Having recently moved to Sydney, Michelle de Kretser says she loves the city because it reminds her so much of Sri Lanka: “the humidity, the frangipanis, the green lushness of the streetscapes,” are all reminiscent of her home for 14 years. Still, she’ll have her first real chance to compare only when, after an absence of 22 years, she returns to her native island as a participant in the 2010 Galle Literary Festival.
You may remember Michelle as the author of The Rose Growers and The Hamilton Case (winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Encore Award), both critically acclaimed novels. Her highly literate, gorgeously imagined stories explored revolutionary France, colonial Ceylon and most recently, urban Australian. They also introduced several memorable characters, most notably Sam Obeysekera-- Anglophile, lawyer and would be detective.
Michelle says her third novel, The Lost Dog, was inspired in part by a jaunt her own pet Gus took. Its brief expedition found its fictional counterpart in the disappearance of a pet belonging to an Anglo-Indian academic named Tom Loxley, a man with a profound admiration for Henry James.
Other autobiographical elements find their way into the novel - Michelle and her character Nelly share a love for bric-à-brac. To the author, a flea market is always a temptation and a delight - “It’s the higgledy-piggledy nature of the spectacle I love, the way it throws together butter knives and old telephones, lace dresses and rusty saws. It’s like looking at an array of baffling clues: perhaps my fascination with these places is linked to my love of detective fiction,” she says.
Originally an editor working for Lonely Planet, Michelle came to fiction late. Still, she hasn’t wasted any time catching up and is already at work on a fourth novel, which she describes as being in an “embryonic” state.
She shares her home with her partner, poet and translator Chris Andrews, and “two black and white dogs of obscure breed,” called Oliver and Minnie. Looking forward to her trip to Sri Lanka, she anticipates “revisiting old haunts and making new friends”.
What are you reading now?
The Sight of Death by the art historian T. J. Clark.
Are you enjoying it?
It’s a wonderful book in which the author describes looking at two Poussin paintings over several months and records his shifting reactions to them. There is something about the tone of Clark’s writing – at once erudite, casual, personal, engaged – that I always respond to. And I love the idea of slow looking: so rare in this world.
Where do you like to read?
In bed. I have a bad back, so it’s the most comfortable place for me.
Your character Tom Loxley in The Lost Dog is a Henry James scholar. If you had to recommend one book by James to the uninitiated which would it be?
I admire James’s unswerving dedication to style and the high value he placed on art. A novella is a good place to start to get to know him. I’d recommend The Aspern Papers or The Turn of the Screw, both brilliant.
The “cold brilliance” of some murderers enthralled another one of your characters, Sam Obeysekera.
Have you read any good murder mysteries recently? Is there one author you would say triumphs over others at fashioning the perfect mysteries?
Earlier this year I read and enjoyed several of Donna Leon’s police procedurals, which are set in Venice. It was the setting I savoured, really, and the social detail, as Leon’s books aren’t driven by the question whodunit. For the sheer riddling genius of plot, I still think there’s no one to touch Christie.
You’re at the end of a long day, and all you want to do is kick back with a fun, uncomplicated read. Which author would you pick?
Any writer of detective fiction.
You lived in Sri Lanka till you were 14. Is there an author whose portrayal of Sri Lanka resonates closely with your own memories?
When I read Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family it was like coming across my memories in someone else’s book. More than 20 years later, I still love that book.
Sri Lankan books are difficult to get in Australia. I hope to discover the work of many wonderful local writers in January. But I recently read A Nice Burgher Girl by Jean Arasanayagam, which I admired and found very moving.
You’ve edited a lot of travel writing. In your opinion who is the consummate travel writer?
Sybille Bedford wrote a marvellous book about Mexico called A Visit to Don Otavio. She has a great gift for observation and writes perfect sentences as well. |
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