Here’s a link to a Q & A for the Tasmanian Writer’s Centre Up Close & Personal following the launch of The Museum of Modern Love. Created by the wonderful Ruth Dawkins @dorkymum.
If you’d like a little insight into what it takes to write a novel, this is an article I wrote on The Museum of Modern Love that appeared today in The Age and also the Sydney Morning Herald. The Age – The Steady Gaze
To anyone who wonders how long novels take to write … well, sometimes they take a very long time. Here is the cover art of my new novel – The Museum of Modern Love – about to be published in Australia September 2016. It’s taken 11 years. I did write 4 other novels in the meantime – but it’s been a lesson in endurance. As the cover suggests, it’s about art – and also marriage. And Marina Abramovic is a character in the novel. I hope you enjoy it.
Back in 2005 I was fascinated by a photograph at the National Gallery in Melbourne. It depicted 72 items on a table – a rose, a bottle of oil, a chain, razor blades, bread, grapes, a gun, a bullet. It was from a performance piece in Milan in 1972 where the visitor to the gallery was invited to use any of the items in their interaction with the performance artist in the room. The artist was Marina Abramovic and the short bio at the side of the photograph intrigued me. Ever since then I’ve been pursuing a novel that captures both Marina’s history, but also the impact her work has on the people who see it. In 2010 Marina gave me permission to use her as a character in the novel.
The pursuit of this story has taken me to New York for The Artist is Present at MoMA in 2010 – and lately to Sydney with John Kaldor to discuss the new novel but also to participate in the Marina Abramovic In Residence experience. Later in 2016 Jane Palfreyman at Allen & Unwin will be publishing the new novel.
In June this year I had the opportunity to meet Marina for the first time, in rather unlikely circumstances. At the invitation of David Walsh, I read an extract of the novel to her during her conversation with David in Hobart at The Odeon. David has been the most extraordinary supporter of this novel. I found back in 2008, by a little stroke of serendipity, that Marina’s work was collected by David – and his personal library housed every book published about Marina. For a few months I read those books in a cupboard at the back of the warehouse that then housed the MoNA collection. After MoNA was built, David gave me a room at MoNA to work through 2012 – 13. (My thanks also to two wonderful women of MoNA – Mary Linzjad and Delia Nichols for being pivotal in making this happen).
David has read drafts and given insightful and generous feedback. For a long while he was the only person who had read the final draft. So while I may not yet have decided on the novel’s title yet – I do know to whom it is dedicated.
This video shows the complete (and fascinating) interview with David and Marina in Hobart as part of Dark MOFO. At about the 44 minute mark David segues to the reading. But enjoy the interview!
The Signature of All Things – by Elizabeth Gilbert – the second in an occasional series for the beautiful Islington Hotel, Hobart.
“From 19th century America to Tahiti and Europe, this is a novel of science and sensuality, intellect and exploration. It has all the grit and colour of Dickens, but the quiet control and social wisdom of George Eliot.”
Elizabeth Gilbert is famous for that bestselling memoir Eat Pray Love. But The Signature of All Things is a return to fiction for Gilbert – the first time in 12 years – and her ease with the form of the novel shows. This is an exquisite story so vivid and vibrant in its characters and plot that it does that wonderful thing very good novels do – it carried me away entirely.
The novel begins in Dickensian fashion with: “Alma Whittaker, born with the century, slid into our world on the fifth of January, 1800.” Alma Whittaker grows up in the midst of extraordinary wealth created by her maverick father through the legal and illegal procurement of rare plants from across the world.
The opening chapters relate her father’s extraordinary life “while we wait for the young girl to grow up…”. These include one of the most wonderful evocations of Cook’s third voyage that it should be required reading for all Australians.
And so young Alma does grow up. On the extensive estate of White Acre, with its gardens and hothouses, Alma finds herself drawn to the infinite wonder of botany. This will lead to a lifetime of enquiry and pursuit – and what a lifetime it is!
Alma is neither beautiful nor petite (always something of a relief in literature) and so her love life is fraught with significant challenges. Her true exploration is both physical and intellectual. Through her fascination with mosses, she develops a pioneering theory on transmutation, paralleling that of Darwin and his younger colleague Alfred Russell Wallace.
From 19th century America to Tahiti and Europe, this is a novel of science and sensuality, intellect and exploration. It has all the grit and colour of Dickens, but the quiet control and social wisdom of George Eliot.
Gilbert researched the novel painstakingly – using 19th century letters to inform the voice and vocabulary of the novel (Walt Whitman’s letters and Captain Cook’s journals were of particular interest.) Every page is imbued with a reverence for nature, science and exploration. And yet this is a novel of pace and great humour. I so loved Alma, and believed in her so entirely, that at one point I googled her to ensure she really wasn’t a person I had missed in history. No, she wasn’t. She, and her marvellous adventures through a century of human evolution, are completely the product of Gilbert’s rich and exciting imagination.
The Signature of All Things is an epic and satisfying journey of some 500 pages. It is a beautiful book to read, and equally to listen to. The audio book (via Audible.com) has the unsurpassed Juliet Stevenson as narrator. Enjoy!
PS. The Islington is Hobart’s (and one of Australia’s) most beautiful and elegant places to stay. Perfect for couples wanting the ultimate retreat. For more about the luxurious accommodation at The Islington visit: www.islingtonhotel.com
And for the most beautiful place for groups to stay in Hobart (especially those who love to read) discover our own Library House – www.libraryhouse.com.au
The exquisite Islington Hotel in Hobart asked me if I’d like to write about books. So here is the first in a new monthly review of a book I’ve recently discovered and enjoyed. And stay tuned for more about books and writing at the Islington through winter …
The Burgess Boys – by Elizabeth Strout
My grandfather was a Burgess – the youngest of many brothers – so the title of this novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Elizabeth Strout – felt warmly familiar.
In the novel, the lives of the three Burgess children are shaped by a freak accident. Now grown-up, the Burgess boys have settled in New York – both are lawyers, one famous with a rich wife from Connecticut, the other divorced and working for Legal Aid. The brothers are called back home to Shirley Falls in Maine where their frosty sister, Susan, still lives. Their nephew has just committed a hate crime.
This is a novel of its time – yet without a moment of preaching or misplaced passion. Strout has a crisp, vivid style and evokes a range of classes and political views in this extraordinary novel of connection and dislocation. Like J.K Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, Strout is fearless in her evocation of character, and it’s the characters that will hold you until the beautifully woven end. (How rare to find a satisfying end to a novel these days – but The Burgess Boys is flawless.)
Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge, a collection of connected short stories. One of these stories becomes a chapter in The Burgess Boys. I haven’t read Olive Kitteridge yet, but now it’s waiting on the To Read shelf.
Heather Rose
PS. The Islington is Hobart’s (and one of Australia’s) most beautiful and elegant places to stay. Perfect for couples wanting the ultimate retreat. For more about the luxurious accommodation at The Islington visit: www.islingtonhotel.com
And for the most beautiful place for groups to stay in Hobart (especially those who love to read) discover our own Library House – www.libraryhouse.com.au
