Final Draft - Great Conversations

If I’ve learned anything in my time covering Australian writing it’s to never underestimate Chris Flynn.

Chris is the award winning author of Mammoth - the story of a loquacious fossil, The Glass Kingdom - a drug fueled romp through outback Australia and perhaps the strangest of all Here Be Leviathans - a collection of Monkey’s, Platypuses and Sabretooth Tigers working well outside their pay grade. 

Chris is back with his new novel Orpheus Nine and he’s going to hold up the mirror once again whether we’re ready or not…

And just a quick content warning that this narrative talks about death and pandemics, just in case you don’t want to hear about that…

On a Saturday morning in the small coastal town of Gattan, families are gathered for the local under tens footy when it happens. One moment all eyes are on the action of the game, the next, confusion reigns as all the players, bar one stand stock still, frozen on the pitch. Next comes the eerie chorus from the players; a line in Latin from King Lear, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport” before all dropping dead.

The horror inflicted on Gattan is repeated all over the world. Scientists are helpless to explain why children aged nine are dying when they reach their ninth birthday.

In Gattan families are struggling to understand the tragedy and it quickly threatens community cohesion. Families of the dead are known as Orpheans and are pariahs in their own town. Meanwhile the families of ten year olds are regarded with suspicion, while those families of eight year olds desperately search for a way out.

On its surface Orpheus Nine looks like a book about the pandemic. It certainly references Covid-19, even if it’s to show how much worse the Orpheus Nine crisis is becoming. Through the novel we see something of the calamity that could have been.

More than the global terror that often felt so far removed from our everyday lives, Orpheus Nine shows us how we suffered at the personal and community level.

By focussing in on the fictional town of Gattan, Flynn shows us the cost of the tragedy across the town. How the deaths were only the beginning as mistrust quickly spread and families and friends come to question their loyalties. 

The novel shows us the roots of the mistrust that festers when everything goes wrong and challenges the notion that banding together is protective, when people can be so quick to turn on each other and declare you now an outsider.

There’s also something of a mystery at the heart of the novel. This isn’t the promised answer that we all secretly hope might save us in these impossible situations. Rather Orpheus Nine shows us how futile our situation is in the face of enormous threats. Or at least how futile things are when our best bet is just to continue with the same petty complaints we’ve always held.

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.

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.

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/ 

Ann Dombroski’s prize-winning short fiction has appeared in literary journals and anthologies. Her debut novel is After the Great Storm

In the near future, Sydney is dominated by seemingly monolithic corporate structures. From prisons to transport and even medicine, the city skyline is overcome by these enormous structures that obscure the sky and channel the increasingly destructive storms that swamp the city..

Alice’s husband is locked in one of these high-rise prisons. Jailed for a crime he claims to be innocent of and vehemently protesting the cost cutting of the same corporations that have locked him away. 

Alice wants a baby but first she has to get her husband out of jail. There’s the legal costs and she’s not even sure she can afford to keep their house let alone pay for the experimental fertility treatments. With nowhere to turn Alice is increasingly desperate for respite.

When another catastrophic storm hits on Alice’s way home from work she must hurry to escape the environmental destruction. In the morning as the neighbourhood takes stock of the latest damage, a strange and shadowy figure appears on Alice’s doorstep… 

Ann Dombriski’s future imperfect tale of a barely recognisable Sydney is a fascinating look at possible consequences of our rapid modernisation. While Alice lives in a townhouse in a so-called heritage neighbourhood, we are privy to the changes that have divided Sydney up into sectors and splintered the social fabric along ghettoized economic lines.

Alice’s life is teetering on the verge of collapse and we are forced to watch on as blow after blow makes it seem increasingly unlikely that Alice will be the heroine who rides off into the sunset.

The novel explores the seeming inevitable moral ambiguity of a world that has continued to develop and sell off its assets for increasing growth. All of the characters, Alice included must look to how they can best codify themselves or the things in their lives, to leverage the necessities and just survive. 

We are shown just how far technology can take us, even as we are challenged with a vision of capricious development for its own sake. Alice works in the field of medical research and advancements and we are challenged with the for-profit access to health and its impacts on care. Lurking behind all of this though is the secret hidden in Alice’s home. A secret that may represent the solution to her problems, even as it damns her.

I feel deep into the world building of After the Great Storm and enjoyed traveling through this convincing, if chilling version of Sydney. I couldn’t see where there’d be room for 2ser in this corporate wonderland but reassuringly the aging millennials still sported fading tattoos. Even if the next generation disapproved.

After the Great Storm is a fascinating deep dive into the future that strays only slightly from our current concerns. The personal becomes political and Alice’s story forces the reader to explore their own morality as we watch Alice consider what she would do for her family.

There’s some terrific speculative and climate based fiction coming out of Australia and After the Great Storm is well worth your time for a glimpse towards tomorrow.

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.

Chris is the award winning author of Mammoth - the story of a loquacious fossil, The Glass Kingdom - a drug fueled romp through outback Australia and perhaps the strangest of all Here Be Leviathans - a collection of Monkey’s, Platypuses and Sabretooth Tigers working well outside their pay grade.

Chris is back with his new novel Orpheus Nine and he’s going to hold up the mirror once again whether we’re ready or not…

And just a quick content warning that this narrative talks about death and pandemics, just in case you don’t want to hear about that…

On a Saturday morning in the small coastal town of Gattan, families are gathered for the local under tens footy when it happens. One moment all eyes are on the action of the game, the next, confusion reigns as all the players, bar one stand stock still, frozen on the pitch. Next comes the eerie chorus from the players; a line in Latin from King Lear, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport” before all dropping dead.

The horror inflicted on Gattan is repeated all over the world. Scientists are helpless to explain why children aged nine are dying when they reach their ninth birthday.

In Gattan families are struggling to understand the tragedy and it quickly threatens community cohesion. Families of the dead are known as Orpheans and are pariahs in their own town. Meanwhile the families of ten year olds are regarded with suspicion, while those families of eight year olds desperately search for a way out.

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.

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.

Ann Dombroski is a writer whose prize-winning short fiction has appeared in literary journals and anthologies.

Ann’s debut novel is After the Great Storm

Alice’s husband is in jail for a crime he claims to be innocent of. Alice wants a baby but is unsure if she can afford to keep their house let alone pay for the experimental fertility treatments. There’s also her grandmother and Daniel’s mounting legal fees.

With nowhere to turn Alice is increasingly desperate for respite.

And then a strange and shadowy figure appears on her doorstep… 

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.

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.

Caro Llewellyn is the author of the Stella Prize shortlisted memoir Diving into Glass, and has worked with writers in publishing and as a Festival Director and human rights advocate.

Her new novel is Love Unedited

As an editor, Molly is used to receiving manuscripts. Even incomplete manuscripts, from mysterious authors aren’t completely out of the ordinary. But there is something about this new manuscript that has gotten under Molly’s skin…

Maybe it’s the tale of lovers reuniting after decades apart, or the hearkening back to a literary world so familiar and yet so romantic. Or perhaps it’s Edna. Something about Edna that seems so familiar.

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.

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/ 

Naima Brown’s essays have appeared in Vogue, the Guardian, and more. She wrote, along with Melissa Doyle, the non-fiction book How to Age Against the Machine and is the author of The Shot. 

Mother Tongue is her second novel.

Ever since the birth of her daughter Jenny, Brynn’s life has been ruled by The Schedule; a clockwork routine that means Jenny will love her and Brynn will be the mother she know she can be. 

Her husband Eric works hard for the family and Brynn will too. Her best friend Lisa always tells she has the perfect life and if Brynn doesn’t feel like that’s true well then maybe she just needs to work harder at it.

Maybe it’s the working hard that did it. Why Brynn was outside on the icy step, taking the fall and then ending up in a coma.

When Brynn awakes from her coma her life is still the same picture of suburban idyll. It’s just Brynn doesn’t seem to fit it anymore. She speaks fluent French, a thing called Foreign Accent Syndrome, and English is an effort.

Suddenly her world feels strange. Brynn is a new person, and while Jenny still accepts her mother, no one else seems to. Eric is becoming withdrawn, even hostile. Her parents are avoiding her and Lisa thinks she might be faking and is eying of Eric.

It’s all too much and so Brynn leaves…

Mother Tongue is about the expectations placed on women’s lives and how these narrow standards manage to choke everyone no matter your position or privilege.

When Brynn wakes up speaking French she equates this as not just a second chance, but a second soul. Freed from so many of the conventions of her world, Brynn suddenly finds that this world is becoming intolerable to her. 

While those around her seek to gaslight her experience Brynn comes to raise that the only choice she may have is to opt out.

Lisa is in many easy Brynn’s foil. Where Brynn opts out, Lisa will opt in. Taking Brynn’s place in the family she will allow Eric to use her for her labour to raise Jenny whilst never truly loving her or wanting her there.

The novel only builds momentum from here exploring how each character’s lives unfold when they are untethered from their ‘typical’ everyday existence.

I’d tell you more about the trajectory of the narrative, playing out over the next fourteen odd years, but you probably wouldn’t believe me. Mother Tongue is incisive in its wit even as its wildly dark and sardonic in its narrative twists.

The personal is political here and Brynn’s choices, indeed all of the characters choices seem to play out against a wider social current of inclusive vs xenophobic impulses. While Brynn lands on her feet in Paris she is not free from the suspicion that drove her out of her home. Meanwhile back in Elderpool Eric is flirting with the absolute worst of humanity as his chance to escape his own personal malaise.

Mother Tongue is clever, fun and wild. Even as it asks big questions, it offers a guiding hand on the journey to some kind of answer.

As Brynn might say ‘C’est un grand livre. Je la recommande’

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.

Rachael Johns was an English teacher before making her dreams of becoming a novelist come true. Her book The Patterson Girls won the ABIA Award in 2016 for General Fiction and she has also won the prestigious Romance Writers of Australia RUBY Award twice.

Rachael is joining us today with her new novel The Bad Bridesmaid

Fred has the conviction of her beliefs. She’s writing a book on how not to catch feelings and is refreshingly honest with all her partners about where she stands on this.

Fred’s also seen some things and she’s pretty keen on stopping her mum from catching feelings as well. So it’s with some surprise and consternation that Fred greets the news that her mother is getting married. Soon. And it’s a destination wedding.

Fred’s practically trapped on Norfolk Island, but all is not lost when she finds a hot accomplice in Leo and together they set out to break up their parents… 

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.

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 days are about to get shorter and the cold is already creeping in. So for today’s book club I’m taking us back to warmer times with Karina May’s That Island Feeling.

Karina is the author of Duck a l’Orange for Breakfast (April 2023), which was longlisted in the Indie Book Awards for Best Debut Fiction, and Never Ever Forever. Karina, alongside her friend and author Clare Fletcher, is the founder and co-host of the successful That Rom Com Pod.

Karina’s new novel That Island Feeling takes us to the secluded beaches of Pearl Island where Andie is determined to help her best friend Taylor through her divorce. A week on Pearl Island is just the beginning. Andie has an itinerary designed to help them forget men and melt away all their dramas.

Except that Andie certainly hasn’t prepared for double booked bucks parties to crash their house. She’s underwhelmed by her friend's immediate gravitation towards these overbearing men. This week is meant to be about the girls and so she definitely hasn’t planned for any handsome, barefoot boat captains to come paddleboarding her way.

Pearl Island is paradise for tourists and locals alike but that doesn’t happen without a little effort. Jack has been working any job he can ever since the Island’s oyster industry was decimated. The environmental catastrophe could quickly become a personal catastrophe if he can’t wrangle all the locals and support whatever industry the island has left, even if that means supporting the local resort.

Jack’s been looking out for everyone else for so long he’s not sure he can trust his instincts when it comes to other people caring for him.

There’s so much at stake and everyone else to look put for. Can Andie and Jack get out of their own way long enough to see what the other has to offer.

So let’s do this a little differently today…

I need all the fellas to lean in here. Because I know a bit about how books are marketed and I know that the powers that be are exactly expecting males to be picking up copies of That Island Feeling. 

People think straight men don’t go for meet cutes and we shy away from romance. But even if that were true let’s just look at the breakdown here; we’ve got a guy shouldering responsibilities and feeling overwhelmed but having difficulty asking for help. He loves to get out on the water and is handy but not too showy about it. He’s trying his best to be a gentleman and he looks out for his mum.

I’m thinking we’d all like to identify with this bloke (except for the asking for help - why can’t we get better at that guys?!) I’m also thinking there’s more than a little to aspire to here, including the shirtless paddleboarding.

It’s also time we shuck off the stereotype of not liking romance. Let’s all embrace our inner sweetheart and agree to surprise our significant others with a sweet gesture tonight. 

We love a little love and just need to overcome all the manosphere garbage and tap into our emotional selves with a delightful beach read.

Now there is also Andie’s story and she’s great, but I think a lot of you already knew that.

I bet you also know there’s going to be rough waters for the Andie and Jack, and will they or won’t they make it?

The joy of these stories is in how we can constantly rediscover things we think we know and embrace the full spectrum of human emotion from the safety of our armchairs.

Karina May’s That Island Feeling. Read it if you have a heart that you’re still regularly using…  

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.

Eileen  Chong is an award winning poet.  You’ve met her on Final Draft with her last collection A Thousand Crimson Blooms and today she’s joining us with her new collection We Speak of Flowers.

We Speak of Flowers comprises 101 interconnected fragments that can be read in any order, attempting to make sense of grief in the face of great pain.

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.

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/