Picador Australia

THE SEAMSTRESS hits the shelves

2011-11-29T16:27:00.000-08:00

A runaway bestseller in Europe, THE SEAMSTRESS hits the shelves in Australia tomorrow. Here is the first chapter to whet your appetite!

CHAPTER ONE

A typewriter shattered my destiny. The culprit was a Hispano-Olivetti, and for weeks, a store window kept it from me. Looking back now, from the vantage point of the years gone by, it’s hard to believe a simple mechanical object could have the power to divert the course of an entire life in just four short days, to pulverize the intricate plans on which it was built. And yet that is how it was, and there was nothing I could have done to stop it.

It wasn’t really that I was treasuring any great plans in those days. My ambitions remained close to home, almost domestic, consistent with the coordinates of the place and time in which I happened to live, plans for a future that could be within my grasp if I reached out my fingertips. At that time my world revolved slowly around a few presences that seemed to me firm and eternal. My mother had always been the most solid of them all. She was a dressmaker, working in a shop with a distinguished clientele. She was experienced and had good judgment, but she was never any more than a salaried seamstress, a working woman like so many others who for ten hours a day sacrificed her nails and pupils cutting and sewing, checking and adjusting garments destined for bodies that were not her own and gazes that would rarely be aimed at her. I knew little about my father in those days. Nothing, to be exact. He had never been around, nor did his absence affect me. I never felt much curiosity about him until my mother, when I was eight or nine, ventured to offer me a few crumbs of information. That he had another family, that it was impossible for him to live with us. I swallowed up those details with the same haste and scant appetite with which I polished off the last spoonfuls of the Lenten broth before me: the life of that alien being interested me considerably less than racing down to play in the square.

I had been born in the summer of 1911, the same year that the dancer Pastora Imperio married El Gallo, when the Mexican singer Jorge Negrete came into the world. When the star of that age they called the Belle Époque was fading. In the distance the drums of what would be the first great war were beginning to be heard, while in Madrid cafés people read El Debate and El Heraldo, and on the stage La Chelito fired men’s passions as she moved her hips brazenly to the tempo of popular songs. During those summer months King Alfonso XIII managed to arrange that, between one lover and the next, his fifth legitimate child, a daughter, was conceived. Meanwhile, at the helm of the government was Canalejas the liberal, who couldn’t predict that just a year later an eccentric anarchist would put an end to his life, firing three bullets to his head while he was browsing in the San Martín bookshop.

I grew up in reasonably happy surroundings, with more constraints than excesses but nonetheless with no great deprivations or frustrations. I was raised in a narrow street in a fusty old neighborhood in Madrid, right beside the Plaza de la Paja, just a couple of steps from the Palacio Real. A stone’s throw from the ceaseless hubbub of the heart of the city, a world of clothes hung out to dry, the smell of bleach, the voices of neighboring women, and cats lying out in the sun. I attended a makeshift school on the mezzanine of a nearby building: on its benches, meant to be used by two people, we kids arranged ourselves in fours, with no sense of order, pushing and shoving, shouting our renditions of “The Pirate’s Song” or our times tables. It was there I learned to read and write, to master the four functions of basic arithmetic as well as the names of the rivers crisscrossing the yellowed map that hung from the wall. At the age of twelve I completed my schooling and became an apprentice in the workshop where my mother worked. My logical fate.

The business of Doña Manuela Godina—the owner—had for years produced fine garments, very skillfully cut and sewn, highly regarded all over Madrid. Day dresses, cocktail dresses, coats, and cloaks that would later be shown off by distinguished ladies as they walked along La Castellana, around the Hippodrome, and the Puerta de Hierro polo club, as they took their tea at Sakuska or entered the ostentatious churches. Some time passed, however, before I began to find my way into the secrets of sewing. At first I was the whole workshop’s girl: the one who took the charcoal from the braziers and swept the cuttings from the floor, who heated the irons in the fire and ran breathless to buy thread and buttons from the Plaza de Pontejos. The one who was in charge of getting the just-finished garments, wrapped in big brown linen bags, to the exclusive residences: my favorite job, the greatest joy of my budding career. That was how I came to know the porters and chauffeurs from the best buildings, the maids, housekeepers, and butlers of the wealthiest families. I watched—unseen—the most refined of ladies, daughters, and husbands. And like a mute witness I made my way into their bourgeois houses, into aristocratic mansions and the sumptuous apartments of charming old buildings. Sometimes I wouldn’t get past the servants’ area, and someone from the household would accept delivery of the dress; at other times, I was directed to go to the dressing room, so I would make my way down corridors and catch glimpses of drawing rooms, where my eyes would feast on the carpets, chandeliers, velvet curtains, and grand pianos that sometimes were being played and sometimes not, thinking all the while how strange it would be to live in such a universe.

My days shifted effortlessly between these two worlds, and I became less and less aware of the incongruity that existed between them. I would walk down those broad roads rutted with carriage tracks and lined with large imposing doorways just as naturally as I would pass through the crazy network of winding streets that formed my neighborhood, streets filled with puddles, rubbish, the cries of vendors, and the sharp barks of hungry dogs. Where everyone always went in a hurry, and at the cry of “Agua va!” you had better take cover to avoid being splattered with urine. Craftsmen, minor businessmen, employees, and newspaper vendors lately arrived in the capital filled the rental houses and gave my neighborhood its villagey feel. Many of them only left its bounds when obliged to; my mother and I, on the other hand, did so early each morning, to get over to Calle Zurbano and quickly buckle down to our day-to-day tasks in Doña Manuela’s workshop.

After my first two years as an apprentice, the two of them decided that the time had come for me to learn how to sew. At fourteen, I started with the simplest things: fasteners, overcasting, loose tacking. Then came buttonholes, backstitches, and hems. We worked seated on little rush chairs, hunched over wooden boards supported on our knees, where we placed the fabric we were sewing. Doña Manuela dealt with the customers, cutting, checking, and correcting. My mother took the measurements and dealt with all the rest: she did the most delicate needlework and assigned the remainder of the jobs, supervising their execution and imposing rhythm and discipline on a small battalion consisting of half a dozen older dressmakers, four or five young women, and a number of chatterbox apprentice girls, always keener on laughing and gossiping than on doing their work. Some of them ended up good seamstresses, and the ones who couldn’t sew well ended up doing the less desirable tasks. When one girl left, another would replace her in that noisy room, so incongruous compared to the serene opulence of the shop’s façade and the sobriety of its luminous front room to which only the customers had access. The two of them—Doña Manuela and my mother—were the only ones who could enjoy its saffron-colored drapery, its mahogany furniture, its luminous oak floor, which we younger girls were responsible for waxing with cotton rags. Only they, from time to time, would receive the rays of sunlight that came in through the four high balcony windows facing the street. The rest of us remained always in the rear guard: in the gynaeceum, freezing in winter and hellish in summer. That was our workshop, that grey space around the back whose only openings were two little windows onto an interior courtyard, where the hours passed like breaths of air between the humming of ballads and the noise of scissors.

I learned fast. I had agile fingers that adapted quickly to the shape of the needles and the touch of the fabrics. To measurements, draping, and volumes. Neck, bust, outside leg. Under bust, full back, cuff. At sixteen I learned to tell fabrics apart, at seventeen to appreciate their qualities and calibrate their possibilities. Crêpe de chine, silk muslin, georgette, Chantilly lace. Months passed as if turning on a Ferris wheel: autumns spent making coats in fine fabrics and between-season dresses, springs sewing flighty dresses destined for long, faraway Cantabrian holidays, the beaches at La Concha or El Sardinero. I turned eighteen, nineteen. Bit by bit I was initiated into handling the cutting work and tailoring the more delicate components. I learned to attach collars and lapels, to predict how things would end up. I liked my work, actually enjoyed it. Doña Manuela and my mother sometimes asked me for my opinion; they began to trust me. “The girl has a fine hand and a fine eye, Dolores,” Doña Manuela used to say. “She’s good, and she’ll get better if she stays on track. Better than you, you needn’t worry about that.” And my mother would just carry on with what she was doing, as if she hadn’t heard a thing. I didn’t look up from my working board either. But secretly I watched her out the corner of my eye, and in her mouth—studded with pins—saw the tiniest trace of a smile.

The years went by, life went by. Fashion changed, too, and at its command the activities of the workshop adjusted. After the war in Europe straight lines had arrived, corsets had been cast aside, and legs began to be shown without so much as the slightest blush. When the Roaring Twenties came to an end, however, the waistlines of dresses returned to their natural place, skirts got longer, and modesty once again imposed itself on sleeves, necklines, and desires. Then we launched ourselves into a new decade and there were more changes. All of them together, unforeseen, almost one on top of another. I turned twenty, the Republic arrived in Spain, and I met Ignacio. It was one September Sunday in Parque de la Bombilla, at a riotous dance that was crammed full with workshop girls, bad students, and soldiers on leave. He asked me to dance, he made me laugh. Two weeks later we began to sketch out plans to marry.

Who was Ignacio, and what was he to me? The man of my life, that’s what I thought then. The calm lad who I sensed would be a good father to my children. I had already reached the age when girls like me—girls with no professional expectations—had few options other than marriage. The example of my mother, who had raised me alone and in order to do so had worked from sunrise to sunset, had never seemed to me a very appealing fate. In Ignacio I found someone with whom to pass the rest of my adult life without having to wake up every morning to the taste of loneliness. I was not stirred to the heights of passion, but rather an intense affection and the certainty that my days by his side would pass without sorrows or stridency, sweetly gentle as a pillow.

Ignacio Montes, I thought, would come to be the owner of that arm of mine that he would take on a thousand and one walks, the nearby presence that would offer me security and shelter forever. Two years older than I, thin, genial, as straightforward as he was tender. He was tall, with a skinny build, good manners, and a heart whose capacity to love me seemed to multiply with the hours. The son of a Castilian widow who kept her well-counted money under the mattress, he lived intermittently in insignificant boardinghouses and was an eager applicant for bureaucratic jobs as well as a perpetual candidate for any ministry that might offer him a salary for life—War, Governance, the Treasury. The dream of nearly three thousand pesetas a year, two hundred and forty-one a month—a salary that is set forever, never to be changed, dedicating the rest of his days to the tame world of departmental offices and secretarial offices, of blotters, untrimmed paper, seals, and inkwells. It was on this that we based our plans for the future: on the back of a perfectly calm civil service that, one round of exams after another, refused stubbornly to include my Ignacio on its list of names. And he persisted, undiscouraged. In February he tried out for Justice and in June for Agriculture, and then it started all over again.

In the meantime, unable to allow himself costly diversions, and yet utterly devoted to making me happy, Ignacio feted me with the humble possibilities that his extremely meager pocket would allow: a cardboard box filled with silkworms and mulberry leaves, cones of roasted chestnuts, and promises of eternal love on the grass under the viaduct. Together we listened to the band from the pavilion in the Parque del Oeste and rowed boats in El Retiro on Sunday mornings when the weather was pleasant. There wasn’t a fair with swings and barrel organ that we didn’t turn up at, nor any chotis that we didn’t dance with watchlike precision. How many evenings we spent in the Vistillas gardens, how many movies we saw in cheap local cinemas. Drinking a Valencian horchata was a luxury to us, taking a taxi a dream. Ignacio’s tenderness, while not overly bold, was nevertheless boundless. I was his sky and his stars, the most beautiful, the best. My skin, my face, my eyes. My hands, my mouth, my voice. Everything that was me made up the unsurpassable for him, the source of his happiness. And I listened to him, told him he was being silly, and let him love me.

Life in the workshop in those days, however, followed a different rhythm. Things were becoming difficult, uncertain. The Second Republic had instilled a sense of apprehension in the comfortable prosperity surrounding our customers. Madrid was turbulent and frantic, the political tension permeating every street corner. The good families extended their northern summer holidays indefinitely, seeking to remain on the fringes of the unsettled, rebellious capital where the Mundo Obrero was declaimed loudly in the squares while the shirtless proletariat from the outskirts made their way, without retreat, into the Puerta del Sol. Big private motorcars began to be seen less and less on the streets, opulent parties dwindled. Old ladies in mourning prayed novenas for Azaña to fall soon, and the noise of bullets became routine at the hour when the gas street lamps were lit. The anarchists set fire to churches, the Falangists brandished pistols like bullies. With increasing frequency the aristocrats and hautes bourgeoises covered their furniture up with sheets, dismissed the staff, bolted the shutters, and set out hastily for foreign parts, taking jewels galore, fears, and banknotes across the borders, yearning for the exiled king and an obliging Spain, which would still be some time in coming.

Fewer and fewer ladies visited Doña Manuela’s workshop, fewer orders came in, and there was less and less to do. Drip by painful drip, first the apprentice girls and then the rest of the seamstresses were dismissed, till all that were left were the owner, my mother, and me. And when we finished the last dress for the Marchioness of Entrelagos and spent the next six days listening to the radio, twiddling our thumbs, without a single soul appearing at the door, Doña Manuela announced, sighing, that she had no choice but to shut up shop.

Amid the turbulence of those days in which the political fighting made theater audiences quake and governments lasted three paternosters, we barely had the chance to cry over what we’d lost. Three weeks after the advent of our enforced inactivity, Ignacio appeared with a bouquet of violets and the news that he had at last passed his civil service exam. The plans for our little wedding stifled any feelings of uncertainty, and on a little table we planned the event. Although the new breezes that swept in with the Republic carried on them the fashion for civil weddings, my mother—whose soul housed simultaneously, and with no contradiction, her condition as single mother, an iron Catholic spirit, and a nostalgic loyalty to the deposed monarchy—encouraged us to celebrate a religious wedding in the neighboring church of San Andrés. Ignacio and I agreed; how could we not, without toppling that hierarchy of order in which he submitted to all my desires and I deferred to my mother’s without argument. Nor did I have any good reason to refuse: the dreams I had about celebrating that marriage were modest ones, and it made no difference to me whether it was at an altar with a priest and cassock or in a large room presided over by a Republican tricolor flag.

So we prepared to set the date with the same parish priest who twenty-four years earlier, on June eighth, as dictated by the calendar of saints’ days, had given me the name Sira. Sabiniana, Victorina, Gaudencia, Heraclia, and Fortunata had been other possibilities that went with the saints of the day.

“Sira, Father, just put Sira—it’s short, at least.” That was my mother’s decision, in her single motherhood. And so I was Sira.

We would celebrate the marriage with family and a few friends. With my grandfather, who had neither his legs nor his wits, mutilated in body and spirit during the war of the Philippines, a permanent mute presence in his rocking chair next to our dining room balcony windows. With Ignacio’s mother and sisters who’d come in from the village. With our next-door socialist neighbors Engracia and Norberto and their three sons, as dear to us as if the same blood flowed right across the landing. With Doña Manuela, who took up the threads again to give me the gift of her final piece of work, in the form of a bridal dress. We would treat our guests to sugar-plum pastries, sweet Málagan wine and vermouth. Perhaps we would be able to hire a musician from the neighborhood to come up and play a paso doble, and some street photographer would take a dry-plate picture for us, which would adorn our home, something we did not yet have and for now would be my mother’s.

It was then, amid this jumble of plans and preparations, that it occurred to Ignacio to prepare me to take the test to make me a civil servant like him. His brand-new post in administration had opened his eyes to a new world: that of the administration of the Republic, an area where there existed professional destinies for women that lay beyond the stove, the wash house, and drudgery; through which the female sex could beat a path, elbow to elbow with men, in the same conditions and with their sights set on the same dreams. The first women were already sitting as deputies in the parliament; the equality of the sexes in public life was proclaimed. There had been recognition of our legal status, our right to work, and universal suffrage. All the same, I would have infinitely preferred to return to sewing, but it took Ignacio just three evenings to convince me. The old world of fabrics and backstitches had been toppled and a new universe was opening its doors to us: we had to adapt to it. Ignacio himself could take charge of my preparation; he had all the study topics and more than enough experience in the art of putting himself forward and failing countless times without ever giving in to despair. As for me, I would do my share to help the little platoon that we two would make up with my mother, my grandfather, and the progeny to come. And so I agreed. Once we were all set, there was only one thing we lacked: a typewriter on which I could learn to type in preparation for the unavoidable typing test. Ignacio had spent months practicing on other people’s machines, passing through a via dolorosa of sad academies smelling of grease, ink, and concentrated sweat. He didn’t want me to have to go through the same unpleasantness, hence his determination that we should obtain our own equipment. In the weeks that followed we launched ourselves on our search, as though it would turn our lives totally around.

We studied all the options and did endless calculations. I didn’t understand about detailed performance features, but it seemed to me that something small and light would be most suitable for us. Ignacio was indifferent to the size, but he did take extraordinary care over prices, installment payments, and terms. We located all the sellers in Madrid, spent hours standing at their window displays, and learned to pronounce exotic names that evoked distant geographies and movie stars: Remington, Royal, Underwood. We could just as easily have chosen one brand as another; we could just as well have ended up buying from an American establishment as a German one, but our choice settled finally on the Italian Hispano-Olivetti on Calle de Pi y Margall. How could we have known that with that simple act, with the mere fact of having taken two or three steps and crossed a threshold, we were signing the death sentence on our time together and irreparably twisting apart the strands of our future.

ends

THAT DEADMAN DANCE awards wrap

2011-10-03T20:21:00.000-07:00

Stephen Romei, literary editor of The Australian, recently called THAT DEADMAN DANCE the book of the year, after Kim Scott won the inaugural Victorian Prize for Literature. Now Scott has rounded off the year of awards by winning the 2010 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards last Friday night.

The judges commended Scott, saying:

'Kim Scott has produced a powerful and poetic novel which reveals the layers of complexity surrounding first contact between indigenous and settler cultures and how these are mediated through language. Set on the south coast of Western Australia and drawing on historical and contemporary Noongar language and culture, this novel reaches out to all readers by providing multiple points of view, and offering contemporary Australia an important new perspective on its complicated colonial past.'

THE CHASE

2011-08-30T20:36:00.000-07:00

A great review this week for Christopher Kremmer's riveting debut novel THE CHASE. Peter Pierce writes in The Australian:

'Kremmer has come to the novel with verve, commitment and worldliness, making The Chase one of the less usual and more impressive fiction debuts of the past few years.'

Christopher Kremmer will be appearing this weekend at the Melbourne Writers Festival, and will be in conversation with Peter Pierce at the ACMI Cube on Friday, September 2, at 7pm.

A good week

2011-07-26T23:21:00.000-07:00

Kim Scott has been shortlisted for the Vance Palmer Award for Fiction at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and the Deadly Awards. Congratulations Kim!

And news in from the UK overnight. Alan Hollinghurst has been longlisted for the Booker Prize for THE STRANGER'S CHILD! The shortlist will be announced on September 6 and the winner on October 18.

Some of the fabulous reviews for THE STRANGER'S CHILD from the UK:

'A new Hollinghurst novel is always a great literary event. And his latest could be his greatest yet’ Observer

‘Impossible as it is to circumnavigate its myriad achievements in a brief review, The Stranger's Child is stunningly easy to commend. It is a rare thing to read a novel buoyed up by the certainty that it will stand among the year's best, but rarer still to become confident of its value in decades to come. I would compare the novel to Middlemarch, for its precision, pathos (a less expected quality, perhaps) and perfect phrasing, were Eliot not so underappreciated as a comic writer today. But let us set comparisons aside. The Stranger's Child is a remarkable, unmissable achievement, written with the calm authority of an author who could turn his literary gifts to just about anything. As for the mercurial title, readers will find much, but characteristically not all, revealed by the closing pages. One leaves the novel with a sense of the truly extraordinary’ Independent

‘With his balance of surface glitter and steely precision, irony and deep seriousness, Alan Hollinghurst is usually seen as an heir to Henry James… Hollinghurst has a strong, perhaps unassailable claim to be the best English novelist working today. He offers surely the best available example of novelistic ambition squared with the highest aesthetic standards. Where so many fiction writers seem stylish but austere, or full of life but messy, Hollinghurst has his cake and eats it. His novels cover high life and low life, culture and instinct, jokes and opera, with equal confidence. He can follow the consciousness of an individual in amazing detail, as well as subtly dramatising the wider social and historical currents… His best books are beautiful at the level of the sentence and impressive at the levels of character, incident and plot; they manage to be nearly perfect and great fun at the same time… The Stranger's Child has the same qualities as his previous novels. It is elegant, seductive and extremely enjoyable to read, and peppered with astute, apparently casual noticings… As ever, Hollinghurst's set-piece parties are stunning… The Stranger's Child will no doubt be one of the best novels published this year’ Book of the Week, Guardian

Australian Literary Society Gold Medal Winner

2011-07-05T23:23:00.000-07:00

Kim Scott won the ALS Gold Medal yesterday for THAT DEADMAN DANCE.

From the judges: 'Scott’s impressively rich novel is a complex portrayal of cultural exchange between Indigenous people and settlers in nineteenth-century Western Australia. That Deadman’s Dance continues Scott’s sustained investigation of language and literacy on the colonial frontier. Unfolding through circular storytelling that highlights the process of history-making itself, the novel investigates both the enlightening potential and the tragic loss of Australia’s founding transcultural endeavours.'

Congratulations Kim!

Kim Scott wins the Miles Franklin Award

2011-06-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Kim Scott who won the Miles Franklin Award on Wednesday night for That Deadman Dance.

Speaking on behalf of the 2011 judging panel, Morag Fraser AM, said: “That Deadman Dance is an astonishingly original work by a writer who can imagine and project possibility where most of us can see only stark, adversarial conflict ... It is a grand feat of transformative storytelling.”

This is Kim Scott's second Miles Franklin win. He won the prestigious prize in 2000 for Benang.

That Deadman Dance was also shortlisted this week for the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, which will be announced in September.

So, a few corks popping this week in the Picador office!

John Banville wins Kafka Prize

2011-05-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to John Banville who has won the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize for literature. The accolade, administered by the Prague-based Franz Kafka Society, is awarded annually for a body of work of “exceptional literary creation”. The society was established shortly after the collapse of communism in 1989 to promote the legacy of Kafka and other German and Jewish writers from Prague. The award – a scaled-down model of the monument to Franz Kafka in Prague and a cash prize of $10,000 (€7,100) – was established by the society in 2001.

2011 Prime Minister's Literary Awards

2011-05-25T22:04:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Kim Scott whose novel That Deadman Dance is one of five novels shortlisted in the fiction category of the 2011 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. The winners will be announced early July 2011.

Madigan Mine wins Aurealis Award

2011-05-25T16:13:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Kirstyn McDermott whose novel Madigan Mine has won the 2011 Aurealis Award for best horror novel. Photos of the awards ceremony held in Sydney 21 May can be viewed here.

Miles Franklin Shortlisted Kim Scott on That Deadman Dance

2011-04-19T16:58:00.000-07:00

Listen to Kim Scott talking about the genesis of his 2011 Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlisted novel, That Deadman Dance.

Miles Franklin Award 2011 Shortlist

2011-04-18T19:40:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Kim Scott, whose novel That Deadman Dance is one of only three novels shortlisted for Australia’s oldest and most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award. The winner will be announced in Melbourne on 22 June 2011.

Room on Orange Prize Shortlist

2011-04-17T23:51:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Emma Donoghue whose novel Room is one of six shortlisted books for the Orange Prize for Fiction. The Prize was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible and is awarded for the best novel of the year written by a woman. The 2011 winner will be announced 8 June 2011 and will receive a cheque for £30,000 and a limited edition bronze statue known as ‘the Bessie’, created by artist Grizel Niven.

Brooklyn on IMPAC Shortlist

2011-04-13T21:48:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Colm Tóibín, whose novel Brooklyn is one of ten novels shortlisted for the 2011 International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award. They were chosen from a total of 162 novels nominated by 166 public library systems in 126 cities worldwide. The Award is worth €100,000 and is one of the world’s most prestigious literary prizes. The winner will be announced 15 June 2011.

ABR on Elisabeth Holdsworth

2011-04-07T22:27:00.000-07:00

The April issue of Australian Book Review has an insightful review of Elisabeth Holdsworth’s novel Those Who Come After. Here is an excerpt; for the full review, visit the ABR website.

‘This elegant and beautifully structured work is rich and contextually flawless, its style consistent with its civilised and well-defended narrator as she grapples with the layers of betrayal and unexpiated guilt that are central to the novel. In this convincing and ultimately fast-moving text, it can be difficult to recognise that Holdsworth’s creative solution is neither memoir nor that more verifiable genre, autobiography, but, rather, a masterly piece of writing that has woven fiction and fact into a powerful expression of love and loss.’ Sue Ebury, Australian Book Review

Sydney Writers' Festival 2011

2011-03-31T21:19:00.000-07:00

The Sydney Writers’ Festival runs from 16 to 22 May 2011 and this year’s slogan is Words: To Live By. The program has just been announced and we are delighted to report that Picador authors James Bradley, Brendan Cowell, Emily Maguire, Kim Scott and Markus Zusak are all attending. Check out the SWF website for the full program here.

The ALS Gold Medal

2011-03-28T20:46:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Kim Scott whose novel That Deadman Dance has been shortlisted for the 2010 ALS Gold Medal. The Medal is awarded annually for an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year. It was inaugurated by the Australian Literature Society, which was founded in Melbourne in 1899 and incorporated into the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (based at the Australian National University in Canberra) in 1982. The winner will be announced 5 July 2011.

The (quiet) revolution of Mischief + Mayhem

2011-03-23T19:40:00.000-07:00

Amid the endless turmoil in book publishing, you occasionally come across a story which gives one hope. Trevor Butterworth writes in the Financial Times of a small outfit in NYC who are pedalling traditional literary publishing values in the face of considerable opposition. Will Mischief + Mayhem succeed? Watch this space.

Aurealis Awards 2010

2011-03-23T14:52:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Kirstyn McDermott whose novel Madigan Mine has been shortlisted in the horror category of the 2010 Aurealis Awards. The winners will be announced 21 May 2011.

The 2011 Tasmania Book Prizes

2011-03-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Robert Dessaix, whose travel-memoir Arabesques has been shortlisted for the Margaret Scott Prize, part of the 2011 Tasmania Book Prizes. The winners will be announced 3 April 2011.

Marion May Campbell on Those Who Come After

2011-03-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

‘Those Who Come After is radical, deeply shocking, heartbreaking and often blackly funny. It delivers, with superb intelligence and stylistic ease, a canny, unsentimental insight into human courage, endurance, and bastardry. Elisabeth Holdsworth exhibits a rare satirical verve and appreciation of the paradoxical, so there is never a cliché regarding culture, ethnicity or character. She manoeuvres with fluidity and elegance between present and past, between Dutch and Australian narrative fronts, between catastrophic history, and poignant moments of resistance or intimate wounding. Her observational acuity conjures experience straight to the reader’s senses, with imagery of hallucinatory power. It is an enthralling work of literary imagination, which, the last page turned, immediately seduces into rereading.’ Marion May Campbell, acclaimed author of Prowler and Shadow Thief

Miles Franklin Award 2011 Longlist

2011-03-17T22:40:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Kim Scott, whose novel That Deadman Dance has been longlisted for Australia’s oldest and most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award. The shortlist will be announced 19 April and the winner 22 June 2011.

No one likes a grammar prig, but ...

2011-03-13T20:15:00.000-07:00

City Journal in the US has an amusing article about the devolution of American English. A Plague of Vague seems to be the overriding problem, but fixing it is, like, not so easy.

The Language of Flowers (September 2011)

2011-03-10T13:32:00.000-08:00

Readers around the world are falling in love with a sublime debut novel called The Language of Flowers. It is the story of a young, damaged woman named Victoria Jones who can only communicate via the ancient ‘language of flowers’. For Victoria, every flower has a special meaning: daffodils signify new beginnings; honeysuckle, devotion; but oleander, beware ... We follow her as she builds a new life - one that might include friendship, a job, and even, if she’s lucky, love. The novel’s author is Vanessa Diffenbaugh (pictured here) and by this time next year, her wonderful book will be published in some twenty-seven countries across the globe. Picador releases The Language of Flowers this September. Prepare to be mesmerised.

Edward Docx

2011-03-02T22:09:00.000-08:00

In June, Picador publishes the ever-engaging Edward Docx’ new novel, The Devil’s Garden. The stunning cover is by London-based designer, Leo Nickolls, and we like it so much we just had to post it.

Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2011

2011-03-02T17:40:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Kim Scott, whose novel That Deadman Dance has won the SE Asia & Pacific Regional Prize, and Emma Donoghue, whose novel Room has won the Caribbean & Canada Regional Prize.

They join the South Asia & Europe Regional winner, David Mitchell, and the Africa Regional winner, Aminatta Forna, on the shortlist for the overall global prize worth £10,000 and announced during the Sydney Writers’ Festival in May.

For the last 25 years the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize has played a key role in unearthing international literary names, bringing compelling stories of human experience to a wider audience. Winners of this year’s Prize will follow in the footsteps of some of the biggest names in fiction, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Andrea Levy, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith and, from Australia, Peter Carey, Richard Flanagan and Kate Grenville.

Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2011

2011-02-13T15:24:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Emma Donoghue and Kim Scott, who have been shortlisted for this year’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Room is one of six titles vying for the Canada and Caribbean Best Book award, while That Deadman Dance is one of six vying for the South East Asia and Pacific Best Book award. The regional winners will be announced 3 March 2011 and the two overall winners 21 May 2011.

The 2011 Australian Creative Illustrators Awards

2011-02-07T14:56:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Stuart McLachlan whose superb illustration for the cover of Judith Lanigan’s novel A True History of the Hula Hoop has won a Gold category gong at this year’s Creative Illustrators Awards.

The Indie Book Award 2011

2011-01-27T17:30:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Kim Scott, whose novel That Deadman Dance has been shortlisted in the best fiction category by Australia’s leading independent booksellers. The winners will be announced 14 March 2011.

Dr Charles Teo AM

2011-01-25T13:48:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Charlie Teo, the co-subject of Susan Wyndham’s book, Life In His Hands, who has been honoured Member of the Order of Australia (AM). Charlie received the honour as part of the 2011 Australia Day celebrations for service to medicine as a neurosurgeon through the introduction of minimally invasive techniques, as a researcher, educator and mentor, and through the establishment of the Cure for Life Foundation.

Emma Donoghue reads from Room

2011-01-20T16:16:00.000-08:00

Listen to Emma Donoghue reading from her novel Room here. Room won the Irish Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.

The Book Thief in the UK

2011-01-19T20:36:00.000-08:00

The Guardian recently published a list of the 100 best selling books between 1998 (when Nielsen began collecting data in the UK) and 2010. Just one Australian author featured on that list: Markus Zusak.

Morag Fraser reviews That Deadman Dance

2011-01-12T22:02:00.000-08:00

Read Morag Fraser’s exultant Sydney Morning Herald review of Kim Scott’s new novel That Deadman Dance here.

Elisabeth Holdsworth in ABR

2011-01-09T21:42:00.000-08:00

The good folk at Australian Book Review have uploaded both of Elisabeth Holdworth’s superb essays to their archive. ‘An die Nachgeborenen’ (February 2007) and ‘Missing From My Own Life’ (October 2008) serve as fascinating background reading to Elisabeth’s forthcoming novel, Those Who Come After (April 2011).

Kim Scott speaks with Ramona Koval

2011-01-06T20:43:00.000-08:00

Listen to Kim Scott speaking recently about his brilliant new novel That Deadman Dance with ABC Radio’s Ramona Koval here.

And why not get along to hear Kim speak live at the 2011 Perth Writers Festival.

Richard & Judy pick Room

2011-01-06T14:04:00.000-08:00

That dynamic duo of the British media, Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, have revealed the eight titles they will be including in their Spring Book Club and Room by Emma Donoghue has made the cut.

The future of literature is Electric?

2011-01-04T21:27:00.000-08:00

Over in Brooklyn, NYC, two brave young men are succeeding in publishing adventurous new literature in a climate when many others are failing. How do they do it? Literature, Plugged In

Congratulations to Rebecca Skloot and Emma Donoghue

2011-01-03T17:25:00.000-08:00

A survey in the US of the very best books of 2010 (across some thirty sources and compiled by Publishers Lunch) includes The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot at number two and Room by Emma Donoghue at number four. Congratulations to both authors.

Seasons Greetings

2010-12-22T20:52:00.000-08:00

From everyone at Picador Australia (including the little guy with the funny hat) we wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Room by Emma Donoghue

2010-12-20T14:13:00.000-08:00

Room by Emma Donoghue continues to gather accolades across the globe: in the US, both Entertainment Weekly and the San Francisco Chronicle have named it one of the best books of 2010.

An die Nachgeborenen

2010-12-12T21:37:00.000-08:00

In April 2011, Picador will publish Elisabeth Holdsworth’s debut novel, Those Who Come After. The novel grew out of Elisabeth’s extraordinary essay entitled An die Nachgeborenen which won the inaugural ABR/Calibre Prize in 2007 and was later broadcast on ABC radio. You can read the essay here.

The Sydney Morning Herald's Best Books of 2010

2010-12-12T17:57:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Roberto Bolaño, Brendan Cowell, Kim Scott and Colm Tóibín, whose works have been voted some of the best of 2010 in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Literary Fiction vs Genre Fiction Debate

2010-12-12T17:42:00.000-08:00

Picador author Edward Docx (The Devil's Garden, April 2011) has weighed in to the debate about the qualities and virtues of literary and genre fiction. You can read his piece in the Guardian here.

Readings Best Fiction of 2010

2010-11-30T15:01:00.000-08:00

Readings Booksellers have included Room by Emma Donoghue, The Ask by Sam Lipsyte and That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott in their annual round-up of best fiction for the year. Congratulations to all the authors. Selected quotes below.

Our reviewer said, ‘The premise of the novel is horrific, but once I started reading Room, I couldn’t put it down ... This isn’t a fictionalised ‘survivor story’, but a story of the love between mother and child.’

Our reviewer said, ‘Here is an attempt, and I would say a marvellously realised one, to meld the experience of early colonial contact from the perspectives and in the voices of all of the participants ... Surely Kim Scott has one hand on next year’s Miles?’

Our reviewer said, ‘In this brilliantly crafted book, Lipsyte lays bare the failings of modern America ... What makes The Ask exceptional is its ability to remain witty and entertaining throughout, even as it deals with a wide range of complex themes, from raising a child to the Iraq war.’

New York Times 100 Notable Books 2010

2010-11-25T13:14:00.000-08:00

No fewer than six Picador titles – two novels and four works of non-fiction – feature in this year’s New York Times 100 Notable Books. Congratulations to all the authors.

THE ASK. By Sam Lipsyte. A deeply cynical academic fund-raiser fighting for his job is the protagonist of this darkly humorous satire, a witty paean to white-collar loserdom.

ROOM. By Emma Donoghue. Donoghue’s remarkable novel is narrated by a 5-year-old boy, whose entire world is the 11-by-11-foot room in which his mother is being held against her will.

THE BRIDGE: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. By David Remnick. This study of Obama before he became president, by the editor of The New Yorker, has many important additions and corrections to make to our reading of Dreams From My Father.

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS. By Rebecca Skloot. Skloot untangles the ethical issues in the case of a woman who unknowingly donated cancer cells that have been the basis for a vast amount of research.

THE MIND’S EYE. By Oliver Sacks. In these graceful essays, the neurologist explores how his patients compensate for the abilities they have lost, and confronts his own ocular cancer.

PARISIANS: An Adventure History of Paris. By Graham Robb. This series of character studies – some of familiar figures, some not – is arranged to give meaning to a volatile, complicated city.

NPR's best 'conversation starters'

2010-11-24T13:06:00.000-08:00

Room by Emma Donoghue and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot are officially two of the (five) most talked about books in the US in 2010 ... According to NPR's Heller McAlpin.

'Five of my favorite books published this year are not just great reads — books you put down reluctantly, not a slog among them — but meaty, serious stories that manage to provide a few laughs while raising controversial questions you'll want to discuss with others, whether they've read the book or not. These issues encompass health care and bioethics, the existence of God, race in America, child-rearing, nature versus nurture, our gluttonous society, marriage, love and adultery.'

The 2010 Patrick White Award

2010-11-11T20:09:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to David Foster, author of Sons of the Rumour, who has won the prestigious 2010 Patrick White Literary Award. Foster, 66, is the author of more than a dozen novels, as well as non-fiction works, poetry, novellas and numerous essays, stories, radio plays and scientific papers. His previous novels include In the New Country (Fourth Estate 1999), The Glade Within the Grove (Fourth Estate 1996), Mates of Mars (Vintage 1991), Testostero (Penguin 1987) and Moonlite (Macmillan 1981).

Established by Patrick White following his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973, and managed by Perpetual as trustee of the philanthropic trust behind it, the Patrick White Award has been given to authors who, in the opinion of the judging committee, have made a significant but inadequately recognised ‘contribution to Australian literature’. Poets, novelists, playwrights and short story writers have been among the 37 who have so far benefited from Patrick White’s generosity. Past recipients have included Christina Stead, Bruce Dawe, Janette Turner Hospital, Tom Hungerford and Thea Astley. The judging committee’s current members are Dr Debra Adelaide, Professor David Carter and Dr Michael Costigan.

The Wellcome Trust Book Prize

2010-11-10T15:22:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Rebecca Skloot whose debut work of non-fiction, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, has won the prestigious £25,000 Wellcome Trust Book Prize in the UK. Chair of the prize judges, Clive Anderson, said the book, which took a decade to write, was “a worthy winner of a prize designed to honour fine writing on a medical theme”, telling the stories of changing medical attitudes and ethics, and the economics of healthcare, as well as the human story of Lacks and her family, whom the author got to know in the course of her research. This was the second year of the Wellcome Trust book prize, which is open to both fiction and non-fiction on the theme of health and medicine.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks named Amazon Best Book of 2010

2010-11-07T14:41:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Rebecca Skloot, whose debut work of non-fiction has been named Amazon US’s Best Book of 2010.

‘As Books editors at Amazon, we read all year with this page in mind. We’re always asking ourselves, “Is this a keeper? Is this one worth telling people about?” And here is our chance to collect those books that made us say, “Yes.” These are the books we’ve been telling each other about all year, and the ones that we’ve watched our customers spread the word about too, starting with our choice for the book of the year, Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a brilliantly and compassionately told story of a woman lost to history and the family that sustained her memory while her cells became a foundation of modern science.’

How It Feels (from Australian Bookseller & Publisher)

2010-10-10T19:22:00.000-07:00

(Brendan Cowell, Picador, $32.99 tpb, ISBN 9781405039291, November, 5 stars)

What I got when I finished this book was not what I was expecting when I started. What I was expecting would not have been nearly as good. Sex, drugs, art, suicide, love, death and, possibly, murder are the themes of this exceptional debut novel, which deals with theme baldly and with unflinching honesty. The story opens in Cronulla in the early 90s. Neil, his girlfriend Courtney and their friends Gordon and Stuart are on the cusp of adulthood as they prepare to leave high school. Plans have been laid for their futures, but all that is changed when Neil decides to abandon his friends and head off on his own to study theatre in Bathurst. The impact of this decision is played out over the following decade as Neil's pursuit of art takes him further away, physically and emotionally, and relationships are at times distant and searingly intimate. The characters are well defined and the connections between them true, difficult and sometimes inexplicable - so like life itself. Given that Brendan Cowell is a well-known actor (who also grew up in Cronulla and studied theatre in Bathurst), it would be natural to look for the autobiography in this story, but the characters are strong enough to tell their own stories. This is a bitter brew with a strong and complex palette and will not be to everyone’s taste - but it is definitely a title you will want to have on your shelves.

Paul Landymore is a bookseller at Brisbane's Avid Reader

Henrietta Lacks shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize 2010

2010-10-07T22:27:00.000-07:00

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is one of six books to be shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize 2010. The prize awards fiction and non-fiction titles on the theme of health, wellness or medicine, and the winner, announced on 9 November 2010, will receive £25,000.

Kim Scott in ABR

2010-10-01T21:35:00.000-07:00

Check out Patrick Allington’s review of That Deadman Dance in the October issue of ABR here. And if you’re still hungry, take a gander at Stella Clarke’s in The Australian here.

The Household Guide to Dying by Debra Adelaide

2010-10-01T00:43:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Debra Adelaide, whose novel The Household Guide to Dying has been shortlisted for the inaugural Randwick Award for Literature. The winner will be announced 21 October 2010.

Review of That Deadman Dance (by Martin Shaw, Readings)

2010-09-28T01:58:00.000-07:00

It’s been over ten years now since Kim Scott published his acclaimed second novel, Benang, which among other distinctions won (in a tie with Thea Astley) the Miles Franklin Award in 2000, making him the first indigenous writer to be so recognised. In the meantime he produced a children’s book, and Kayang and Me, written in collaboration with Hazel Brown, one of the elders of Scott’s Noongar people from the south-western coast of Western Australia, an oral-based history of the author's family.

I wasn’t familiar with these earlier works unfortunately, but that hasn’t affected my wonder and delight at his new book, which seems to unfold like a magical dream. And I mention the latter non-fiction work because it no doubt influences this novel – here is an attempt, and I would say a marvellously realised one, to meld the experience of early colonial contact from the perspectives and in the voices of all of the participants: the Noongar of course, ancient Aboriginal custodians of this spectacular coast; the early settlers, predominantly convicts and their wardens, as well as those free men with what we might call the ‘colonial spirit’, of starting anew in ‘virgin’ lands; and the early whalers, who were indeed the initial reference point for the indigenous encounter with the Other.

Scott begins his tale in the early 1830s, focusing on a fledgling colonial outpost not far from present-day Albany. His narrative follows both black and white, and is divided into several parts, proceeding linearly over a little over a decade, but including as well a prequel of sorts back to the mid-1820s. It is a periscopic style that enables us to observe the shifting perspectives over time among all the participants, newcomer and traditional owner alike, as the ‘progress’ we know from our history books unfolds.

The over-arching narrator is Bobby Wabalanginy, whose life story spans the duration of events under examination, and beyond. Scott, in some gently ironic asides, looks forward to when Bobby is an old (and tragically isolated) elder, acting as a guide and nominal ‘Aborigine’ to tourists who now call this country their own. He remembers the old tales, but must be careful how he recounts them lest he offend – some things he must mutter under his breath.

So we have the tales of well-intentioned Dr Cross, ambitious Mr Chaine, the guard Killam and convict Skelly – each with their own vision of the bounty the country can afford – and Bobby’s people, fishermen and hunters: Wunyeran, Menak, Wooral and many more. What starts as a tentative reconnaissance by both sides of knowledge and attitudes separates over the years into a more combative relationship. Bobby, who as a boy learns English from Dr Cross and is intrigued by what he comes to understand of the colonial enterprise, becomes the man who stands on the literal knife-edge between the old world and the new.

It’s hard to imagine we’ll ever again have an account of this period, fiction or non-fiction, with such veracity as this, and I mean that particularly in terms of the psychological. For here we get absolutely convincing portraits of the attempts at understanding on both sides. But perhaps the particular historical tragedy, other than the ravages of disease, was that the active fascination that people such as the Noongar had for Western ways led them (as Scott notes in an afterword) to never suspect that they were putting their very identity on the line in their encounter with the white man, the ‘horizon people’. Their ‘confidence in themselves as manifestations of the spirit of place and of the impossibility of that spirit ever being conquered’ turned out, as we well know, to be severely battered, if thankfully not completely extinguished.

Scott’s enormous achievement then, in this fascinating and beautiful book, is to register that openness as it once existed, and, without judgement or didacticism, and only a quiet nod to the tragedy that was and continued to unfold, to give us a poetic and wise vision of what form our cultural life could still take today.

Surely Kim Scott, with That Deadman Dance, has one hand on next year’s Miles?

http://www.readings.com.au/reviews

Brendan Cowell on How It Feels (Nov 2010)

2010-09-24T15:31:00.000-07:00

Listen to Brendan Cowell discuss his debut novel How It Feels (Nov 2010).

Room shortlisted for Man Booker Prize

2010-09-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Emma Donoghue whose novel Room has been shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The winner will be announced 12 October 2010.

That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (Oct 2010)

2010-09-13T17:57:00.000-07:00

Listen to author Kim Scott talking about the genesis of his new novel, That Deadman Dance.

New York Drama Awards

2010-09-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

New Picador author John Connell has won the bronze medal for a radio adaptation of his story ‘The Little Black’ at the 2010 New York Drama Awards. The tale of a young boy and his relationship with the farm animals around him, ‘The Little Black’ has been published in the Best Australian Stories 2009 and the UTS Writers Anthology 2009. You can listen to the story here.

Get Reading!

2010-09-05T16:59:00.000-07:00

Keep an eye out for Picador/Pan Macmillan authors Mark Dapin, Joy Dettman, Simmone Howell, Malla Nunn and Susan Wyndham who feature in this year’s Get Reading! campaign.

Steele Rudd Arts Queensland Award

2010-09-05T16:45:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Karen Hitchcock, whose debut collection of stories Little White Slips has won the 2010 Steele Rudd Arts Queensland Award for short fiction. With a prize purse of $15,000, the award was presented by Premier Anna Bligh on 31 August 2010. Check out Karen’s acceptance speech here (shot by her husband Michael and you need to turn the volume UP):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL2tyLAVl8M

New Zealand Post Book Awards

2010-08-28T22:37:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Alison Wong, whose novel As The Earth Turns Silver has won the prestigious 2010 New Zealand Post Book Award. Worth NZ$10,000, the award was presented on Friday 27 August 2010. Last year, Alison won the Janet Frame Fiction Award and, on the other side of the Tasman, she is currently shortlisted for the 2010 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award.

Susan Wyndham and Charlie Teo

2010-08-25T20:57:00.000-07:00

Susan Wyndham will be appearing at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival on Saturday 5 September 2010 talking about ‘Mind Games’ with Norman Doidge and Perminder Sachdev.

And keep an eye out for Charlie Teo, the co-subject of Susan’s book, Life In His Hands, in the next issue of Australian Women’s Weekly, as well as on Channel 7’s ‘Sunday Night’ program on 5 September 2010.

Bret Easton Ellis Comp Questions

2010-08-25T00:12:00.000-07:00

So we got the chance to ask Bret the questions that won two lucky people signed proofs of Imperial Bedrooms - here are the questions and answers:

1) Has there ever been a time when you looked at what you have written and thought, ‘this is too graphic, this is too extreme, I shouldn’t write this’?

Whatever novel I’ve written is a reflection of my emotional state at the time. That’s the only way I can write; I have to feel the novel in order to write it. I can’t be conscious of the reader when I’m the writer. I’m writing the book for myself. I’m the reader. I’m not interested in violence in real life. Fiction is a different place. It’s a place where you can explore darker aspects of yourself. You don’t necessarily want to do these things. I can’t be conscious of an audience.

2) There must have been more to what became of your original characters that drove you to write Imperial Bedrooms. What else sparked your need to write more of their story?

I wanted to know where Clay was. What would Clay be doing now? Okay, so he’s a screenwriter. That means this is going to be a Hollywood novel. I was also reading a lot of Raymond Chandler at the time, and was thinking about doing something noir like that. I wanted Clay to be like the detective who is in the middle of a conspiracy, but doesn’t want to know anything about it. Every narrator I write gets older, they age with me, and the books are really more about the narrator than the plot. I was re-reading Less Than Zero, and going through a period of paranoia, and was thinking about what happens to the narcissist after they “hit the wall”. That is what I was going through when I was writing Imperial Bedrooms. I’m just exploring the character 20 years later.

Congratulations to Karen Hitchcock

2010-08-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

Little White Slips by Karen Hitchcock has been shortlisted for the Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award for Short Stories as part of the 2010 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. The winner will be announced 31 August 2010.

A Review of How It Feels by Brendan Cowell (Nov 2010)

2010-08-15T18:03:00.000-07:00

‘How It Feels is a lacerating, blackly comic novel about the suburban masculine psyche; but it also extends a warmth and understanding to contemporary society that confronted my prejudices and forced me to look at the world anew. Cowell’s voice is truthful, without any condescension. A smashing novel; urgent, challenging and humane.’ Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap

The Great American Novelist - GQ Magazine

2010-08-09T18:01:00.000-07:00

Read GQ Magazine’s interview with Bret Easton Ellis here.

A Review of That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (Oct 2010)

2010-08-04T20:29:00.000-07:00

‘That Deadman Dance is an achievement equivalent to that of Alexis Wright. It is an enchanting and authentic book, giving us an insider’s view of Australia before it was Australia. The early collisions between European and Aboriginal (Noongar) cosmologies is calmly narrated, the tragedy of it delineated at a wonderful pace. It is an enormously readable, humane, proud and subtle book, and many Australians will love to get a sense of the experience of intrusion not from a descendant of intruders but from a child of the true possessors.’ Thomas Keneally

Kirstyn McDermott talks about Madigan Mine

2010-08-03T17:13:00.000-07:00

Click here to read an interview with Kirstyn McDermott from the Newcastle Herald (31 July 2010).

Imperial Bedrooms Comp - Winners

2010-08-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Nicholas and Rachel, the winners of signed proofs of Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis. When Bret is in our Sydney offices, we'll ask him the winning questions and post the answers here. The questions are:
1. (Nicholas): Has there ever been a time when you looked at what you have written and thought 'This is too graphic, this is too extreme - I shouldn't write this...'?
2. (Rachel): There must have been more to what became of your original characters that drove you to write Imperial Bedrooms. What else sparked your need to write more of their story?

(Nicholas and Rachel, can you please email feedback@panmacmillan.com.au with your address details?)

Room longlisted for 2010 Man Booker Prize

2010-07-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Emma Donoghue whose novel Room has been longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The shortlist will be announced on 7 September.

Congratulations to Alison Wong

2010-07-26T18:08:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Alison whose novel As The Earth Turns Silver has been shortlisted for the 2010 Nielsen BookData New Zealand Booksellers’ Choice Award. Booksellers were asked to nominate the books they have most enjoyed reading, selling and promoting during the past twelve months. The award carries a prize of $NZ2500 for the winning author.

2010 Melbourne Writers Festival

2010-07-22T17:36:00.000-07:00

The 2010 Melbourne Writers Festival program is out and features Picador authors Waleed Aly, Christopher Kremmer, Michael McGirr, Emily Maguire and Tony Martin.

A Review of That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (Oct 2010)

2010-07-18T22:38:00.000-07:00

‘Fresh and original in its re-imagining the first years of contact between the Noongar people, British colonists and American whalers, That Deadman Dance explores the lively fascination these people felt for one another. It’s a testimony to Kim Scott’s skill and restraint that, right from the beginning, he leaves the reader’s own awareness of history to cast the long shadow of tragedy over the story. The result is a brilliant feat of understanding—a novel rich in compassion—from a writer bewitched by the thrill of breathing life into the past.’
Rodney Hall, Miles Franklin Award winning author of Love Without Hope

Congratulations to Alison Wong

2010-07-14T23:48:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Alison Wong, whose novel As As The Earth Turns Silver has been shortlisted in the Prime Minister's Literary Awards in the adult fiction category. The winner will be announced in November.

Congratulations to Kim Scott

2010-07-14T23:10:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Kim Scott (author of the forthcoming That Deadman Dance) who has won the Patricia Hackett Prize for best contribution to Westerly in 2009 for his story ‘A Refreshing Sleep’.

Imperial Bedrooms Competition

2010-07-11T21:42:00.000-07:00

We have two signed, advance reading copies (proofs) of Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis to give away. For your chance to win a copy, post the question you would most like answered by Bret Easton Ellis here, and when he comes to Australia, we'll ask the two selected questions and post the answers on the Picador site. Competition closes on July 31. Good luck!

From the Publisher's Desk: Karen Hitchcock

2010-07-08T17:38:00.000-07:00

Karen Hitchcock has had short stories selected for inclusion in the July Big Issue fiction edition, Black Inc's Best Australian Stories 2010, Scribe's New Australian Stories anthology (early 2011), and Overland's 200th edition.

Her debut novel Read My Lips will be published by Picador in 2011.

A Review of That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (Oct 2010)

2010-07-07T23:02:00.000-07:00

‘That Deadman Dance is beautiful, heart-rending and utterly superb. The language is magical, often ecstatic, and Kim’s passion for it is a gift to the reader ... It is a novel of great power and originality ... one of the finest I’ve read in many years.’
Alex Miller, Miles Franklin Award winning author of Journey to the Stone Country and Lovesong

An Extract from Imperial Bedrooms

2010-07-07T22:50:00.000-07:00

They had made a movie about us. The movie was based on a book written by someone we knew. The book was a simple thing about four weeks in the city we grew up in and for the most part was an accurate portrayal. It was labelled fiction but only a few details had been altered and our names weren't changed and there was nothing in it that hadn't happened. For example, there actually had been a screening of a snuff film in that bedroom in Malibu on a January afternoon, and yes, I had walked out onto the deck overlooking the Pacific where the author tried to console me, assuring me that the screams of the children being tortured were faked, but he was smiling as he said this and I had to turn away. Other examples: my girlfriend had in fact run over a coyote in the canyons below Mulholland, and a Christmas Eve dinner at Chasen's with my family that I had casually complained about to the author was faithfully rendered. And a twelve-year-old girl really had been gang-raped-I was in that room in West Hollywood with the writer, who in the book noted just a vague reluctance on my part and failed to accurately describe how I had actually felt that night-the desire, the shock, how afraid I was of the writer, a blond and isolated boy whom the girl I was dating had halfway fallen in love with. But the writer would never fully return her love because he was too lost in his own passivity to make the connection she needed from him, and so she had turned to me, but by then it was too late, and because the writer resented that she had turned to me I became the handsome and dazed narrator, incapable of love or kindness. That's how I became the damaged party boy who wandered through the wreckage, blood streaming from his nose, asking questions that never required answers. That's how I became the boy who never understood how anything worked. That's how I became the boy who wouldn't save a friend. That's how I became the boy who couldn't love the girl.

The scenes from the novel that hurt the most chronicled my relationship with Blair, especially in a scene near the novel's end when I broke it off with her on a restaurant patio overlooking Sunset Boulevard and where a billboard that read disappear here kept distracting me (the author added that I was wearing sunglasses when I told Blair that I never loved her). I hadn't mentioned that painful afternoon to the author but it appeared verbatim in the book and that's when I stopped talking to Blair and couldn't listen to the Elvis Costello songs we knew by heart ("You Little Fool," "Man Out of Time," "Watch Your Step") and yes, she had given me a scarf at a Christmas party, and yes, she had danced over to me mouthing Culture Club's "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" and yes, she had called me "a fox," and yes, she found out I had slept with a girl I picked up on a rainy night at the Whisky, and yes, the author had informed her if that. He wasn't, I realized when I read those scenes concerning Blair and myself, close to any of us-except of course to Blair, and really not even to her. He was simply someone who floated through our lives and didn't seem to care how flatly he perceived everyone or that he'd shared our secret failures with the world, showcasing the youthful indifference, the gleaming nihilism, glamorizing the horror of it all.

But there was no point in being angry with him. When the book was published in the spring of 1985, the author had already left Los Angeles. In 1982 he attended the same small college in New Hampshire that I'd tried to disappear into, and where we had little or no contact. (There's a chapter in his second novel, which takes place at Camden, where he parodies Clay-just another gesture, another cruel reminder of how he felt about me. Careless and not particularly biting, it was easier to shrug off than anything in the first book which depicted me as an inarticulate zombie confused by the irony of Randy Newman's "I Love L.A.") Because of his presence I stayed at Camden only one year and then transferred to Brown in 1983 though in the second novel I'm still in New Hampshire during the fall term of 1985. I told myself it shouldn't bother me, but the success of the first book hovered within my sight lines for an uncomfortably long time. This partly had to do with my wanting to become a writer as well, and that I had wanted to write that first novel the author had written after I finished reading it-it was my life and he had hijacked it. But I quickly had to accept that I didn't have the talent or the drive. I didn't have the patience. I just wanted to be able to do it. I made a few lame, slashing attempts and realized after graduating from Brown in 1986 that it was never going to happen.

The only person who expressed any embarrassment or disdain about the novel was Julian Wells-Blair was still in love with the author and didn't care, nor did much of the supporting cast-but Julian did so in a gleefully arrogant manner that verged on excitement, even though the author had exposed not only Julian's heroin addiction but also the fact that he was basically a hustler in debt to a drug dealer (Finn Delaney) and pimped out to men visiting from Manhattan or Chicago or San Francisco in the hotels that lined Sunset from Beverly Hills to Silver Lake. Julian, wasted and self-pitying, had told the author everything, and there was something about the book being widely read and costarring Julian that seemed to give Julian some kind of focus that bordered on hope and I think he was secretly pleased with it because Julian had no shame-he only pretended that he did. And Julian was even more excited when the movie version opened in the fall of 1987, just two years after the novel was published.

I remember my trepidation about the movie began on a warm October night three weeks prior to its theatrical release, in a screening room on the 20th Century Fox lot. I was sitting between Trent Burroughs and Julian, who wasn't clean yet and kept biting his nails, squirming in the plush black chair with anticipation. (I saw Blair walk in with Alana and Kim and trailing Rip Millar. I ignored her.) The movie was very different from the book in that there was nothing from the book in the movie. Despite everything- all the pain I felt, the betrayal-I couldn't help but recognize a truth while sitting in that screening room. In the book everything about me had happened. The book was something I simply couldn't disavow. The book was blunt and had an honesty about it, whereas the movie was just a beautiful lie. (It was also a bummer: very colorful and busy but also grim and expensive, and it didn't recoup its cost when released that November.) In the movie I was played by an actor who actually looked more like me than the character the author portrayed in the book: I wasn't blond, I wasn't tan, and neither was the actor. I also suddenly became the movie's moral compass, spouting AA jargon, castigating everyone's drug use and trying to save Julian. ("I'll sell my car," I warn the actor playing Julian's dealer. "Whatever it takes.") This was slightly less true of the adaptation of Blair's character, played by a girl who actually seemed like she belonged in our group-jittery, sexually available, easily wounded. Julian became the sentimentalized version of himself, acted by a talented, sad-faced clown, who has an affair with Blair and then realizes he has to let her go because I was his best bud. "Be good to her," Julian tells Clay. "She really deserves it." The sheer hypocrisy of this scene must have made the author blanch. Smiling secretly to myself with perverse satisfaction when the actor delivered that line, I then glanced at Blair in the darkness of the screening room.

As the movie glided across the giant screen, restlessness began to reverberate in the hushed auditorium. The audience-the book's actual cast-quickly realized what had happened. The reason the movie dropped everything that made the novel real was because there was no way the parents who ran the studio would ever expose their children in the same black light the book did. The movie was begging for our sympathy whereas the book didn't give a shit. And attitudes about drugs and sex had shifted quickly from 1985 to 1987 (and a regime change at the studio didn't help) so the source material-surprisingly conservative despite its surface immorality-had to be reshaped. The best way to look at the movie was as modern eighties noir-the cinematography was breathtaking-and I sighed as it kept streaming forward, interested in only a few things: the new and gentle details of my parents mildly amused me, as did Blair finding her divorced father with his girlfriend on Christmas Eve instead of with a boy named Jared (Blair's father died of AIDS in 1992 while still married to Blair's mother). But the thing I remember most about that screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because in the book Julian Wells lived but in the movie's new scenario he had to die. He had to be punished for all of his sins. That's what the movie demanded. (Later, as a screenwriter, I learned it's what all movies demanded.) When this scene occurred, in the last ten minutes, Julian looked at me in the darkness, stunned. "I died," he whispered. "They killed me off." I waited a beat before sighing, "But you're still here." Julian turned back to the screen and soon the movie ended, the credits rolling over the palm trees as I (improbably) take Blair back to my college while Roy Orbison wails a song about how life fades away.

The real Julian Wells didn't die in a cherry-red convertible, overdosing on a highway in Joshua Tree while a choir soared over the sound track. The real Julian Wells was murdered over twenty years later, his body dumped behind an abandoned apartment building in Los Feliz after he had been tortured to death at another location. His head was crushed-his face struck with such force that it had partly folded in on itself-and he had been stabbed so brutally that the L.A. coroner's office counted one hundred fifty-nine wounds from three different knives, many of them overlapping. His body was discovered by a group of kids who went to CalArts and were cruising through the streets off of Hillhurst in a convertible BMW looking for a parking space. When they saw the body they thought the "thing" lying by a trash bin was-and I'm quoting the first Los Angeles Times article on the front page of the California section about the Julian Wells murder-"a flag." I had to stop when I hit upon that word and start reading the article again from the beginning. The students who found Julian thought this because Julian was wearing a white Tom Ford suit (it had belonged to him but it wasn't something he was wearing the night he was abducted) and their immediate reaction seemed halfway logical since the jacket and pants were streaked with red. (Julian had been stripped before he was killed and then re-dressed.) But if they thought it was a "flag" my immediate question was: then where was the blue? If the body resembled a flag, I kept wondering, then where was the blue? And then I realized: it was his head. The students thought it was a flag because Julian had lost so much blood that his crumpled face was a blue so dark it was almost black.

But then I should have realized this sooner because, in my own way, I had put Julian there, and I'd seen what had happened to him in another-and very different-movie.

The blue Jeep starts following us on the 405 somewhere between LAX and the Wilshire exit. I notice it only because the driver's eyes have been glancing into the rearview mirror above the windshield I've been gazing out of, at the lanes of red taillights streaming toward the hills, drunk, in the backseat, ominous hip-hop playing softly through the speakers, my phone glowing in my lap with texts I can't read coming in from an actress I was hitting on earlier that afternoon in the American Airlines first-class lounge at JFK (she had been reading my palm and we were both giggling), other messages from Laurie in New York a total blur. The Jeep follows the sedan across Sunset, passing the mansions draped with Christmas lights while I'm nervously chewing mints from a tin of Altoids, failing to mask my gin-soaked breath, and then the blue Jeep makes the same right and rolls toward the Doheny Plaza, tailing us as if it were a lost child. But as the sedan swerves into the driveway where the valet and a security guard look up from smoking cigarettes beneath a towering palm, the Jeep hesitates before it keeps rolling down Doheny toward Santa Monica Boulevard. The hesitation makes it clear that we were guiding it somewhere. I stumble out of the car and watch as the Jeep slowly brakes before turning onto Elevado Street. It's warm but I'm shivering in a pair of frayed sweats and a torn Nike hoodie, everything loose because of the weight I dropped that fall, the sleeves damp from a drink I spilled during the flight. It's midnight in December and I've been away for four months.

"I thought that car was following us," the driver says, opening the trunk. "It kept moving lanes with us. It tailed us all the way here."

"What do you think it wanted?" I ask.

The night doorman, whom I don't recognize, walks down the ramp leading from the lobby to the driveway to help me with my bags. I overtip the driver and he gets back into the sedan and pulls out onto Doheny to pick up his next passenger at LAX, an arrival from Dallas. The valet and the security guard nod silently as I walk past them, following the doorman into the lobby. The doorman places the bags in the elevator and says before the doors close, cutting him off, "Welcome back."

An Interview with Emma Donoghue, author of Room

2010-07-07T22:41:00.001-07:00

Room by Emma Donoghue

2010-07-07T22:39:00.000-07:00

The story of a mother, her son, a locked room and the outside world
Jack is five and, like any little boy, excited at the prospect of presents and cake. He's looking forward to telling his friends it's his birthday, too. But although Jack is a normal child in many ways – loving, funny, bright, full of energy and questions – his upbringing is far from ordinary: Jack's entire life has been spent in a single room that measures just 12 feet by 12 feet; as far as he's concerned, Room is the entire world.
He shares this world with his mother, with Plant, and tiny Mouse (though Ma isn't a fan and throws a book at Mouse when she sees him). There's TV too, of course – and the cartoon characters he thinks of as his friends – but Jack knows that nothing else he sees on the screen is real. Old Nick, on the other hand, is all too real, but only visits at night – like a bat – when Jack is meant to be asleep and hidden safely in Wardrobe. And only Old Nick has the code to Door, which is otherwise locked...
Told in Jack's voice, Room is the story of a mother's love for her son, and of a young boy's innocence. Unsentimental yet affecting, devastating yet uplifting, it promises to be the most talked about novel of 2010.

Madigan Mine

2010-07-07T18:42:00.001-07:00

Alex doesn't know what he wants to do, how to connect with people or what's good for him. He drifts his way through dead-end jobs and fumbled relationships, unable to find a way out of the rut his life has become. Then he runs into Madigan Sargood and everything changes.
A ray of light shining from an almost-forgotten past, Madigan is beautiful and impulsive, enigmatic and passionate beyond measure. This is what it means to live, Alex realises, and to love. Never mind that she can be somewhat possessive. Never mind that his best friend thinks there's something wrong with her, something dangerous even. Never mind that the creepy band of misfits she attracts have all but taken over his home. Madigan fills Alex's life with significance; he will put up with anything to be with her.
Until, without any warning, she kills herself.
Now Alex can't seem to get her out of his head, and his world – along with his sanity – begins to disintegrate. Black outs and missing time, conversations he can't recall, people he can't remember. Is this the product of a diseased and lovesick mind, or can Madigan really be trying to communicate with him?
When the past threatens to obliterate the future, Alex is forced to take action. To save himself and those he loves, he must discover the sinister reason why Madigan took her own life – and why she won't lie still in her grave.

Interview with Bret Easton Ellis on Imperial Bedrooms (LA Times)

2010-07-07T18:41:00.001-07:00

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/13/entertainment/la-ca-bret-easton-ellis-20100613

Interview with David Remnick, author of The Bridge, from The Daily Beast

2010-07-07T18:39:00.001-07:00

Tina Brown Talks with David Remnick: The Full Interview from The Daily Beast Video on Vimeo.