her waist inside an expanding mound, happily exploring her past through items in her bag.

Within the audience the women’s minds drift out across time. Margot considers her family, expanded to include a new grandson, even as her husband slowly moves into his old age. Ivy thinks about her world and how far she’s come from the person she was at uni. Summer wishes she could pay closer attention to the stage. Her job is to usher guests to their seats but her mind is miles away as the fires circling the city move closer to her girlfriends family home.

Join me as we discover Claire Thomas’s The Performance...

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

Today's episode features part one of Claire Thomas discussing her new novel The Performance

Today on the show...

Three women attend a staging of Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days. Inside the theatre is air conditioned to a chill, while outside bushfires rage outside the city.

On the stage a woman is trapped to her waist inside an expanding mound, happily exploring her past through items in her bag.

Within the audience the women’s minds drift out across time. Margot considers her family, expanded to include a new grandson, even as her husband slowly moves into his old age. Ivy thinks about her world and how far she’s come from the person she was at uni. Summer wishes she could pay closer attention to the stage. Her job is to usher guests to their seats but her mind is miles away as the fires circling the city move closer to her girlfriends family home.

Join me as we discover Claire Thomas’s The Performance...

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

Today's episode features the Head of the 2021 Stella Prize Judging Panel Zoya Patel discussing the lead up to the prize announcement

Zoya Patel is the author of No Country Woman. She is the founding editor of Feminartsy and has been published widely including Junkee, Women’s Agenda and The Canberra Times. Today she is joining us as the head of the 2021 Stella Prize Judging Panel.

The Stella Prize is an annual award open to books published by women and non-binary writers. It’s now in its ninth year and always offers up an incredible selection of titles.

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

Today's episode features Lawrie McMahon discussing his debut novel As Swallows Fly

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In rural Pakistan Malika is entrusted to the care of Ayesha after her parents are killed in an accident. She grows up along another survivor, Tahir, gradually becoming part of the village life. As Malika is entrusted with more responsibility it emerges that she has an extraordinary intelligence. Malika’s talents are destined to take her away from the village until a violent betrayal threatens her entire world.

In Melbourne Kate is piecing together her life after the death of her mother. She’s always leant on her career as a surgeon and has little to show in the way of personal relationships. When a young woman from PAkistan enters her life, will she finally learn to open up to others?

Join me as we discover L.P. McMahon’s As Swallows Fly...

Iain Ryan is the Ned Kelly Shortlisted author of Four Days and the Student.

In the Spiral...

Erma Bridges is tired. She just got off a thirty six hour flight to answer as yet unknown charges of misconduct from her university. A university where young women are disappearing at an alarming rate. A university where one young woman, Erma’s missing research assistant, is about to reappear and brutally attack Erma for seemingly no discernible reason.

When Erma wakes from the shocking attack she must try and piece together what has happened to her life. Why did her research assistant turn on her. Did it have anything to do with her book on the History of Reader Deployed Young Adult Fiction and the missing interviews with an elusive author?

Ryan’s opening immediately throws the reader off balance. Erma is seemingly being targeted on all sides by forces she can barely comprehend.

As she throws herself into Brisbane’s underworld in the search for answers she must also confront her own part in the unfolding events.

Erma’s story in The Spiral is twinned with that of a mysterious barbarian named Sero. Sero emerges from Erma’s unconscious and moves inexorably forward in a quest to recover their memory.

Sero is all brute strength and violence, occupying a world straight out of horror/fantasy.

The fascinating conceit of Sero’s existence is they are told through the second person. The being, seemingly of Erma’s creation becomes a proxy for our own movement through the narrative.

Identification and control are central to Ryan’s unfolding story. Erma does not like having control wrested from her. Behind the academic sounding title Erma’s thesis is focussed on Choose Your Own Adventure books (remember them?) and she seeks the certainties of choice and consequence those books offered her as a teen.

Sero seems drawn straight from one of these books but their path is linear, no choices but to move forward. That is until Erma is brought to a crisis point.

Approaching its penultimate moments The Spiral shifts into a Choose Your Own adventure style, circuitous narrative.

The reader is dazzled with the illusion of control. Seemingly we hold both Erma and Sero’s fates in our hands.

This is the fun and the fascination of The Spiral. By giving us control, the story is seeking to challenge our assumption about what control even means.

I think more than a few readers will be unsettled by their own presumption of sitting above the narrative. That it’s some sort of entertainment that we can dip in and out of.

The Spiral also explores the exercise of control in our own world. Power and its uses to control are at the centre of our public consciousness at the moment. While it would be too much to say that The Spiral is talking directly to this moment, it offers some perspectives on how control operates, particularly against women.

The Spiral is taut and thrilling. It is experimental and baffling. It is an absolute gripping read and I highly recommend it.

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 Yassmin Abdel-Magied discussing her new YA novel Listen, Layla

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Layla is an inventor. After winning a scholarship to an exclusive school she is now preparing for the Grand Designs Tourismo which will take her to Germany and working her hardest to win a place on the Special International Invention Tour. But Layla’s plans for conquering the world with her inventions hit a hurdle when her family must travel to Sudan to be at her grandmother’s bedside. This trip challenges Layla to discover who she is beyond the world of her inventors workshop...

Join me as we discover Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s Listen, Layla...