books

And then what happened was…

/ Kelly Gardiner / Leave a comment

The day started with a workout, then after a much-needed and extremely strong recovery coffee I turned on my laptop to find messages of congratulations on email and Twitter, because the Barbara Jefferis Award shortlist was announced today and Act of Faith was highly commended.


It’s such an honour and surprise because, apart from anything else, this is an Australian Society of Authors award for  ‘the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society’. That means a great deal to me. It is named in honour of the late Barbara Jefferis: novelist, founding member of the Australian Society of Authors and its first woman President.


And there are so many significant and terrific books this year that are eligible, I’m really quite delighted.


I mean, really – look at this shortlist:

  • Georgia Blain: Too Close to Home (Vintage)
  • Claire Corbett: When We Have Wings (Allen & Unwin)
  • Anna Funder: All That I Am (Penguin)
  • Gail Jones: Five Bells (Vintage)
  • Gillian Mears: Foal’s Bread (Allen & Unwin)
  • Frank Moorhouse: Cold Light (Vintage).



Also highly commended were:

  • SJ Finn: This Too Shall Pass (Sleepers)
  • Meg Mundell: Black Glass (Scribe).



Chuffed. Me. Hell, yeah. And I don’t care who knows it.


Hearty congratulations to all those commended and shortlisted. And happy IWD 2012.


You can read more about  the award on the ASA site.

Reviewing reviews

/ Kelly Gardiner / Leave a comment

Hark! What’s that?
It’s the sound of someone blowing her own trumpet.

Since everyone else ON EARTH is reflecting on highlights of 2011, I’m gonna jump right on that bandwagon.

It seems like a very short year. Feels like I lost track of a few months somehow, starting a new day job, building up to and then focusing on the release of Act of Faith, and then spending October in France obsessively hunting down historical details for the Tragedie project.

If 2011 has flown past in a blur, luckily I have several artifacts to remind me: blog posts and social media updates, manuscripts and photos, a very handsome book out in the world and apparently going gangbusters, plus a whole range of people’s reactions to it.

Here are a few recent reviews, important to me because they are from industry journals; from librarians or teachers or YA/children’s book specialists who are passionate about writing for young people:

‘In the world of contemporary young adult fiction, Act of Faith runs against stereotype… A fine book for the classroom, especially at a time when religious tolerance, and tolerance of religion, is at a depressing low… a work of scholarship as well as a work of fiction. A novel that begs for a sequel.’
– Viewpoint 

‘This is a very exciting and thought-provoking book which may very well open up knowledge for today’s adolescent readers about what the world was like when such religious intolerance pursued everyone…’
– Reading Time (Children’s Book Council of Australia)

‘A good read for lovers of books and historical adventure stories.’
– Magpies journal

And I was deeply chuffed to be listed by Holly Harper amongst Readings’ best YA books for the year, in some dazzling company.

Thanks to Readings, and to booksellers everywhere – large and small.

And of course to everyone who has had faith enough to read my book.

May yours be a happy new year.

Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012

/ Kelly Gardiner / Leave a comment

This is a challenge born of something approaching despair.

Last year, VIDA in the US released its survey of publishing data which showed exactly what anyone with half a brain already knew: dire levels of representation of women at all levels; the number of books by women that got reviewed, the number of female reviewers and book page editors, and women in senior positions in the industry.

Throughout 2011, more and more incidents came to prominence (as if inequality was a new thing!) including the lack of women writers on a number of key literary prize judging panels and shortlists.
My personal favourite moment was when Jennifer Egan  won the Pulitzer, and the LA Times reported instead that Jonathan Franzen had lost the Pulitzer, and ran his photo on the front page – not the winner’s. Laugh? I nearly…

Of course, this is not unique to writing and publishing. Like nursing, librarianship and education, it’s a field in which the majority (which happens to be female) are dominated by a minority, with males traditionally taking positions in management in publishing, libraries, writing courses, festivals and writers’ centres (although the normally rowdy community is often strangely silent on those last two categories, I notice).

That’s not to diminish the many amazing women in positions of power in the writing world. It’s just a thing.

But unlike those fields, something unique and profound is also afoot, because the issue is also about how literary worth is assessed: which issues, what settings, language, topics and characters make up the sort of books that win prizes. It’s about our culture.

I won’t bang on about it: others have already done so very eloquently, and anyway it seems like the kind of no-brainer thing most of us have been saying since 1975. Or since we could speak.

But what to do?

Short of coming over all Emma Goldman (and don’t tempt me), here’s one wee thing we can all do, no matter what our gender: make 2012 the year you read a few good books written by Australian women.

The challenge has been issued. It runs as follows:

Goal: Read and review books written by Australian women writers – hard copies, ebooks and audiobooks, new, borrowed or stumbled upon.

Genre challenges: 

  • Purist: one genre only
  • Dabbler: more than one genre
  • Devoted eclectic: as many genres as you can find

 
Challenge levels:

  • Stella (read 3 and review at least 2 books)
  • Miles (read 6 and review at least 3
  • Franklin-fantastic (read 10 and review at least 4 books)

You can read more about it here.

My response?

I’m going to undertake the devoted eclectic challenge (of course, because that’s how we roll here, at the best of times), and at least the Miles level.

I’m not sure of all the books I’ll read yet, because there are some beauties coming out, but the first few are:

  • Sensational Melbourne: Reading, Sensation Fiction and Lady Audley’s Secret in the Victorian Metropolis, by Susan Martin and Kylie Mirmohamadi

  • Playing with Water: A Story of a Garden, by Kate Llewellyn

  • Bite Your Tongue, by Francesca Rendle-Short

 

And no doubt I’ll read some YA titles, including the forthcoming:

  • Queen of the Night, by Leanne Hall 
  • The Howling Boy, by Cath Crowley 
  • Pulchritude (or whatever it ends up being called) by Fiona Wood.

Happily ever after

/ Kelly Gardiner / Leave a comment

On a recent school visit, the teachers asked me to talk a bit about book reviews. Good timing, because I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the way the reviewing world has changed with so many peer-to-peer recommendation sites and a gazillion book blogs.
I love book blogs: this started out as one, in a way, many years ago. There are reviewers on blogs who are so perceptive about books, they astonish me; some who write beautifully; others who may do so one day, or who write perfectly good thoughtful pieces; others who write as fans – especially in genre – and unashamedly so.
Good on ’em all, I say.
Sites such as Good Reads, Library Thing and inside a dog* make it possible for all of us to share our thoughts on books we’ve read as, increasingly, do online library catalogues and book stores.
There are dangers, sure, and the occasional scandal, but the more the merrier.
Communities of book lovers, talking about books. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, nothing much, really.
But there is one thing I’ve noticed over and over again in discussions about books on Good Reads and facebook and various blogs: people really hate it when the book doesn’t turn out how they expect. It makes them furious.
They equate this with failure – the plot doesn’t unfold the way they imagined therefore the book sucks. And they will often take it out on the author, either through reviews, or more directly in a chat or forum, in a tone that can make your hair curl right up and slide off your head.
I’ve never been in that position myself but I hate to think what it does to an author.
Let’s take a famous example: the death of the beloved Dumbledore at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The world was shocked. The death of “a major character” had been foreshadowed by JK Rowling prior to the book’s release and it was even in all the media, but Dumbledore’s death led to an outcry. Readers believed he wasn’t really dead, and would reappear like Gandalf (of course he does, but he’s still dead). As was usual in the Potterverse, complex theories were developed to explain it, dead or alive, and the discussion continues to this day.
But Rowling as the author was always quite clear, and why wouldn’t she be? Apart from the fact that it’s her book world and she can do whatever she likes, there were myriad plot twists wrapped around the death and, most critical, Harry’s character development and quest (and Hermione’s too)  required it.
That’s not how many fans saw it: they saw it as a betrayal, as a failure of the logic they had established for themselves, as a mistake.
They have invested so much in the story – what a wonderful thing! But what else is going on there? We all love to have a theory about what will happen next. Part of the fun of online discussion of books, film and TV is that very element.
I reckon part of it, too, is the expectation that there will be happy endings. That there will be romance, and everyone will live happily ever after.
Sometimes that does happen. In life, and in art. But other things happen too – people disconnect from one another accidentally, or never connect; they argue about stupid things; they annoy you; they get scared when they should be brave; they falter and bicker and fall out of love and die. 
I remember well the shriek that went around the cinema when I was a kid watching Doctor Zhivago at the Anglesea Luxury Cinema and Lara DIDN’T TURN AROUND AND OMAR SHARIF WAS RUNNING AND THEN HE CLUTCHED HIS CHEST AND OH MY GOD AND SHE NEVER KNEW!
I nearly spat my Marella Jube into the hair of the person in front.

So if you feel betrayed by an author or a film-maker when that happens in your favourite book or series, don’t take it out on them or the work they’ve created.
What it means is that they have created a world so engaging that we, as readers, are lost in it. We are annoyed because the author wants us to be annoyed, upset because that person we loved is gone and we just don’t know what will happen next.
And that’s a good thing. Right?



*Disclosure: I work with inside a dog as part of my day job, but these comments are my own.

On romance and friendship and Mr bloody Darcy

/ Kelly Gardiner / Leave a comment

One of the questions asked most often about Act of Faith concerns the likelihood of romance between the characters Willem and Isabella (the heroine of the piece).

I’m not going to tell you exactly what happens in the book, nor what happens in the next one. Instead, I’m thinking about expectations of romance in historical fiction for young women. It’s something I’ve pondered a great deal and have chosen to treat quite specifically.

But first a story.
When HarperCollins first accepted Act of Faith, we went out for The Lunch to have a chat about it. I should say right now that I was never asked to write it as a romance. Instead, I got this very sensible advice:
“It doesn’t matter what you do, people will read romance into it, so you may as well make Willem worthy of Isabella, just in case.”

I get that.
I have, personally, never quite recovered from Teddy marrying Amy March and Jo ending up with the boring old Professor, and it’s only been about forty years since I first read Little Women. I may get over it one day. Because – and I know exactly how this feels – you can read ANYTHING and imagine romance into it. Or whatever you want into it. That’s a good thing.
I hope that in my writing I leave room for readers to use their own imaginations, to wonder what they would do, how that would feel, how things might look or taste or be, without being told.

But back to the story. At that point, before the final redraft, I must admit that Willem was a pretty gormless young chap, and my sensible publishers didn’t want the lovely Isabella to be projected into any kind of romance with a drip like him. So Willem got rewritten to be a bit more likeable and – I hope – actually a bit more convincing as the zealous young Protestant stuck in a changing world he doesn’t really understand.

All good. Everyone liked Willem more, including me, and off we went.

Then it came to writing the blurb: “Isabella finds work with an elderly printer, Master de Aquila, and his enigmatic young assistant, Willem.”

Well. Yes, Willem is a little puzzling. He does have a secret. He is mysterious. But is he enigmatic? We wavered about that. We went back and forth, wondering if we should change it. But to be honest, there really aren’t too many other words for enigmatic. So enigmatic it is.

And the cover is gorgeous, glamorous, historical and there is pink on it.

Pan out a little to the broader market. People expect romance in historical fiction – perhaps in all fiction. Let’s unpack that a little.

  • Is romance a critical component of every book? Must it be? Should it be?
  • Do you always want to read about romance (or if not romance, some kind of simmering tension)?
  • Is historical fiction is the same as  historical romance?

There is some very fine historical romance, and although historical and romance are not the same genre, it’s easy to see how they become conflated with each other (thanks for that, Phillipa Gregory). The two also get confused in our minds with novels that we read as historical now, although at the time they were written as contemporary fiction. If there are long swishy frocks, it must be a kissing book. Right?

That expectation has changed, somehow, in my reading lifetime and with the advent of historical fiction and YA as genres – and indeed as publishing phenomena. Maybe I’m slow to catch up. One of my writing heroines is Rosemary Sutcliff (it shows, I know) whose books were always historical – sometimes there was romance and sometimes not, depending on the demands of the plot and characters. Some stories lend themselves to romance, some don’t. Some require it. But not all.

So then I was sick in bed and watching Pride and Prejudice on DVD (as I usually do when I’m sick) and realised that of course there is another word for enigmatic: Mr Darcy.

Doh! Enigmatic is code for ‘mysterious, handsome and romantic stranger’. For Willoughby. For Heathcliff. For Mr Rochester. For a young Colin Firth in anything but a hand-knitted Christmas pullover.

That’s not what Willem is. Bless his little clogs.

He is, no matter what might happen between them in the future, Isabella’s friend.  Her first ever real friend of her own age. What a miracle that is for her. She has been surrounded her whole life by older men who admired her intellect, or younger men who thought she was a freak.

Act of Faith is about friendship. It’s about freedom, too, and books and ideas. But most of all, just like every other book I’ve written, it’s about friendship and the courage you find when you and your friends are in danger.

That doesn’t mean there will never be any romance in Isabella’s life or in the sequel. God knows the poor thing could do with a cuddle.

Please don’t get me wrong. I could read about Mr Darcy and Mr Rochester over and over – and I do. I read as much Georgette Heyer as Rosemary Sutcliff when I was 12 or so.

But in Act of Faith I wanted to do something else. After all, there are millions of books in which a young woman meets an enigmatic young man. In many – but by no means all – of them, straight romance is the thing that ends up defining both characters and the book, and as a result, other plot and character developments are subsumed into the overarching romance narrative. It often also means that the male characters can end up being less defined than we might wish.

Young women protagonists deserve lovely romances of diverse and wondrous kinds, but it doesn’t have to be what makes them who they are.

Nor have I ever been convinced about the old Hermione/Ron model, in which the brilliant young woman adores the less spectacular but worthy hidden qualities of the sturdy young man.

Rubbish. She’d be bored to death within months.

Weeks.

Or perhaps I should have had Isabella run off into the sunset with Signora Contarini? Now that would put the cat amongst the San Marco pigeons.

Image from TripAdvisor

Out into the world

/ Kelly Gardiner / Leave a comment

This is the Preface from Act of Faith:

Dear Reader,
This book you hold is a treasure, of sorts, as is every book I have ever known.
I have made it for you – especially you – for reasons you will understand as my words unfurl before your eyes.
Turn these pages tenderly.
You hold my life in your hands.
Isabella Hawkins
Venice
1647

They are my words, of course, and as I send the book out into the world I feel much the same as – years ago – I imagined Isabella might when I wrote those lines in her voice.

These weeks around a book release are anxious ones – this time more so, for some reason.

But I’ve realised over the last couple of days that worrying, although inevitable, is useless.

I have made as good a book as I can.

That’s all I can do.