April 26, 2025 • 25 mins
The opening scene of Chris Flynn’s fourth and latest novel, Orpheus Nine, came to him in a dream. Not long after, he had the whole story down from start to finish. On this week’s episode of Read This, Chris and Michael sit down for a conversation about the falsity of certitude, how trauma can re-shape a community, and what The Exorcist, the Bible, and Winnie the Pooh all have in common.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, it's Daniel James and I'm here to share
another episode I've Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast,
hosted by editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features
conversations with some of the most talented writers from Australia
and around the world. On this episode, Michael sits down
with Irish born Australian based writer Chris Flynn. As always,
(00:22):
Michael is here to tell us a little bit more
about the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, Michael, Daniel James. What a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
So in this week's episode of Read This, you've got
another Irish author on the show. But Chris Flinn has
actually been calling Australia home for quite some time now,
and he began his literary career here. How did you
first come across his work?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, Chris Flynn's writing first came on to my radar
in a past life. I was working in publishing as
a kind of junior editorial assistant, reading manuscripts and trying
to translate having an opinion about what I read into
some kind of career path. Crazy, I know. But one
of those manuscripts was one that came in from a
first time writer and it was about a young guy
(01:02):
from Belfast on the run who finds himself in Thailand.
And it was a kind of raucous, crazy, comedic kaper thing,
and it was unmistakably talented. It was one of those
ones where you read the manuscript and you think, oh,
this person is a natural writer. The writer, of course,
was Chris Flynn, and the manuscript did go on to
eventually become his first book, A Tiger and Eden. He's
(01:24):
written a few books now, probably most notably A twenty
twenty's Mammoth. But he's a writer who is known for
slightly outlandish, slightly unpredictable, kind of twisty turning stuff. He
had another book of short stories called He'd be Leviathan's
and his books are always very funny, kind of slightly dark,
maybe genre adjacent. He's a really talented voice.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Michael's it writer.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
You actually wrote about Christ's latest novel, Orpheus nine for
one of your many secret side hustles. What was it
the Cornus mag Tell me about that experience on one
of the book's premise might scare off son read but shouldn't.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yes, being opinionated about what I read continues to be
the through line of what I do, Daniel, And one
of those side hustles is, as you say, writing for
the Quantus in Flight magazine, which is a strange thing,
but I get to recommend books that I've read, and
for the first time since I've been doing that job,
I sent in a review of Chris Flynn's new book,
(02:22):
Orvius nine, and the editor came back and very politely said,
could you choose a different book? This one sounds too
scary for the people who are going to be on
our flights. In the end, I just rewrote the review
in a way that she was kind of happy with.
But I thought about that a lot, because the premise
of Chris's new book is pretty horrifying. On a day
during an under twelves football match, every nine year old
(02:46):
in the field suddenly starts chanting a line from King
Lear in Latin, and then they die horribly and gruesomely.
And it's a global phenomenon. Every nine year old around
the planet has died suddenly in the same sterious circumstances,
and almost worse than that, after that, any day another
kid turns nine, that kid dies at the age of
(03:08):
nine in the same gruesome way. This is a kind
of Stephen King esque setup. It's horrifying but kind of
very compelling and part of what I love so much
about this book, and you'll hear in this conversation is
that Chris focuses at this global, even supernatural phenomenon, focuses
it on a small town in Australia and on three
(03:28):
former school friends, each of whom are hit by the
phenomenon in different ways.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Coming up in just a moment, Chris Flynn's new book
arrived in a dream.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
My own questions, you seems self evident. Who hurt you,
Chris Flynn.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
On, No one hurt me.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Were you bullied as a nine year old?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
I was relentlessly bullied as a child because I was skinny,
milinky long legs, as my mum used to call me.
She said, I've seen better legs hanging out of a
bird's nest.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
That's a hard one to come back from. And my
dad was a former bodybuilder, so I was the weakling
who's constantly abused for not being able to lift huge
fence posts that he could lift with one hand. But
I have nothing against kids personally. I grew up in
a foster family in that my mom and Dad were
foster parents when I was in my early teens and
(04:30):
my sister was four years younger than me, and so
throughout my teenage years we had kids in the house,
over one hundred little kids, all young. They're all seized
by the social services for various reasons, sometimes for a
few weeks, sometimes months, and a couple of cases we
had them for years. So I had all these little
brothers and sisters, and my sister and I were pseudo parents.
(04:51):
In fact, we'd often walk around the housing estate in
Belfast pushing the buggy and people would assume we were
the mum and dad because of so many teenage pregnancies
of these kids, and we were horrified, or we would
sometimes say no, no, we're brother and sister, which would freak
people out them.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
That's very reassuring, that's what you want to hear about
those teen parents.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
That's right, we're brother and sister. On top of that,
So I sort of grew up being a parent to
absolutely loads of little brothers and sisters. But I mean,
the beautiful thing about fostering is that you're giving them stability,
and then the kids move on. They either would go
back to their natural parents who sometimes would have dependency issues,
(05:29):
and we're sorting them some things ourselves out so they'd
get the kids back, or they'd move on to an
adoptive family. And the thing was you were never allowed
to see them ever again, or have any contact with
them whatsoever. If you saw them in the shopping center,
you were told. My mom and dad were told walk
the other way. And partly it's for the good of
the kids, because they don't want to introduce confusion into
(05:51):
their lives, like who who are you? Why do you
know me? You know, you assume that they'll just forget you.
But there's a sadness to that too, and I had
never really processed that. I don't think very well. And
I think part of the reason behind this book was that,
for some reason it just came up. My sister and
I never had kids of our own, and we always wonder,
is it because some sort of paternal instinct or maternal
(06:14):
instinct was satisfied in us, something some switch was flipped
and we never felt compelled.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
To or you associated it with an impermanence as well,
like that you know that you invest in it, it's
an important thing in your life, but it's not something
that you then hold on to It's not an ongoing thing.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Could be. Yeah, yeah, and we obviously obviously all those
kids are now in their forties. I don't know what
happened to them. Some of them will be alive, some
not probably, But they don't know me, Yeah, they don't.
They probably don't remember that I was a figure in
their lives. But I wonder if maybe one of the
reasons behind this book subconsciously was me trying to sort
(06:52):
of because all those kids, they might as well be
dead to me, you know, and this this book my
way of sort of coping with that. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
If it's a coping mechanism, it's a deeply unhealthy one.
And I suggest you get some therapy, That's all I'll say.
I mean, the reason I start there is that when
the advanced reading copy of this book arrived, the publisher
basically sold it in the advanced reading copy as Chris
Flynn was standing at a kid's football game and basically
(07:24):
had a vision.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Yes, So what happened to me was I drove myself
seven thousand kilometers around Australia, staying in murder motels, visiting
over one hundred book shops and I wanted to do
it because it was twenty twenty two and I hadn't
got to do that with Mammoth, which is twenty twenty
because everything was locked down and it was an adventure.
But when I got back, the last thing I wanted
to think about was books are writing. I got home, Okay,
(07:48):
I don't want to be bothered with this, and I
had a dream like a few days later in which
that opening scene of the book is exactly what happened.
In my dream. I was standing there alongside these parents
I live in a small original time, and I was
there on the footy ground watching it all happen. And
when I got up the next morning, I brought it
(08:09):
down and it's the opening scene in the book almost
forbid him as like as it happened in my dream.
And then over the next hour, the rest of it
all just appeared. And so the whole book was there,
right to the ending, right from the beginning, and I thought,
oh bloody hell, now I'm going to have to write
the freaking thing, you know. And it was the start
of the summer. I was intending to take some time off,
and I ended up just giving up my summer to
(08:31):
set on my computer, it down watches. This thing appeared
before my eyes, so who knows where that came from.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
You do something that I particularly love, and I think
it's what makes the book work as well as it does,
which is you take this kind of speculative, fantastical premise
that has global ramifications, but then you write about it
in an intensely local way rather than canvas and here's
how it's rolling out in Paris and Tokyo and New
(09:00):
York and whatever. You bring it right in and you
go very small and very intimate, kind of essentially with
three protagonists who are all relating to this global tragedy
in their own different ways, and a town called Gatton,
which is kind of seven and a half thousand people
small population was the town? I mean, are you just
(09:22):
writing about where you live? And it's thinly veiled and
every nasty person in the book is one of your
neighbors A little bit.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I have to be careful so I don't get hung
drawn and quartered. I tend to not reveal the time
that I live in so that.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
I nearly said it that and be nice mikel Vernon.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
But obviously if I'm speaking to anyone local, no, no, No,
it's clearly somewhere else, some horrible place in Queensland that's
got nothing to do with where I live, but the
general framework of the town is very similar to where
I live. Yeah, the local thing I think is important
for this kind of story. I'm not a big fan
of those sort of part glyps books where it's like
(10:02):
we've got to get on the cargo plane and fly
to Paris next and to talk to a scientist and
then he sends us to you know, Cape time like boring,
Like how on earth can a person relate to that?
And it just seemed a very relatable story from the beginning,
a very intimate story from the beginning. And although the
premise it's a premise heavy book, but the premises, as
you say, has got o of the way at the beginning,
(10:24):
and then it's very focused on a local level on
how people respond to your disaster because it all happened
to us, all right, you know, there was a global
disaster and we all had to deal with it in
our own very localized way because we were actually trapped
in our own homes. To that sort of degree, in
your neighbors, the street you were in, you became very
intimate with that, so it made sense to approach it
(10:46):
in those terms.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Thinking in particular as a Melbourne based person who went
through the COVID lockdowns here in many ways as the
beats of a pandemic novel that actually, if you take
away the more fantastical elements and you take away some
of the more kind of overt body horror stuff, what
you have at the heart is a society that's assumptions
(11:07):
about itself and how it operates irretrievably fractured and trying
to find some version of normalcy after that. And in particular,
the relationship with Salt is very reminiscent of many of
the responses to COVID and the anti vaxx crowd and
that kind of thing. Were you aware of it as
a kind of COVID allegory or is that just something
(11:29):
that's easy to impose on it afterwards?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
It was imposed a little bit as I went along.
I'm not so interested in COVID as I am in
Hope people's opinions. Everyone's got an opinion about everything. Now
we're expected to be experts on all matters, matters of science,
matters of medicine, everything, And I don't know if that's
a bit of a layover from COVID, where suddenly we
(11:52):
all become very opinionated and experts, but of course none
of us are experts in anything, and so I think
that's what frustated in me more about the COVID thing
was all of a sudden, everyone's a scientist. All of
a sudden, everyone's choosing to believe certain things they read
on the Internet whilst ignoring other things because it suits
their personal narrative, or it's they're a coping mechanism. And
(12:13):
that became the focus of the book was how you
can have neighbors, friends who know each other, who are
suddenly because of something that happens, all sent in various
different directions, all believe certain things, and all believe they're correct,
whereas they're probably all partially correct but also partially wrong,
(12:33):
but not wanting to listen to what the other person's
point of view might be.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Part of how that rolls out, then, in the context of
Olpheus nine, is that the overlay of those neighborly disagreements
in the face of something bigger than themselves is all
the history and baggage and stories that are not bigger
than themselves. That are the ways in which they have
come up together in this town. They have had romances
and let each other down, and secrets and betrayals and
(12:59):
all that kind of stuff. How do you get the
stakes right in a book like this where you know
you're open with a cataclysmic thing. How do you find
the space for character staff for comedy, even when you're
killing off kids on page three?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah? Yeah, well, the killing of kids thing will probably
put people off, but you sort of get past that,
and it probably will be a bit of an issue
for some people. They'll be put off by the idea
of it. And I certainly have parents of nine yearls
particularly who've said to me, I'm not reading this, whereas
other parents of nine yearls said, I'm definitely reading this
because my kid does my head in. But yeah, how
(13:38):
do you sort of get away from that? It's unavoidable
that I have to bring up the premise at the
beginning and set it up. Once people are past those
initial pages, I think they'll find something very different unfolding,
because I don't dwell on that. In fact, it's not
really mentioned at all after the initial incident. But yeah,
how do you develop those characters. The characters were standing
(13:59):
next to me on the sideline, and it's sort of
you get this creepy feeling in the back of your
neck as an author whenever this happens, because you're like,
that seems like quite a complete person there. Where did
they come from? Is that an aspect of my personality?
Is that sort of an amalgamation of people? I know?
Who is this this woman standing next to me that
suddenly I know everything about, including you know, her life
(14:20):
as a teenager. It's hard to pin down where that
comes from, but I guess that's kind of the juice
for me, is being presented with these characters wherever they're
coming from, and exploring them and not really knowing whether
anyone will care, but hoping that they do. But also
I love the idea of the premise sends people's lives
(14:41):
in a very specific direction. But no one is all
bad and no one is all good in this world,
And too often in fiction things are written in those
black and white terms, those binary terms, and that doesn't
please me, And so I saw an opportunity here. As
like these characters. You will like them at certain points
in the book, and other times you will not like them,
(15:03):
and then maybe you'll like them again because you will
understand whether made the choices that they've made. And so
it is basically a character study of these three characters
in the book. And that's probably going to also disappoint
some people because they'll think it's a sort of wombbamb
some pandemic book about there's been a disaster. You know,
when's the SWAT team coming in to sort all this out?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
When we return, Chris explains why a sense of mystery
is so important to this book, and he shares the
Holy Trinity of books he grew up. We'll be right
back amongst the many mysteries in Orpheus nine. The reciting
(15:55):
of the passage from King Lear gives it an element
of the supernatural or the other worldly that takes it
from h oh, this could be a viral contagion, this
could be whatever to something truly freaky. Did you did
you have ideas about what that freakinness was?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
So right from the beginning, I knew exactly what this was,
and I know how this happened, but I have not
revealed that in the book, and some might find that frustrating,
but really, early on, I'm not going to reveal why
this is happening, although I know why it's happening, partly
because you can only really disappoint by having a resolution
of people say oh it's aliens. Okay, Oh that's that's
(16:38):
a disappointment. You're only going to disappoint people, So I
chose to avoid the reveal. But you're right, there's also
that mysterious supernatural thing with the kids. Before they swell
up full of salt, they recite a passage from King
Lear in Latin, which introduces that creepiness to it where
you're like, there's no way they could know that, why
is that happening? So it gives that tension to the
(16:59):
narrow right from the beginning, where you're reminded periodically, Okay,
so we're dealing with people in a small town her
living with the aftermath of a disaster. They've got their
own problems to solve, but also there's this other thing
looming over them the whole time that no one's ever
really resolving either. And I think that just it gives
(17:21):
you a through line of the books that you don't
forget and you don't get bogged down in domestic politics.
You have this constant reminder that sort of eeriness that
casts a shadow over the whole book, And so that
was all done on purpose.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
And I think it's very effective because it means that
the dual impulses of the book pull in different directions.
It's a very grounded, very realistic book if you let
yourself forget what's led the characters to where they are.
Everything else about it is society in disarray, small town
worrying about kind of who's in charge.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
You know, they're getting top aware from big w you know, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Very domestic, very kind of grounded. Do you read a
lot of speculative fiction? Do you read a lot of
that kind of more fantastical stuff.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
I sure do. In fact, I always did as a
young reader, and I moved away from it a little
bit and got into more literary world, you know, in
my sort of twenties and thirties. But I've gone back
to it, and I find a lot more satisfaction in
sort of speculative and sci fi light, fantasy light. I
(18:30):
love that sort of black mirror. Twilight Zone. I've seen
so many episodes of the Twilight Zone growing up, and
I think that probably influenced me more than I care
to acknowledge that idea that this is a very recognizable
world in this story, but there's something off and we
can't quite put our finger on what it is. But
we all know there's something off, and you know, you
(18:52):
could argue that that is our reality. You know, we
all live in a world where we think we have certitude,
but we don't really don't really know what's around the corner.
As we all learned a harsh lesson with COVID. We
never saw it coming and suddenly it affected us dramatically,
and none of us really know what lies around the
corner or where things. We live in an age of uncertainty,
(19:13):
but we desperately yearned for certainty. So I think there's
there's a really interesting tension.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
There having an answer to what's happening in Orpheus nine,
and withholding that answer from your readers. Does that mean
it's conceivable there's a scenario where this is a world,
or a context or a premise that you would return to,
Because it does seem to me that pick a different town,
pick a major city, pick a different context in which
(19:40):
they're responding to the same thing, and there's endless stories
that may come out of that.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
What you're talking about is what I call the flu
the Flint literary universe. You know, good magic, where the
TV show comes out and then there's an offshoot show
set in another country from a different point of view.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I've got the branded drinking mug, but otherwise I haven't
followed all the rest of it.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
So because I know what happens, I have had a
completely bonker's, totally left field idea for a continuation of
the story that would drive people up the wall. But
I'll be tempted if this book does well. I mean,
I've got a lot of few other things in the pipeline,
but if this book does well, then I would consider
(20:25):
tackling that. It wouldn't be easy to do, and there'd
be a bit of a leap of faith people would
have to take with me, and people would probably be like,
what the hell, what's happening now?
Speaker 2 (20:37):
I can see in your eyes though, not only is
that not off putting to you, but I suspect that's
what gets you up out of bed and writing in
the morning is not easy. Confounding readers and making them
come and meet you halfway, and a sense of play.
They the things that get you going.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
It totally is, and I've started to get into a
bit of a flaw state now whenever I'm writing, and
then I'm like, okay, so I'm obviously onto something. I'm
not going to question this too much. My favorite part
of the whole writing process. I love it all, even
the promotion stuff, which a lot of people hate. I
love that. I guess I'm a former stage actor when
I was young, and I'm a bit of a natural
(21:15):
showman maybe, but I really love the moments when the
thing is being created and I am laughing at myself,
thinking what's wrong with me? Where is this coming from?
Because it's a mystery to me every time it comes
to writing a book, I feel like I'm starting from scratch,
and because the ideas are often unusual and the execution
(21:39):
of them is very different each time. But that's the
joy in it for.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Me, you know, apart from your own childhood and that
kind of presence of lots of kids in your life,
such an important thread through this book is about parental grief,
parental sense of responsibility, that kind of bond you workshop
this with friends with kids? Did you like pick up
(22:03):
the scab of How would you respond to this? How
would you deal with it or is it entirely inactive
imaginative empathy.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
No, I did not. I don't let anyone read my
work at all whilst I'm working on it. I sort
of have a horror of that workshopping of things, maybe incorrectly,
maybe I should, but I'm not from an academic background,
so i just have no history of that in me.
So I've always sort of been a loner, a solitary
(22:32):
writer who just does his own thing. And for years
I was writing books in my twenties and thirties that
sometimes I would send it to publishers and you'd get
pretty form rejections. To give you credit, you're one of
the first people to ever throw me a bone in
the literary world, because my first book, Tiger Needen, which
came out in twenty twelve. You read a really early
(22:54):
draft of that, whichs very different to the finished book,
and then you met up with me for a coffee,
and you didn't really know me and gave me some
very pointed, kind but also firm advice about what worked
and what didn't work. And I was very grateful for that.
And then when I you know, over the following months,
I just thought about it, and I think one of
the things you said to me was about the voice,
(23:15):
because you had heard me speak, and you said, I
just don't see you in this. And it made me think, oh,
is it okay to put me into it, not as
a character, but as to channel a voice that comes
from my head. And I ended up going away months
later writing that book in the voice of a character
who was a very similar to the guys I grew
(23:37):
up with, but not me, and laughing whilst I was
doing it. Playing but for an autodidact, you know, someone
who doesn't have, you know, a formal education, really, and
there was no books in our house growing up. We
only had three books in our house growing up, because
my parents are functionally illiterate, you know. The three books
were and it sort of says a lot about me.
The illustrated Bible the house would put Corner by A.
(24:01):
Milton and William Peter Blood is the.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Exorcist, excellent.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
So those are the first three bits of three. That's
the Holy Trinity, but it probably explains a lot of
my work.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
The main characters in all three were a top but
no pants at some point. Probably it's a little lonely,
but there you go.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
There, you go, you go. But for someone from that background,
I sort of dope be working class Irish kid. You know,
it meant a lot to me that you did that
because it's set me on a path that I had
never considered before. And isn't that the beauty about being
in the arts and taking a risk sometimes and you know,
having a feeling and sometimes it's those things that make
(24:39):
all the difference.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Well, it's yeah, it's the most satisfying part of working
book adjacent and look, Auvius nine is magnificent. It deserves
to do terribly well, and I hope it does. I
hope people don't get scared away by the concept and
they get lured in for your chit, cannery and trickery
(25:00):
which is there on every page. But it's been great
to chat to you today, Thanks for coming in.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Lovely to see you, Michael.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Orpheus nine. But Chris Flynn is available at all good bookstores.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Thanks so much for listening to another episode of Read This.
We have another episode to share with you next Sunday.
As always, if you want to dive further into the show,
you can search for it wherever you listen to podcasts.
There are more than eighty episodes, and then read this
archive for you to enjoy. See you next week.
Hey there, it's Daniel James and I'm here to share
another episode I've Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast,
hosted by editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features
conversations with some of the most talented writers from Australia
and around the world. On this episode, Michael sits down
with Irish born Australian based writer Chris Flynn. As always,
(00:22):
Michael is here to tell us a little bit more
about the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, Michael, Daniel James. What a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
So in this week's episode of Read This, you've got
another Irish author on the show. But Chris Flinn has
actually been calling Australia home for quite some time now,
and he began his literary career here. How did you
first come across his work?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, Chris Flynn's writing first came on to my radar
in a past life. I was working in publishing as
a kind of junior editorial assistant, reading manuscripts and trying
to translate having an opinion about what I read into
some kind of career path. Crazy, I know. But one
of those manuscripts was one that came in from a
first time writer and it was about a young guy
(01:02):
from Belfast on the run who finds himself in Thailand.
And it was a kind of raucous, crazy, comedic kaper thing,
and it was unmistakably talented. It was one of those
ones where you read the manuscript and you think, oh,
this person is a natural writer. The writer, of course,
was Chris Flynn, and the manuscript did go on to
eventually become his first book, A Tiger and Eden. He's
(01:24):
written a few books now, probably most notably A twenty
twenty's Mammoth. But he's a writer who is known for
slightly outlandish, slightly unpredictable, kind of twisty turning stuff. He
had another book of short stories called He'd be Leviathan's
and his books are always very funny, kind of slightly dark,
maybe genre adjacent. He's a really talented voice.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Michael's it writer.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
You actually wrote about Christ's latest novel, Orpheus nine for
one of your many secret side hustles. What was it
the Cornus mag Tell me about that experience on one
of the book's premise might scare off son read but shouldn't.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yes, being opinionated about what I read continues to be
the through line of what I do, Daniel, And one
of those side hustles is, as you say, writing for
the Quantus in Flight magazine, which is a strange thing,
but I get to recommend books that I've read, and
for the first time since I've been doing that job,
I sent in a review of Chris Flynn's new book,
(02:22):
Orvius nine, and the editor came back and very politely said,
could you choose a different book? This one sounds too
scary for the people who are going to be on
our flights. In the end, I just rewrote the review
in a way that she was kind of happy with.
But I thought about that a lot, because the premise
of Chris's new book is pretty horrifying. On a day
during an under twelves football match, every nine year old
(02:46):
in the field suddenly starts chanting a line from King
Lear in Latin, and then they die horribly and gruesomely.
And it's a global phenomenon. Every nine year old around
the planet has died suddenly in the same sterious circumstances,
and almost worse than that, after that, any day another
kid turns nine, that kid dies at the age of
(03:08):
nine in the same gruesome way. This is a kind
of Stephen King esque setup. It's horrifying but kind of
very compelling and part of what I love so much
about this book, and you'll hear in this conversation is
that Chris focuses at this global, even supernatural phenomenon, focuses
it on a small town in Australia and on three
(03:28):
former school friends, each of whom are hit by the
phenomenon in different ways.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Coming up in just a moment, Chris Flynn's new book
arrived in a dream.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
My own questions, you seems self evident. Who hurt you,
Chris Flynn.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
On, No one hurt me.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Were you bullied as a nine year old?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
I was relentlessly bullied as a child because I was skinny,
milinky long legs, as my mum used to call me.
She said, I've seen better legs hanging out of a
bird's nest.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
That's a hard one to come back from. And my
dad was a former bodybuilder, so I was the weakling
who's constantly abused for not being able to lift huge
fence posts that he could lift with one hand. But
I have nothing against kids personally. I grew up in
a foster family in that my mom and Dad were
foster parents when I was in my early teens and
(04:30):
my sister was four years younger than me, and so
throughout my teenage years we had kids in the house,
over one hundred little kids, all young. They're all seized
by the social services for various reasons, sometimes for a
few weeks, sometimes months, and a couple of cases we
had them for years. So I had all these little
brothers and sisters, and my sister and I were pseudo parents.
(04:51):
In fact, we'd often walk around the housing estate in
Belfast pushing the buggy and people would assume we were
the mum and dad because of so many teenage pregnancies
of these kids, and we were horrified, or we would
sometimes say no, no, we're brother and sister, which would freak
people out them.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
That's very reassuring, that's what you want to hear about
those teen parents.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
That's right, we're brother and sister. On top of that,
So I sort of grew up being a parent to
absolutely loads of little brothers and sisters. But I mean,
the beautiful thing about fostering is that you're giving them stability,
and then the kids move on. They either would go
back to their natural parents who sometimes would have dependency issues,
(05:29):
and we're sorting them some things ourselves out so they'd
get the kids back, or they'd move on to an
adoptive family. And the thing was you were never allowed
to see them ever again, or have any contact with
them whatsoever. If you saw them in the shopping center,
you were told. My mom and dad were told walk
the other way. And partly it's for the good of
the kids, because they don't want to introduce confusion into
(05:51):
their lives, like who who are you? Why do you
know me? You know, you assume that they'll just forget you.
But there's a sadness to that too, and I had
never really processed that. I don't think very well. And
I think part of the reason behind this book was that,
for some reason it just came up. My sister and
I never had kids of our own, and we always wonder,
is it because some sort of paternal instinct or maternal
(06:14):
instinct was satisfied in us, something some switch was flipped
and we never felt compelled.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
To or you associated it with an impermanence as well,
like that you know that you invest in it, it's
an important thing in your life, but it's not something
that you then hold on to It's not an ongoing thing.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Could be. Yeah, yeah, and we obviously obviously all those
kids are now in their forties. I don't know what
happened to them. Some of them will be alive, some
not probably, But they don't know me, Yeah, they don't.
They probably don't remember that I was a figure in
their lives. But I wonder if maybe one of the
reasons behind this book subconsciously was me trying to sort
(06:52):
of because all those kids, they might as well be
dead to me, you know, and this this book my
way of sort of coping with that. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
If it's a coping mechanism, it's a deeply unhealthy one.
And I suggest you get some therapy, That's all I'll say.
I mean, the reason I start there is that when
the advanced reading copy of this book arrived, the publisher
basically sold it in the advanced reading copy as Chris
Flynn was standing at a kid's football game and basically
(07:24):
had a vision.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Yes, So what happened to me was I drove myself
seven thousand kilometers around Australia, staying in murder motels, visiting
over one hundred book shops and I wanted to do
it because it was twenty twenty two and I hadn't
got to do that with Mammoth, which is twenty twenty
because everything was locked down and it was an adventure.
But when I got back, the last thing I wanted
to think about was books are writing. I got home, Okay,
(07:48):
I don't want to be bothered with this, and I
had a dream like a few days later in which
that opening scene of the book is exactly what happened.
In my dream. I was standing there alongside these parents
I live in a small original time, and I was
there on the footy ground watching it all happen. And
when I got up the next morning, I brought it
(08:09):
down and it's the opening scene in the book almost
forbid him as like as it happened in my dream.
And then over the next hour, the rest of it
all just appeared. And so the whole book was there,
right to the ending, right from the beginning, and I thought,
oh bloody hell, now I'm going to have to write
the freaking thing, you know. And it was the start
of the summer. I was intending to take some time off,
and I ended up just giving up my summer to
(08:31):
set on my computer, it down watches. This thing appeared
before my eyes, so who knows where that came from.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
You do something that I particularly love, and I think
it's what makes the book work as well as it does,
which is you take this kind of speculative, fantastical premise
that has global ramifications, but then you write about it
in an intensely local way rather than canvas and here's
how it's rolling out in Paris and Tokyo and New
(09:00):
York and whatever. You bring it right in and you
go very small and very intimate, kind of essentially with
three protagonists who are all relating to this global tragedy
in their own different ways, and a town called Gatton,
which is kind of seven and a half thousand people
small population was the town? I mean, are you just
(09:22):
writing about where you live? And it's thinly veiled and
every nasty person in the book is one of your
neighbors A little bit.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I have to be careful so I don't get hung
drawn and quartered. I tend to not reveal the time
that I live in so that.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
I nearly said it that and be nice mikel Vernon.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
But obviously if I'm speaking to anyone local, no, no, No,
it's clearly somewhere else, some horrible place in Queensland that's
got nothing to do with where I live, but the
general framework of the town is very similar to where
I live. Yeah, the local thing I think is important
for this kind of story. I'm not a big fan
of those sort of part glyps books where it's like
(10:02):
we've got to get on the cargo plane and fly
to Paris next and to talk to a scientist and
then he sends us to you know, Cape time like boring,
Like how on earth can a person relate to that?
And it just seemed a very relatable story from the beginning,
a very intimate story from the beginning. And although the
premise it's a premise heavy book, but the premises, as
you say, has got o of the way at the beginning,
(10:24):
and then it's very focused on a local level on
how people respond to your disaster because it all happened
to us, all right, you know, there was a global
disaster and we all had to deal with it in
our own very localized way because we were actually trapped
in our own homes. To that sort of degree, in
your neighbors, the street you were in, you became very
intimate with that, so it made sense to approach it
(10:46):
in those terms.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Thinking in particular as a Melbourne based person who went
through the COVID lockdowns here in many ways as the
beats of a pandemic novel that actually, if you take
away the more fantastical elements and you take away some
of the more kind of overt body horror stuff, what
you have at the heart is a society that's assumptions
(11:07):
about itself and how it operates irretrievably fractured and trying
to find some version of normalcy after that. And in particular,
the relationship with Salt is very reminiscent of many of
the responses to COVID and the anti vaxx crowd and
that kind of thing. Were you aware of it as
a kind of COVID allegory or is that just something
(11:29):
that's easy to impose on it afterwards?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
It was imposed a little bit as I went along.
I'm not so interested in COVID as I am in
Hope people's opinions. Everyone's got an opinion about everything. Now
we're expected to be experts on all matters, matters of science,
matters of medicine, everything, And I don't know if that's
a bit of a layover from COVID, where suddenly we
(11:52):
all become very opinionated and experts, but of course none
of us are experts in anything, and so I think
that's what frustated in me more about the COVID thing
was all of a sudden, everyone's a scientist. All of
a sudden, everyone's choosing to believe certain things they read
on the Internet whilst ignoring other things because it suits
their personal narrative, or it's they're a coping mechanism. And
(12:13):
that became the focus of the book was how you
can have neighbors, friends who know each other, who are
suddenly because of something that happens, all sent in various
different directions, all believe certain things, and all believe they're correct,
whereas they're probably all partially correct but also partially wrong,
(12:33):
but not wanting to listen to what the other person's
point of view might be.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Part of how that rolls out, then, in the context of
Olpheus nine, is that the overlay of those neighborly disagreements
in the face of something bigger than themselves is all
the history and baggage and stories that are not bigger
than themselves. That are the ways in which they have
come up together in this town. They have had romances
and let each other down, and secrets and betrayals and
(12:59):
all that kind of stuff. How do you get the
stakes right in a book like this where you know
you're open with a cataclysmic thing. How do you find
the space for character staff for comedy, even when you're
killing off kids on page three?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah? Yeah, well, the killing of kids thing will probably
put people off, but you sort of get past that,
and it probably will be a bit of an issue
for some people. They'll be put off by the idea
of it. And I certainly have parents of nine yearls
particularly who've said to me, I'm not reading this, whereas
other parents of nine yearls said, I'm definitely reading this
because my kid does my head in. But yeah, how
(13:38):
do you sort of get away from that? It's unavoidable
that I have to bring up the premise at the
beginning and set it up. Once people are past those
initial pages, I think they'll find something very different unfolding,
because I don't dwell on that. In fact, it's not
really mentioned at all after the initial incident. But yeah,
how do you develop those characters. The characters were standing
(13:59):
next to me on the sideline, and it's sort of
you get this creepy feeling in the back of your
neck as an author whenever this happens, because you're like,
that seems like quite a complete person there. Where did
they come from? Is that an aspect of my personality?
Is that sort of an amalgamation of people? I know?
Who is this this woman standing next to me that
suddenly I know everything about, including you know, her life
(14:20):
as a teenager. It's hard to pin down where that
comes from, but I guess that's kind of the juice
for me, is being presented with these characters wherever they're
coming from, and exploring them and not really knowing whether
anyone will care, but hoping that they do. But also
I love the idea of the premise sends people's lives
(14:41):
in a very specific direction. But no one is all
bad and no one is all good in this world,
And too often in fiction things are written in those
black and white terms, those binary terms, and that doesn't
please me, And so I saw an opportunity here. As
like these characters. You will like them at certain points
in the book, and other times you will not like them,
(15:03):
and then maybe you'll like them again because you will
understand whether made the choices that they've made. And so
it is basically a character study of these three characters
in the book. And that's probably going to also disappoint
some people because they'll think it's a sort of wombbamb
some pandemic book about there's been a disaster. You know,
when's the SWAT team coming in to sort all this out?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
When we return, Chris explains why a sense of mystery
is so important to this book, and he shares the
Holy Trinity of books he grew up. We'll be right
back amongst the many mysteries in Orpheus nine. The reciting
(15:55):
of the passage from King Lear gives it an element
of the supernatural or the other worldly that takes it
from h oh, this could be a viral contagion, this
could be whatever to something truly freaky. Did you did
you have ideas about what that freakinness was?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
So right from the beginning, I knew exactly what this was,
and I know how this happened, but I have not
revealed that in the book, and some might find that frustrating,
but really, early on, I'm not going to reveal why
this is happening, although I know why it's happening, partly
because you can only really disappoint by having a resolution
of people say oh it's aliens. Okay, Oh that's that's
(16:38):
a disappointment. You're only going to disappoint people, So I
chose to avoid the reveal. But you're right, there's also
that mysterious supernatural thing with the kids. Before they swell
up full of salt, they recite a passage from King
Lear in Latin, which introduces that creepiness to it where
you're like, there's no way they could know that, why
is that happening? So it gives that tension to the
(16:59):
narrow right from the beginning, where you're reminded periodically, Okay,
so we're dealing with people in a small town her
living with the aftermath of a disaster. They've got their
own problems to solve, but also there's this other thing
looming over them the whole time that no one's ever
really resolving either. And I think that just it gives
(17:21):
you a through line of the books that you don't
forget and you don't get bogged down in domestic politics.
You have this constant reminder that sort of eeriness that
casts a shadow over the whole book, And so that
was all done on purpose.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
And I think it's very effective because it means that
the dual impulses of the book pull in different directions.
It's a very grounded, very realistic book if you let
yourself forget what's led the characters to where they are.
Everything else about it is society in disarray, small town
worrying about kind of who's in charge.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
You know, they're getting top aware from big w you know, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Very domestic, very kind of grounded. Do you read a
lot of speculative fiction? Do you read a lot of
that kind of more fantastical stuff.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
I sure do. In fact, I always did as a
young reader, and I moved away from it a little
bit and got into more literary world, you know, in
my sort of twenties and thirties. But I've gone back
to it, and I find a lot more satisfaction in
sort of speculative and sci fi light, fantasy light. I
(18:30):
love that sort of black mirror. Twilight Zone. I've seen
so many episodes of the Twilight Zone growing up, and
I think that probably influenced me more than I care
to acknowledge that idea that this is a very recognizable
world in this story, but there's something off and we
can't quite put our finger on what it is. But
we all know there's something off, and you know, you
(18:52):
could argue that that is our reality. You know, we
all live in a world where we think we have certitude,
but we don't really don't really know what's around the corner.
As we all learned a harsh lesson with COVID. We
never saw it coming and suddenly it affected us dramatically,
and none of us really know what lies around the
corner or where things. We live in an age of uncertainty,
(19:13):
but we desperately yearned for certainty. So I think there's
there's a really interesting tension.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
There having an answer to what's happening in Orpheus nine,
and withholding that answer from your readers. Does that mean
it's conceivable there's a scenario where this is a world,
or a context or a premise that you would return to,
Because it does seem to me that pick a different town,
pick a major city, pick a different context in which
(19:40):
they're responding to the same thing, and there's endless stories
that may come out of that.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
What you're talking about is what I call the flu
the Flint literary universe. You know, good magic, where the
TV show comes out and then there's an offshoot show
set in another country from a different point of view.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I've got the branded drinking mug, but otherwise I haven't
followed all the rest of it.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
So because I know what happens, I have had a
completely bonker's, totally left field idea for a continuation of
the story that would drive people up the wall. But
I'll be tempted if this book does well. I mean,
I've got a lot of few other things in the pipeline,
but if this book does well, then I would consider
(20:25):
tackling that. It wouldn't be easy to do, and there'd
be a bit of a leap of faith people would
have to take with me, and people would probably be like,
what the hell, what's happening now?
Speaker 2 (20:37):
I can see in your eyes though, not only is
that not off putting to you, but I suspect that's
what gets you up out of bed and writing in
the morning is not easy. Confounding readers and making them
come and meet you halfway, and a sense of play.
They the things that get you going.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
It totally is, and I've started to get into a
bit of a flaw state now whenever I'm writing, and
then I'm like, okay, so I'm obviously onto something. I'm
not going to question this too much. My favorite part
of the whole writing process. I love it all, even
the promotion stuff, which a lot of people hate. I
love that. I guess I'm a former stage actor when
I was young, and I'm a bit of a natural
(21:15):
showman maybe, but I really love the moments when the
thing is being created and I am laughing at myself,
thinking what's wrong with me? Where is this coming from?
Because it's a mystery to me every time it comes
to writing a book, I feel like I'm starting from scratch,
and because the ideas are often unusual and the execution
(21:39):
of them is very different each time. But that's the
joy in it for.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Me, you know, apart from your own childhood and that
kind of presence of lots of kids in your life,
such an important thread through this book is about parental grief,
parental sense of responsibility, that kind of bond you workshop
this with friends with kids? Did you like pick up
(22:03):
the scab of How would you respond to this? How
would you deal with it or is it entirely inactive
imaginative empathy.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
No, I did not. I don't let anyone read my
work at all whilst I'm working on it. I sort
of have a horror of that workshopping of things, maybe incorrectly,
maybe I should, but I'm not from an academic background,
so i just have no history of that in me.
So I've always sort of been a loner, a solitary
(22:32):
writer who just does his own thing. And for years
I was writing books in my twenties and thirties that
sometimes I would send it to publishers and you'd get
pretty form rejections. To give you credit, you're one of
the first people to ever throw me a bone in
the literary world, because my first book, Tiger Needen, which
came out in twenty twelve. You read a really early
(22:54):
draft of that, whichs very different to the finished book,
and then you met up with me for a coffee,
and you didn't really know me and gave me some
very pointed, kind but also firm advice about what worked
and what didn't work. And I was very grateful for that.
And then when I you know, over the following months,
I just thought about it, and I think one of
the things you said to me was about the voice,
(23:15):
because you had heard me speak, and you said, I
just don't see you in this. And it made me think, oh,
is it okay to put me into it, not as
a character, but as to channel a voice that comes
from my head. And I ended up going away months
later writing that book in the voice of a character
who was a very similar to the guys I grew
(23:37):
up with, but not me, and laughing whilst I was
doing it. Playing but for an autodidact, you know, someone
who doesn't have, you know, a formal education, really, and
there was no books in our house growing up. We
only had three books in our house growing up, because
my parents are functionally illiterate, you know. The three books
were and it sort of says a lot about me.
The illustrated Bible the house would put Corner by A.
(24:01):
Milton and William Peter Blood is the.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Exorcist, excellent.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
So those are the first three bits of three. That's
the Holy Trinity, but it probably explains a lot of
my work.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
The main characters in all three were a top but
no pants at some point. Probably it's a little lonely,
but there you go.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
There, you go, you go. But for someone from that background,
I sort of dope be working class Irish kid. You know,
it meant a lot to me that you did that
because it's set me on a path that I had
never considered before. And isn't that the beauty about being
in the arts and taking a risk sometimes and you know,
having a feeling and sometimes it's those things that make
(24:39):
all the difference.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Well, it's yeah, it's the most satisfying part of working
book adjacent and look, Auvius nine is magnificent. It deserves
to do terribly well, and I hope it does. I
hope people don't get scared away by the concept and
they get lured in for your chit, cannery and trickery
(25:00):
which is there on every page. But it's been great
to chat to you today, Thanks for coming in.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Lovely to see you, Michael.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Orpheus nine. But Chris Flynn is available at all good bookstores.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Thanks so much for listening to another episode of Read This.
We have another episode to share with you next Sunday.
As always, if you want to dive further into the show,
you can search for it wherever you listen to podcasts.
There are more than eighty episodes, and then read this
archive for you to enjoy. See you next week.
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