In Conversation with Sulari Gentill: The Woman in the Library

Sulari Gentill in conversation with Robert Gott on ‘The Woman in the Library’. Presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival 2022’

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:09):
It is evening. It's delightful to see you all. And
for this conversation with Solari Gentil as part of the
Melbourne Writers Festival. My name is Liane Zardari and I'm
the community engagement coordinator for the Vision Australia Library. We
are a national library service for some 18,000 people across
Australia with different disability. We make books available in accessible

(00:33):
print and digital formats, including Daily Audio and Braille, as
well as building a community of readers and learners across
the country. It is wonderful to welcome some of our
members here tonight, as well as joining us online. If
you're interested in learning more about our service and how
we can work with you or someone you might know,

(00:54):
please speak to one of our staff or volunteers here tonight.
You can find us wearing our lanyards. In addition to
our library service Vision, Australia offers supports for thousands of
people who have blindness and low vision, providing services such
as our seeing eye dogs. You will find information about
how you can donate or even become a puppy carer

(01:15):
for one of our very special dogs around the room.
But please, also our staff. If you'd like more information.
As we begin this evening, we take a moment to
acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we
are gathered today. There were injury people of the cooler nations.
We pay our respects to the elders, past, present and emerging,

(01:38):
recognising their rich history over tens of thousands of years
as the original storytellers of this land. The Vision Australia
Library is committed to the telling of First Nations stories
and supporting the traditions of oral storytelling. It is tradition.
When we gather at Vision Australia to do a roll

(01:58):
call and a description of the space in which we
are meeting. So there are too many of us for
a roll call, but we are in a large conference room.
Our audience is seated and facing the stage. I'm next
to the stage speaking at a lectern and our guests,
Solari and Robert, are sitting on stage. If everyone came

(02:19):
in today, you may have noticed a chalk outline of
a body on the floor. A little portent of the
discussion ahead. Following this evening's conversation, there will be an
opportunity for questions and then to have your book signed
by Solari and Robert, our local booksellers, Geoffrey Jefferies Books
from Open with us selling a selection of Robert Ancillaries titles.

(02:41):
We also invite you to stick around for some drinks
and nibbles, generously donated by local businesses, croutons and the
Purple Fig Bakery on Glenferrie Road. A tiny bit of housekeeping.
We encourage you to keep your masks on for the evening.
Please have your phones on silent. Our bathrooms are through
the corridor to my right. Please keep walkways clear and

(03:03):
tuck any belongings under your seats. And if you do
need any assistance, please speak with one of our wonderful
volunteers or staff. I am now delighted to introduce Solari
and Robert Solari. Gentille is the award winning author of
15 novels, including the acclaimed Roland Sinclair series. Dr. Robert
God is the author of 97 fiction and non-fiction books.

(03:27):
He's pushing for a century with his new novel, Naked Ambition,
coming Early 2023. Please join me in welcoming Robert and Solari.

S2 (03:41):
Thank you very much. Not on. Oh, now, is that all?

S3 (03:55):
Is it?

S2 (03:56):
People are not. Oh, okay. I'll just shout. You'll have
to excuse my coughing. I'm getting over a small chest infection,
not COVID. Now, apart from salaries writing, which is, of
course marvelous. She's also an incredibly talented painter, watercolor mainly,

(04:22):
and gouache. She also grows black truffles in a highly
productive year in Batlow. She it's quite a large property.
Your property up to now.

S3 (04:35):
It's tiny. It's.

S2 (04:37):
It's quite a tiny property. Your property, you know. But
it does have two truth years on it, which is amazing.
As Laurie is married to her chief research officer Michael,
and has two sons, Edmund and Atticus. I think I
would enumerates salaries, various awards, one of which is the

(04:58):
Ned Kelly Award for best fiction for your novel, Crossing
the Lines. But I'm not going to do that because.
I'll just want to kill myself because the only thing
I have ever won is a meat tray in West
Wyalong in 1982. Anyway, sorry. Welcome.

S4 (05:19):
Thank you.

S2 (05:22):
Now, let's talk about this book. Well, we will get
we'll get to the book. But I want to talk
about other things apart from the book. Because there's more
to life than books.

S3 (05:31):
That's a good way to start a book talk.

S2 (05:36):
So just give us. This book is a very, very
difficult book to talk about because it's so slippery. It's
so slippery. It's difficult to talk about it without giving small,
even small spoilers away. Yeah, but give us just a
thumbnail sketch of what we have here.

S3 (05:55):
The woman in the library is essentially a story within
a mystery folded into the pages of a correspondence. It
opens with the letter. The letter is addressed to Hannah,
who is an established Australian writer. The letter comes from
a character called Leah, and it's obvious that the two

(06:17):
of them are friends. Do this. In the beginning, Leo
is everything that any writer could hope for in a
correspondent and a friend. He's a he's warm, he's friendly,
he's admiring of Hannah's work. He's even willing to do research.
But as the novel progresses and you see more of

(06:39):
Leo's letters and you see one at the end of
each chapter, the reader comes to realize that they're.

S4 (06:47):
Be all right.

S3 (06:50):
There might be something a little bit unusual about Leo. He.
For one thing, he seems to has have a certain
zealousness for investigations of murder. I think. I think.

S2 (07:08):
Okay. All right, let's go no further, then.

S3 (07:10):
I further go.

S2 (07:11):
No further.

S3 (07:12):
Than that. So that's one part of the novel, and
that's actually the framing of the novel. But within that,
that you also see the the story that Hannah writes
in response to the advice and the letters and the
research she gets from Leo. You don't actually hear from
Hannah directly, but you see the chapter that she writes

(07:32):
after she receives a letter from Leo telling her what
she needs to know about Boston, where he's located.

S2 (07:42):
Okay. Yeah. Good.

S3 (07:43):
Okay. That's no spoilers, no spoilers.

S2 (07:46):
And it was sufficiently unclear that people would simply have
to buy this book. Now, one of the reasons I
absolutely love this book is because it's not just a
crime novel. It's actually a book about writing. Now, I'm
not saying I am saying that there is some slippage

(08:09):
here between your character, who is the writer and your
self in terms of process. And I want to give
you an example and then you can defend yourself.

S4 (08:24):
All right. Bring it on.

S2 (08:26):
Okay. Where are we? You have your character, the fictional writer,
the real writer. As opposed to the internal fictional writer.
She's talking about her process, her writing process, and she says,
I am a bricklayer without drawings, laying words into sentences,

(08:47):
sentences into paragraphs, allowing my walls to twist and turn
on whim. There is no framework, just bricks interlocked to
support each other into a story. I have no idea
what I'm actually building or if it will stand. Now, Solari,

(09:08):
you are famous. That's not quite the right word. Notorious
for having a very particular and eccentric writing process. Would
you please talk to it?

S3 (09:21):
Talk to it. Okay, So, look, I. I used to
be ashamed of it, but I am no longer. I'm
out and proud. I'm a I'm an extreme cancer. So
for those of you who haven't, writers exist on a
spectrum on one end of the plotters, and they outline
everything before they write it down. You know, some of

(09:43):
them down to the last exchange of dialogue. And then
on the other end of the spectrum of the patsies.
And they have no idea what's going to be on
the in the next paragraph, let alone in the next
page or at the end of the book. I live
on the extreme cancer end of the spectrum. I just
sit down to write and let the story unfold as

(10:07):
it will, as I think you do it.

S2 (10:09):
I do. Yes, I do. But I don't do the
other thing that you do.

S3 (10:14):
The other thing that I do, which Robert is making
sound a little bit more salacious than it is, is
that I watch television when I write.

S4 (10:24):
You see, now.

S3 (10:28):
I used to be really, really embarrassed about this because
it sounds like, you know, like I didn't care about
my writing. It might just knock off any old thing
while I watch Midsomer Murders. But it's it's not actually
the case. I just actually write better when I'm actively
watching television. And I always knew this, and I used

(10:50):
to be a bit cagey about admitting to it because
it sounds really bad.

S4 (10:55):
Yeah.

S3 (10:57):
But then a little a few years ago, I did
an event, the Emerging Writers Festival with Colin Ladd. I
don't know if any of you know of her. She's
a wonderful writer, but she's also a cognitive psychologist. And
she said to me, Oh, no. SOLARI That makes perfect sense.
And so she explained to me what was going on
in my head. So apparently the creative centre of your

(11:21):
brain is in your prefrontal cortex, which is that front
part of the prefrontal cortex is very difficult to access directly.
That's why when you lose a word. And you're trying
to think of it. You could never think of it,
but you go away and you do something else and
suddenly it pops into your head, that process. So I'm

(11:42):
basically using that process for 100,000 words. I'm going away
and doing something else and letting the words pop into
my head. So that's what.

S2 (11:51):
She was actually doing, was describing a form of mental illness.

S3 (11:56):
So while I so I watch television, it's always it's
never anything that requires a lot of engagement. It's always
something that has a very steady and predictable rhythm, like
Midsomer Murders or Lewis, the BBC crime dramas. And it's
sort of I think it must occupy about 30% of
my brain to watch the television show. And that just,

(12:20):
you know, distracts my conscious so that my subconscious can
run riot and write the book. So that's that's the
process which Robert is slandering.

S2 (12:33):
I'm not slamming it. I'm just.

S3 (12:35):
Jealous.

S2 (12:38):
I'm just talking. You must have come to. I know
that because I will stop answer. But I don't watch TV. What?
I'm doing it. You must have. Sometimes, you know, you
reach a position and I know you did when you
were writing this, where your character says at one point

(12:58):
there's a murder in the library. There are only four
people there. The writer and her three new acquaintances. And
it's very early on in the.

S3 (13:07):
Novel, in the first chapter.

S2 (13:09):
And she actually says.

S3 (13:12):
One at coffee with.

S2 (13:14):
My coffee with my.

S3 (13:16):
I had my first coffee with a killer.

S2 (13:17):
With a killer? Yeah. So we know when you wrote
that sentence, did you think, Oh, no.

S4 (13:23):
I.

S3 (13:24):
Look like you because I had no idea which one
of them would be the killer. So I knew that
when I did that, I was making a declaration. And
then that was a challenge. Because not only did the
killer have to be one of those four people, but
I had given the read a warning that it would
be one of those four people, so the reader would
be watching them closely. So part of part of writing

(13:48):
an effective crime fiction is to be able to distract
into and to sort of misdirect the reader. But if
the if the reason is that it's one of these
one of these all, then they're they're paying very close attention.
So that was part of the challenge, and I knew
that when I wrote it. But, you know, it's the

(14:10):
way it comes out. You just got to keep. And
that's what Pants is doing. That's what happened.

S2 (14:15):
You must have been thinking, wow, that's a lot of
television ahead of me.

S3 (14:20):
I thought, well, I think that I thought at the time,
if I can pull it off, this will work really well.
But now I have given myself a difficult task ahead
of me.

S2 (14:34):
And yet throughout the book, you never know.

S3 (14:39):
No, no, but. But the truth is, I didn't know
either until the end, because I'm a panther. So the
one of the benefits of being a panther is plotters.
Know who the murderer is at the beginning, and they
may subconsciously telegraph that to the reader without even meaning
to do so. Plot pansies don't do that because we

(15:01):
don't know.

S2 (15:03):
That's why this book, I think, is like a. Beautiful
piece of cabinet making, Missouri cabinet making. It's incredibly complex,
but we always know exactly what's going on. We are never,
ever confused. And that is down. Absolutely. To your control

(15:24):
and to the clarity of your writing. And I love
the fact that what we're doing when we're reading this
book is actually watching a novel being written, and we're
watching it through the eyes of this person called Leo.
Tell us a little bit about him without giving away
any spoilers.

S4 (15:46):
Okay.

S2 (15:46):
Well, tell us who he's based on. Let's start.

S3 (15:48):
Okay. So I'll start with we might give you a
little bit of a spoiler, but I think it's worth
it for the story of how this how this novel began.
I was actually writing the 10th book of the Roland
Sinclair series, and that book is based in in the US,
and I wanted to based that book in the US
because American readers had embraced Roland. Much to everybody's surprise.

(16:13):
And I wanted to, as a sort of a thank
you and a nod sit Roland book in their country.
The problem was this was early 2019. I had at
that time not been to the US for decades, and
I had never been to Boston, where I wanted to
set the story. Now, it's one thing to want to
write a story in another country as a as a

(16:36):
nod or a thank you, but you have to do
it well. If you do it badly, you're just going
to end up offending people. So to that end, I,
I was sort of in court caught in in that
sort of paradox of, you know, would I go or
wouldn't I or would I should I should I set

(16:58):
the book in Texas where I'd been rather than Boston?
But I did have a friend who was in Boston
at the time, and he was an American writer who
I'd met here in Melbourne. And we had corresponded because
he'd been a fan of the Roland Sinclair series. So
I wrote to Larry and I said, Would you mind

(17:19):
if I pick your brain while you're in Boston? He
was there researching his own book, and with typical American largesse.
He said, Sure, no problems. I can do whatever you need.
If you if you need me to look for somewhere
in particular, I can look for it. And that was
all fine. So we started and, you know, I'd send
Larry questions and he would send me responses. The the

(17:43):
problem emerged when I came to realize that Larry is
actually a much better researcher than I am. So not
only would you answer my questions. And Robert knows Larry.
He's just that type of man. He's a very easily
he's an historian and he's very particular. So he'd answer
my questions, but he would also send me menus and maps,

(18:06):
suggestions for where people would eat. Then he started taking
photographs of the sidewalks so I could see that they
were cardboard and see how the snow plows sort of
knocked the snow up on them. And then one day
there was a murder about two blocks from where he
was staying. And he thought, well, Salaam is a crime writer.
She might be very interested in what an American crime

(18:27):
scene looks like. So he took himself down there after
the body had been removed and he took footage of
this murder scene. And so I'm in Australia. I received
this email from Larry. I opened the email file attached,
open the file, and up pops footage of what is
very obviously a murder scene. And my husband happened to

(18:48):
be standing behind me at the time and he said, Gosh,
I hope Larry's not killing people. So you can send
your research and 99% sure that he wasn't there. He didn't.
But it did strike me as a really interesting idea
for a novel. So that's where the woman in the

(19:08):
library had its genesis. But of course, I was writing
the Roland Sinclair novel, so I sort of put it away.
And all I knew about that novel was that it
would open with a letter from Larry, who became Leo
to protect the innocent. And and so I just sort
of shoved it away in the corner, and it just

(19:28):
sort of lived there happily until I finished the other book.
And then when I pulled it out, Leo sprang from
the pages.

S2 (19:39):
In fact, you you Leo is actually a writer. Or
at least he's trying.

S3 (19:44):
Is an aspirant, right? He's an.

S2 (19:45):
Expert writer. Yes. And he just simply cannot get his
novel published. And you have him say something that is
never said out loud, but because you have him say it. Yes.
I think it's such a fascinating area for people to

(20:06):
talk about. I'd like. Or I'll just read it.

S4 (20:09):
Yeah. Oh.

S3 (20:12):
You've been told.

S4 (20:15):
Oh.

S3 (20:15):
I can read.

S2 (20:16):
It. Let's take my.

S4 (20:17):
Voice. That.

S3 (20:18):
That one. Okay. Okay. That Solari should have brought the glasses. Okay.
So this is that Leo is. This is in the
midst of a letter from Leo to Hannah on less
important matters. I received a letter from Alexandra, who says
that while she enjoyed reading the opus she regrets, she

(20:39):
cannot offer me representation. I'm not sure she actually regrets it,
but that's what she wrote. The reality is, I suppose,
that I am a straight white man with no diversity
or disadvantage to offer as a self for the fashionable
collective guilt that rules publishing. I understand that popular correctness

(21:00):
demands that men like me be denied to compensate for
all the years in which we were given too much.
I just wish I'd had a chance to enjoy a
little of that privilege before it became a liability. Anyway,
she said no. So there we are. Yours, Leo.

S2 (21:19):
Now, how do you want readers to respond? How do
you think readers would respond? Where is the dividing line?

S4 (21:28):
Well.

S3 (21:29):
I think I don't know how readers will respond. I
think it depends on who you are as a reader.
So there will be certain readers who will have sympathy
for Alia for a number of reasons, and there will
be other readers who will see him as an example

(21:49):
of the problem. So, you know, I don't mind a
lot of my my belief about novels is that they
are conversations and it is the job of the writer
to raise a conversation. It's not to give all the answers.
It's not to do all the speaking. It's just simply
to raise the ideas and begin the conversation.

S2 (22:14):
Would you have some sympathy for?

S3 (22:16):
Yeah, I do. I do. And we were discussing this before.
I understand that Leo is part of the problem. That
part of part of part of the. The issue is
that when you have had generations of privilege, having that
privilege taken away seems like a discrimination. I understand that.
But I also understand what it's like to be excluded.

(22:39):
To feel like there's a club somewhere and you're not
allowed in. And it doesn't matter whether Leo is right
about whether he's being excluded or why he's being excluded,
he does actually feel excluded. And so I have sympathy
for that because that is a very frustrating and undermining

(22:59):
feeling to feel like you can't get in. And there
are generations of, you know, people with disabilities, people of colour,
women who have experienced that. And so we we understand
that feeling. So yeah, it's a funny sort of conundrum.
The fact it doesn't matter whether he has a right

(23:20):
to feel that way. The fact is he feels that way.
And so I have sympathy for that. Not necessarily for
his position, but sympathy for that frustration. Feel empathy for
that investigation. What that sympathy for that frustration.

S2 (23:37):
There's a second There's a second Leo in this.

S4 (23:40):
Yep.

S2 (23:41):
And again, even though there are two Leos, it's not
in any way confusing. Yeah. This Leo is also. A writer.
And he said something and it's very short. So I
will read it because it's only a couple sentences. He says.

(24:02):
The mystery writers, the historical novelists, the political thriller writers,
the science fiction writers, everybody but the people who write
instruction manuals is writing romance. We dress our stories up
with murders, discussions about morality and society, but really, we
just care about relationships. Do you agree with him?

S3 (24:24):
Yeah, I do. I do. I think. I think. I
don't necessarily I wouldn't necessarily classify everything as romance, but
I think it's relationships at the heart of the vino,
whether that relationship is a romantic relationship or a fraternal
paternal maternal relationship. It's a relationship, and that's what moves

(24:45):
a novel. You can write.

S4 (24:48):
All.

S3 (24:48):
The action you want in the world. You can write
beautifully about landscape. But if there's no relationship, the.

S4 (24:55):
Book is hollow.

S2 (24:58):
Yeah, I think. I think that's probably true.

S4 (25:01):
Too.

S3 (25:02):
Yeah. Look, I think, you know, it's a funny sort
of thing. People sort of revile when they hear the
word romance, because it's it's one of those very slanted
genres where it's equated with sort of trashy, pulpy, non literary.

S2 (25:20):
Right. But that's not really what he's talking about here.

S3 (25:22):
He's talking about writing about relationships. Yeah, he calls it romance,
but but, but what he's talking about is relationships. And
he's right. This I agree with him. I wouldn't have
put it quite that way, but I do agree with him.
I think if you if you try to write a novel,
I'm trying to even think of a novel without a relationship.

(25:42):
At its heart.

S2 (25:44):
Even novels. I'm trying to think of novels that are
dead people. So novels that are, you know, that have
that are about animals, say.

S3 (25:52):
The Animal Farm. It's all about the relationships. Yeah. You know,
in Animal Farm, the most moving thing was the horse,
I think, you know, the old steady horse who was
sent to the knackery. But even.

S2 (26:07):
Also. Yeah, things like Bambi. Yeah.

S3 (26:09):
Yeah. But at the heart of it is, is what
we're really interested in is how people or beings relate
to one another and what makes us love. What makes
us hate, what makes us jealous, what makes us passionate.
And I think that's always about it. Yeah.

S2 (26:29):
Sorry, in late 2019. In November, you may jokes, Sarong
and Emoji Sketch were sent on an Australia Council grant
to America to spread the word about Australian mystery writers.
And while we were there, did you get some sense?

(26:55):
That Americans read. Did did that trip give you some
sense that Americans read fiction differently from the way we do?
And if that influenced the way you ultimately wrote The
Woman in the Library?

S3 (27:10):
No, I don't think that they did. If anything, I
thought that Americans, because of their traditional position in the world,
were a little bit more open. Then then readers in Australia,
two different types of fiction. So they seem to be
there seem to be room in America for things that

(27:33):
we would consider niche. Or too small to have a market.
So I actually found them very surprisingly open. And curious
about things and and nonjudgmental when they saw things that
were different. So, you know, there were lots of occasions

(27:55):
when we were we were quite blunt about the difference
differences between America and Australia. And they were quite shocked,
but they seemed quite open to the idea that we
were coming from a different point of view. So one
of the things I remember particularly we were talking about
how Australians are like the second place getter, that we

(28:15):
are quite fond of losers. And America is a culture
where it's all about the winners. But in Australian novels,
the protagonist is often a loser. He's someone who doesn't
quite make it in some way, or she is some
someone who doesn't quite make it. You cannot have a character,
I think in Australia in an Australian novel like Jack Reacher,

(28:39):
who just wins everything. The Australian protagonist always has to
have some kind of flaw, some kind of failure, because Australians,
particularly we we go for the underdog and we love
people for their failures. As you know.

S2 (28:56):
The underdog thing, really weird.

S3 (28:58):
Yeah, they, they, they all about winners. But they were curious.
They didn't they. Do you remember They didn't say you're wrong,
you're ridiculous, you know, How on earth can you read that?
They were actually quite curious to try it from our perspective.

S4 (29:12):
Yeah.

S3 (29:13):
So I was quite I was quite surprised. I went
to America expecting Americans to be quite parochial and quite
set in the way that they read, but they seemed
to be quite open and curious and really interested in
the different perspective that you got by being Australian.

S2 (29:32):
And generous listeners.

S3 (29:34):
Yeah, think. Yeah. So it was, it was, it was
quite a radical change in my writing at all. No,
I just wrote the way I have always written. Then
you can't you can't write for a market. You can't
write thinking that you know, you are going to accidentally

(29:55):
seduce people into making your book a bestseller because, you know,
Americans write like reading about like ice cream. So you
put lots of ice cream in your books. That just
doesn't work. You've got to stay true to the story.

S2 (30:11):
What's behind the the title changes of some of your
books for the American market?

S3 (30:16):
Well, because titles, titles like Jackets are signals to readers.
They're not about the book. They're actually a signal to
the reader to tell them what they're getting. So and
in different markets, that has a different meaning. So, for example,
the the original title for the Woman in the library
was Letters from Leo. But the Americans changed that title

(30:40):
because they said letters from Leo sounds like a literary title.
It does not signal crime fiction. And if you wanted
a crime fiction audience, you had to signal crime fiction.
They have this really interesting process. They focus grouped it.
So they started with 100 titles and it got focus
group back to the one title that won, and that

(31:00):
was the woman in the library. So I tend to
not get too worked up about titles and covers because
that's really the job of the publisher. You, the writer,
creates the story and it's the the job of the
publisher to communicate that story to the kind of reader

(31:21):
who will enjoy it. So the both the cover and
the title basically shout out to the reader to say,
This is the kind of story that you will like.
And they will write, they will write with the title
and they will write with the cover.

S2 (31:35):
Crossing the lines became after she wrote him and the
Roland Sinclair titles. Some of them are changing.

S3 (31:42):
Yes. So if you write Thinking Man is a House
Divided in America, paving the new road is our man
in Munich. I can't remember half of them, to be honest.
And this a testament of character is where there's a will.
The most awful one is all the tears in China.

(32:05):
They call it Shanghai Secrets. So, you know, but, you know,
they know their market. They know. They know culturally how
those titles speak to their to their readership. So you've
just got to go with it and trust them.

S2 (32:22):
You know what my take home message was from America.
It was that they need to stop going on about
all of the deadly animals in Australia that can kill you.
They because we discovered that they have the deadliest animal
in the world. And if you look at the Grand Canyon,
there are signs that say, do not pat the squirrels.

(32:47):
They transmit plague.

S4 (32:51):
Play. Play.

S3 (32:56):
You notice that someone got bitten by a squirrel in
the hole in the library, but apparently they don't bite often.
But yes, Americans have this idea that Australia is really,
really dangerous. And you can understand that because a lot
of the books that the blockbusters we're sending off there
are rural noir, which has the outback as this great

(33:20):
looking thing with letters full of bushfires and snakes and spiders.
And yes, it is, but we know how to move
in that outback and so it isn't quite as deadly
to us as it might be to them.

S2 (33:38):
In this book you talk a lot about writing and reading, obviously,
at one point. Freddie wonders. I love this question. Freddie
wonders if the morality of the writer. Affects the meaning
a reader gets from the work. Where do you stand

(33:58):
as a writer? On that position is the art for
important than the artist? It's a big question. Just give
a short answer.

S3 (34:11):
It's it's a big question. I love.

S4 (34:13):
What you.

S2 (34:13):
Wrote it.

S3 (34:14):
I know. But it's a question. A lot of it's
it's it's a question. It's a discussion. It's a conversation.
And I think it's one of those things where your
opinion changes from day to day. And sometimes I think, no. Well,
you know, you can't you can't support the art of
a amoral person. So, you know, do I want to

(34:35):
read a novel written by Alfred, by Adolf Hitler? No,
I don't. What if it was a really good novel? No,
I still don't. But by the same token, I love
Alfred Hitchcock's work, and there's questions about him. Did. Did I?

(34:58):
Changed my opinion of To Kill a mockingbird when I
realized that, you know, Atticus Finch was supposed to have
been a Klansman. In the original draft. Well, I might have.
That's why I didn't read that book. I didn't read
Go Set a Watchman, because I was worried it would change.

(35:19):
It's yeah, it's really difficult because artists are imperfect people.
And and I think one of the characters was it
was saying that, you know, he reads The Great Gatsby.
Every couple of years to remind himself that an imperfect
person can produce a perfect piece of art. And I

(35:43):
think that's true because if Scott Fitzgerald was problematic.

S2 (35:47):
Highly problematic, Highly problematic.

S4 (35:48):
But the book is beautiful. Yeah.

S3 (35:51):
So it's just one of those one of those questions
that change with context. It just it just depends. But
it's it's a conversation starter. And I don't know that
I've landed on an opinion books and I don't know. Well,
my books are certainly not about giving people answers. It's

(36:13):
just about having conversations and readers will decide for themselves
what's right. I don't need to tell them. It's not
about writers don't stand on sort of facts and deliver
wisdom to you. We're just people.

S4 (36:28):
Who.

S3 (36:29):
We we are no more wise than anybody else. We
just try to reflect questions and conundrums and struggles in story.

S2 (36:39):
It's often the case that books that claim to give
the answer are giving the wrong answer.

S3 (36:44):
Yeah, exactly.

S2 (36:47):
This book is blowing up in America and it's blowing
up in Australia. What's going on?

S3 (36:57):
Oh, look, I have a theory about that. As I was,
you asked me this question about a month ago, and
I didn't have any idea. I you know, I said
to you, I don't know what it is about this
book as opposed to the 14 before it that suddenly
made me an overnight success after 15 books. And but

(37:19):
I think I've sort of. Come down to an idea
that this. This book very particularly. Isn't wholly loved. So,
you know, if you write a book that everybody loves,
it doesn't go anywhere. So people love the role. And

(37:42):
Sinclair series, very few people hate it. And it has
it doesn't blow up. It doesn't blow up the way
this book has. But it's it's like when you go
to a book club event and, you know, the the
books that everybody in the book club loves, the conversation's
over in 10 minutes. Yeah, we all loved it. And

(38:03):
everybody moves on to wine and cheese. But if you
have two or three people in the book club who
hated it, then the conversation is really good because you
get that. You get the argument. So this book, because
of the framing device, there is a good 20 to 30%
of people who don't get it who hate it. And

(38:25):
I think it's that that keeps it as a conversation
in the in the publishing world. The people feel very
strongly want it one way or another so that this
that you love it or they hate it and they
fight about it. So that means that it's in the
conversation for longer than it otherwise would be, which is

(38:45):
my explanation for why it's doing so well. So my
my theory is that books that are bestsellers are books
that polarize people one way or another. And I think
the ratio has to be something like 7030. You need first,
you need enough people to actually be heard and not

(39:08):
be drowned out. But you don't need them to be.

S4 (39:12):
More than.

S3 (39:13):
The people who like it, because that's a problem, too.
So that's my wisdom on how to write a bestseller.

S2 (39:22):
That is an interesting theory.

S4 (39:25):
It is.

S3 (39:26):
I was explaining it to Michael Robotham last night. I
don't know if he believed me.

S2 (39:32):
This is also a book about friendships and betrayal and
the virtues of loyalty and trust. But in your view.
Is there a virtue that is pretty much overrated?

S3 (39:48):
So not valueless, but overrated? I would say honesty.

S2 (39:55):
Why?

S3 (39:56):
Because I think honesty is used as a weapon in
modern society. It's used as a weapon to be cruel.
It's used as a weapon to alienate people. It's used
as a justification for racism or misogyny. I'm just being honest.
You know, And so honesty by itself is not is

(40:22):
not of any value. Truth is a different thing. Just
saying what you believe honestly doesn't necessarily mean you're speaking
the truth. It just means that you're speaking honestly. What
you believe and what you believe is ridiculous. You still
say it. I remember very much a point in Australian

(40:45):
politics where there was a movement against political correctness, and
that was the the point at which people felt it
was okay to come out and say. Things that were
normally taboo. So things that had previously been taboo, racist things,
misogynistic things on the grounds that they were not being

(41:07):
politically correct and they were being honest, so that if
I had to if I had to pick a virtue
that I think is overrated, I would say the honesty.

S2 (41:21):
Interesting.

S4 (41:22):
And you?

S2 (41:23):
Oh, mine is always piety. Pious people are the most
boring people in the world. Despite what you might say.

S3 (41:35):
Yeah.

S2 (41:36):
I know that you are an incredibly disciplined. Person. What
is your greatest extravagance? How do you not reward yourself?
But what is your greatest extravagance? Would you say?

S3 (41:54):
My greatest extravagance.

S4 (41:55):
Yeah.

S3 (41:57):
I'm very extravagant. I don't actually deny myself a lot.
I have four dogs because, you know, they're cute. I
have two donkeys for no other reason than I wanted
to donkeys.

S2 (42:13):
This is no one's idea of extravagance. I'm thinking of
five star hotels. Think give.

S4 (42:19):
Donkeys.

S3 (42:20):
My most extravagant thing. The most extravagant thing that I
have ever done in my life I'm going to be
doing soon. I have an American tour coming up where
I'm going to the US to tour with the.

S4 (42:34):
Book.

S3 (42:35):
And on the way home, instead of coming straight back
to Australia, I'm going to the UK, ostensibly to sign
a few books at Waterstones or whatever, but I'm meeting
my sister there and then we're catching the Eurostar down
to Paris and we're getting on the Orient Express to Venice,
and that is probably the most extravagant thing I've done

(42:56):
in my life. But it's research.

S2 (43:02):
You're not taking those donkeys.

S3 (43:04):
I'm not taking the donkey. But, you know, other than that.

S4 (43:09):
I think.

S2 (43:10):
Now that's a good yeah.

S3 (43:11):
That's a that's a bit that's, that's a bit. Yeah. But,
you know, I kind of think that every day of
my life is an extravagance. I have the privilege of
being able to spend my life making things up. You know,
it's a that's an absurdity in itself that I live
in a world so privileged that that's what I do.

(43:32):
I sit around and I make stuff up. So I
am always aware of the sheer extravagance of my life.

S2 (43:41):
Where do you feel most competent?

S3 (43:46):
What I feel most competent. I feel. Oh, gosh, that's
really hard. I think you know, this I would like
to say I feel most competent writing, but I suspect
that some of what makes a writer a writer is
a feeling of not being competent is a feeling of

(44:09):
of of striving, of fear, of not making it. I think.
I feel I'm really. Yeah. Look, it's it's really hard.
I that's a really tricky question because I'm not sure
that competence is anything is something that I strive for,

(44:33):
as you know, because you've tasted my cooking.

S2 (44:35):
Well, my next question is, do you feel do you
feel most incompetent?

S3 (44:39):
I feel most in in the kitchen. I have a terrible,
terrible fault.

S2 (44:43):
True salary uses the smoke detector as a.

S4 (44:47):
But as a timer, You know.

S3 (44:51):
But but, you know, I'm perfectly content with that, which
is what I mean. I don't strive for competence because I.
I do my best in almost everything that I do,
but I'm perfectly willing to accept that that best may
not be competent.

S2 (45:10):
Were there writers who made you want to write?

S4 (45:14):
No.

S2 (45:15):
Who are you reading?

S3 (45:17):
Who am I reading at the moment?

S2 (45:18):
No, no.

S3 (45:18):
No.

S2 (45:19):
Who were you reading growing up?

S3 (45:21):
Agatha.

S2 (45:21):
You don't become a write your kind of writer with
that kind of elegant understanding of an English sentence. Unless
you read. So who are you reading?

S3 (45:31):
I was reading Agatha. I was reading Agatha Christie. I
had it when I was sick, when I was in
my first year at law school. I had a dear
friend and he was he went on to be professor
of classics at the University of Sydney, and now he's

(45:52):
a professor of classics at the University of Queensland. But
when I knew him, we were just kids and he
was in law school doing classics and I was in
science law, but I was moving with a group of
kids in those days, the, the, the majority of the kids.
So that got into law school were from the very elite.

S4 (46:11):
Private schools.

S3 (46:12):
And I was moving with that that group of people
for the first time. I'd come from the public public system.
And what I found is that they were making all
these literary references in ordinary conversation that I just didn't get.
And it's not that my education had been lacking. It
had just been different. They were very educated in the

(46:33):
classics whilst in the public system. At the time in Queensland,
it was a lot of Australian fiction and contemporary fiction
and international fiction. And so I was I was struggling
because they'd make these literary references and I had no
idea what I was they were talking about. And every
time I asked, I'd feel so stupid. And so I,

(46:56):
I cornered Alastair one day and I said, Look, you know,
this is my issue. You guys keep making these literary references.
I have no idea what you're talking about. And I
feel like a fool. And he and he said, Oh, yes,
you are rather culturally illiterate. And he took me he
took me to the to the arts library, and he

(47:16):
gave me a list of things I had to read
in order to become culturally literate. And on that was
things like Wuthering Heights. That was the Iliad, there was
Dante's Inferno, and there was about 15 of them. Then
I dutifully went through and read every single one. So
there was that. So that must.

S4 (47:38):
Have been.

S3 (47:38):
A late sort of Pygmalion episode in my in my life.
But mostly when I was when I was a child
or when I was a teenager, my go to was
Agatha Christie. I used to do fantasy fiction. I used
to read David Eddings and so forth when I was

(47:59):
a teenager, and I can't really remember. And Kill a
mockingbird was whatever was prescribed by the school. I read it.
I adore To Kill a mockingbird. To this day as
a novel is terrible.

S2 (48:17):
You know, you ought to have liked, but just didn't.

S3 (48:21):
Yeah, My brother Jack.

S2 (48:24):
Monster.

S3 (48:25):
I hated my brother. Jack hated it. And in fact,
it turned me off.

S4 (48:29):
Australian literature.

S2 (48:31):
Oh.

S3 (48:31):
Yeah. No, I did. I was made to read it.
It was part of the school curriculum, and I hated it.
I thought it made Australian sound appalling.

S4 (48:40):
We are.

S3 (48:41):
Everybody was mean.

S4 (48:43):
And.

S3 (48:43):
I just didn't want. And so I stopped reading Australian
literature for a long time. And I think, you know,
I was immature, I was a child, I was maybe
15 at the time it was given to us. And
I think now if I read it now, I'd probably
enjoy it. But at the time I was just repulsed
by it, repulsed by the whole story. And to me

(49:05):
quite often it's that relationship thing. When Jack betrayed his
brother by not standing up for him, they were all
dead to me. I didn't.

S4 (49:16):
Want to.

S3 (49:17):
It. And and again, it's, you know, it's that relationship
that's at the heart of it. And for some reason,
I've always had fraternal, strong, fraternal relationships at the heart
of most of my books. So the role of Sinclair novels,
that fraternal relationship between William Roland is actually probably the
strongest relationship in those in those novels, which is interesting

(49:41):
because I'm one of three girls. So often I don't
have a brother, and I. And I married an only child.
So the first my first experience of the fraternal relationship
was when I had my sons. And it it goes
to show you that one of the things that, you know,
it's not about writing what you know, it's about writing

(50:02):
what you will interest, what you're interested in. So at
the time I started writing the role in Sinclair series,
my boys were little, and I was just fascinated by
this fraternal relationship between them because I've never seen it.
I've never experienced it. And I, I think that's what
makes that relationship so strong in those novels, because I

(50:23):
was looking at it so closely.

S2 (50:26):
As a crime writer, you deal with issues of forgiveness.
Are there crimes that simply. Cannot be forgiven, of course.

S3 (50:38):
Of course, many. Well, I mean, it depends on who
you are. There are people who are capable of forgiveness
for anything. But I'd never forgive paedophilia, ever. But that
is not something I think you can come out of.

S4 (50:55):
Um.

S2 (50:56):
Yeah, I've got a very low bar on this one.

S4 (50:58):
Yeah, well, you.

S2 (51:01):
Know, when you're driving into a car space and a
car comes in and steals.

S3 (51:05):
If that's. That's rough.

S4 (51:06):
You know.

S2 (51:08):
If I had a gun. Melbourne's car parks would be.

S3 (51:13):
I was thinking you were asking serious questions.

S4 (51:18):
But. Well.

S3 (51:21):
I. Cruelty to animals is something that I have. So
it just depends. It's a funny thing. I think you
could forgive murder, but I wouldn't forgive anyone who was
cruel and.

S4 (51:31):
Well.

S3 (51:32):
And. And the reason is, and quite often you see
in my books, sometimes people are driven to murder for
very good reason. They still pay their they're still the
law is the law. They still have to pay the price.
But it's a different thing. You can ask me that.

S2 (51:49):
No, I'm not. Because we've gone over time.

S3 (51:50):
Yeah. Oh.

S4 (51:51):
Really?

S3 (51:52):
Sorry.

S2 (51:52):
Sorry. Questions from the audience. So is there. Is anyone
in the audience who would have a question? Could you
raise your hand? Yes.

S4 (52:05):
But the microphone here.

S2 (52:08):
I guess, is a roving mic. This is very.

S4 (52:11):
Thank you very much, rock star. So first, many question
when you talk about Hansa, is that a fly by
the seat of your pants rider or something else? Right.
So when do you know where in the book do
you know who the murderer is?

S3 (52:25):
So I knew. Page 232. I mean, I know round
about the time the reader realizes, I realize. Or just
before the reader realizes, I realize. And you know, that
works because, you know, it seems to me when I'm writing,

(52:50):
I'm seeing this sort of all sorts of clues and
red herrings, and I'm trying to decide which person did it.
And there's a strongest argument for one or the other,
and the reader meets that at exactly the same time, too.
You've got the strongest argument realistically, you know, in a novel,
any person can do it because the author can just

(53:11):
create that scenario. But the way I pancit is, and
to make it coherent and to make it fair play,
it's the person that you can create the strongest argument
for in the end, that fits most fits best but
is still a surprise. So it was you know, I

(53:35):
was leaning towards one person until about page two, three,
three or four. And then I realized.

S4 (53:44):
No, it's not.

S3 (53:48):
X, it's.

S4 (53:49):
Y.

S2 (53:53):
Thank you. And now the other question. Yes. Oh.

S4 (53:58):
Yeah.

S3 (54:03):
Yep. Cancer. So that means writing by the sea to
your pets.

S4 (54:09):
Well, that's. Yep. What do you.

S3 (54:23):
Okay, so my structure this. So when I'm actively writing,
so when I decide, okay, this book is going to
be delivered in four months or whatever, I write a
thousand words a day. Never write less, but I quite
often just stop in the middle of a sentence Once
I've got to a thousand and you try to stop

(54:43):
in the middle of it. If you stop in the
middle of a sentence, it means that the next day
when you pick it up, it's a lot easier to
get going.

S4 (54:50):
I'm.

S3 (54:52):
Then it takes longer. So some days I write that
thousand words in an hour and a half, and some
days it takes me eight.

S4 (55:00):
That can't be you. Oh, sorry. My question was, what
happens to the days when it's just not flowing? And
you've got that deadline.

S3 (55:07):
It just takes. So some days, some days I finish
in an hour and a half and I go out
and do the garden or whatever else I want to
do or keep writing if that's what I want to do.
And some days it takes me 8 hours to get
that thousand words. But I don't not get the thousand words.
So theoretically, if you write a thousand words a day

(55:30):
in three months, you have a novel. It's a thousand
words isn't huge. It's, you know, what is it? Two
and a half. Three pages. Yeah.

S4 (55:38):
Yeah. Yeah.

S3 (55:39):
It's not a huge amount, but if you can do
it consistently by the end of three months, you'll have
a novel. So that's that's my discipline. And the other
thing is I just love writing. You know, it's not
the discipline for me is to stop writing and to
cook dinner and feed the dogs and do the other
things that.

S2 (56:00):
Put out the fires in the kitchen.

S4 (56:01):
Yeah.

S3 (56:02):
The other things that life requires of one.

S2 (56:06):
Question down the.

S4 (56:06):
Bat. Slurry. Do you only work on one novel at
a time? And so. And what are you working on next?

S3 (56:17):
No, I rarely work on one level at time. A
there's a tail. But they're not moving in sequence. So
as I'm finishing one novel, I'm starting another. And then
as I'm finishing that one, I'm starting another. So the
that is quite often two novels going at a time.
When I do that, I allocate the morning to one

(56:39):
in the afternoon to the other. And. And don't. Don't
cross them. One's a morning novel. One's an afternoon novel.
And I try to work in different rooms. Um, for
them so that they feel feel different. What am I?
I just submitted a novel to my agents, and it

(57:03):
went out on submission to publishers three or four weeks ago.
And so they're expecting responses soon. And I've got a
number of ideas floating in the air. There's, of course,
a Roland Sinclair novel. So that's about, you know, half finished.

(57:24):
And then there's about three or four ideas competing for primacy,
and one of them will win. And I'll write that
one unless I come up with something different when I'm
on the Orient Express and one.

S2 (57:39):
Thank you. One final question.

S4 (57:41):
Oh, I've got a quick question for Larry. But you've
got a question. Will you give us a little reading
at the end? Yeah. And this question here, I've got
the mike a horse, Larry. I'm just wondering, did you
ever watch Australian crime dramas Australia were growing up?

S3 (58:02):
What are the Australian crime dramas? Cop shop.

S2 (58:05):
Homicide. Homicide Division for Matt Law.

S4 (58:08):
Division for No Prisoner? No, I wasn't.

S3 (58:13):
A member.

S4 (58:13):
Heelers, which I'm watching at the moment.

S3 (58:16):
I vaguely remember my mother watched Prisoner, but we weren't allowed.
It was considered a little bit too racy. But no,
it wasn't. I moved straight to BBC crime dramas. I
loved the Australian crime dramas at the moment, those that
are coming out. You know, Mystery Road, I think the

(58:39):
other ones that are there, I've watched them all on Netflix.
I'm really bad with titles. I just go through them
and yeah, but and it's interesting Australian crime dramas on
on Netflix or in production are different from Australian crime novels.
And I was wondering, I wonder I was wondering for

(59:01):
ages what the issue was. And I think it is
that when we do things on screen we seem to
leave out the humour, whilst Australian novels always have an
underlying sense of Australian humour.

S4 (59:17):
Do you know.

S3 (59:19):
What it was? The humor in Mystery Road.

S4 (59:24):
So. Yeah.

S3 (59:29):
Which one? Okay. So, yeah. Well, I mean, my impression
was watching a lot of the things that have come
out more recently is that the they seem to lack
a sense of humor through them. They actually take themselves
quite seriously. Well, Australian crime novels seem to have a

(59:53):
certain Australian absurdity about them or sense of absurdity about them. Yes.

S4 (01:00:03):
Who do like mystery and crime novels. Crime in general,
It exists both really well on TV and film and
really well in books. What's what's your preferred medium?

S3 (01:00:19):
Oh, I'll do both. Look at this. You know, I
write novels while watching murder mysteries.

S4 (01:00:26):
Yeah.

S3 (01:00:28):
Yeah. So? So to me, there's a there's a symbiotic
relationship between them. And certainly when I write my stories,
play out in my head like I'm watching them. And
so I describe what I'm seeing on the page. So
I don't know that I have a preference for either.

(01:00:49):
I'm not sure I could I could write novels without
the without the television or the without the without the
you know, without the the wealth of story I've got
from that medium. So I think there is a kind
of a maybe screenwriting.

S4 (01:01:06):
Yeah. Up your alley.

S3 (01:01:10):
Yeah. So yeah. So I don't know whether that's a
definitive answer, but I, I think, you know, realistically it's
all wrapped up into one in the end. It's all
storytelling and, you know, producers and actors and filmmakers and novelists, storytellers. Um,
and in the end, that's, that's what's really valuable to me.

S2 (01:01:36):
And you want to do a reading like.

S4 (01:01:40):
Okay.

S3 (01:01:42):
A reading, I think. Can I. I'll just get my glasses.
But just because I do actually require them now. No.
You know, in the old days when I only had
one or two books, I used to be able to
tell you what happened on one page. But I have

(01:02:03):
this theory about memory. And I think in order to
write another book, you've got to download some stuff. And
I think I've downloaded stuff. So I don't remember as
as well as I used to.

S4 (01:02:15):
Okay.

S2 (01:02:21):
Probably safest. Just to read.

S4 (01:02:23):
The.

S3 (01:02:23):
First one.

S4 (01:02:24):
The very opening, the opening.

S3 (01:02:26):
So this is the opening letter from Leo to Hannah.
Dear Hannah, what are you writing? I expect you've started
something new by now. If not, consider this a nudge
from a fan. You have a following, my friend. Desperate
for the next Hannah to go. To paraphrase Spider-Man, with

(01:02:48):
great leadership comes great responsibility. Seriously, though, I saw an
implausible country in the bookstore round the corner yesterday. A
place called the Rook. One of those hipster joints where
you can get a half strength turmeric, soy latte and
a wheatgrass and birdseed snack.

S4 (01:03:09):
Any. He was set to talk to the. You take
your photos in a. I want to go. So I
applied it to the book. So I need to know that.
They should replace it with a different evacuation device. I

(01:03:32):
started it when I was nine years old. It took
Mitt Romney's campaign somewhat. Aside from that, you. That Maybe something.

(01:03:55):
About a friendship based on a common love of good.
Actually inquiries about how much of. Well, when I said
Friday politely, I just a thousand words. The Boston Public
Library did not support. Despite not. I had to like.

(01:04:30):
I'm afraid it's just one more word from Syria. Before
the holidays, I was like. For taxpayers any or all
of what they said about what? The most. I look

(01:04:54):
forward to hearing that. So where? We check to see what?
It'll give me something to do on. But I think. They.

S2 (01:05:24):
Thanks, Laurie. Thank you so much for coming out to
this event. We really, really appreciate it. And could you
please thank Solari.

S1 (01:05:40):
Wonderful. Say thank you so much, Solari and Robert, for
such a wonderful conversation. Such a treat to hear about
your unconventional writing process and the genesis of the woman
in the library, as well as your reflections on who
we are as readers. Thank you so much. So before
you all go home, there is an opportunity to purchase
one of Solari or Robert's titles from Amy, from Jay

(01:06:03):
Jeffrey's books, and to have your book signed. So there
is a signing table up the back. You can meet
Solari and Robert there in a few moments. Otherwise, please
help yourself to some food and drinks. Our volunteers are
ready to assist you and we farewell those who have
joined us on the livestream. Thank you again for joining
us this evening for In Conversation. We hope you can

(01:06:24):
join us for another in conversation with the Regional Australia
Library in the future. Thank you, everyone.