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Good Reading : October 2017
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GOOD READING OCTOBER 2017 31 writhing in the current, and they too seemed to be shrieking. It was silent, but the effect was palpable. These two places were so charged with pain, suffering and terror. The intensity of this effect struck me as emanating like waves. It’s this hidden although perceptible depth that intrigues me, the layers lurking beneath what is apparent on the surface. I hope to tap into this in my wr iting; Haruki Murakami is a master of it. What kind of people did you meet on your travels around Australia? Have you borrowed any of them for Soon? Our unorthodox, home-made vehicle tended to attract eccentrics. We met so many fascinating people – although we did get tired of compar ing fuel consumption, which was a measure of your credibility. The women were the most striking; they weren’t as wild or unusual as some of the men, but it was much more unconventional for women to live on their own on the road, so they had real backbone. They were arresting characters. One of my favour ites was the pensioner whose husband fell ill, so she put him on a plane, sent him home and kept going on her own. Another was topless in a public dunny, r insing her bra in the basin. ‘A caravan park?’ she said. ‘I haven’t stayed in a caravan park since 1983.’ But in some ways it was also easier for women, because they weren’t seen as a threat, so they tended to be looked out for by the people around them. The character who really stayed with me, and who made it into Soon, was a lovely old man we met, gentle and shy, who loved children but had never mar ried. He delighted in kids but was exiled from them; men can’t hang around parks and playgrounds. Quite a few solitary men talked of being isolated, shunned by families, seen as dubious for being on their own and nomadic. This exile and alienation contributed to the character of Pete. How did the real-life town of Wittenoom inspire the story of Soon? Wittenoom was a small town in the north of WA that survived on asbestos mining. Asbestos was their livelihood and they celebrated it. Then people started to die and the reality of asbestos was discovered, and the town, surrounded by the stuff, was declared unfit for habitation. Everyone was evicted. A community was dismantled; people lost their homes and their past. But some people wouldn’t go, and the tactics that were used against them were insidious, like taking down road signs and removing the town from maps, turning off the utilities and not maintaining the roads. It was a stand-off, with no ultimate winners. I was intrigued by the idea of closing down of a town – making it disappear – even though people were still living there. You weren’t supposed to go there. There were all these official warnings, but we went there anyway. It was so sad, an abandoned landscape of empty houses, set against the most beautiful backdrop of stunning cliffs and gorges – all poisoned. A couple of houses were still occupied. One had a big sign in the front yard that said: ‘Private property – Mine. Keep out, this is my bloody home.’ Imagine living like that, alone but under siege. What inspired the mist that engulfs Nebulah? It was a mixture of things: the Wittenoom story and the idea of being under siege by forces beyond your control, combined with a dream I once had, which is in one of the final scenes. (I have terrible dreams.) The mist that descends on Nebulah is allegorical. It symbolises unknown forces that can appear out of nowhere and destroy lives, like the powerlessness experienced in war, illness and natural disasters. Humans always demand answers, explanations and justice; we have a need to understand and think of people as deserving or undeserving, when really so much is inexplicable and unfair. The mist symbolises this vulnerability and uncertainty, both physically and psychically. Soon by Lois Murphy is published by Transit Lounge, rrp $29.95. Q&A 3
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