The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
There were many times I thought, I don't want to keep reading this.
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
It's overwritten.
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
I don't care about the next generation of love affairs or the great soldier who looked out and he felt like a man again.
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
And these kinds of moments, I thought, this story is too big to be treated in this way.
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
Having said that, I can see that she obviously wanted popular readership and a large readership and got that that way.
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
When you asked me to read this book for this show, I was quite excited because back in 2002, I was sent a manuscript by Pandanus Press and asked for an opinion.
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
And it was called White Butterflies and it was by Colin McPhadren.
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
And Colin McPhadren was a...
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
child in rangoon who was born of a scottish father and a burmese mother privileged childhood who had to escape to india when the japanese invaded and he wrote a memoir it is the most extraordinary story you will read and they did publish it in 2002 and it's been republished since then i think with university of new south wales or new south wales books
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
That story blew my mind open about the atrocities of the war, about the suffering of the Burmese people, not the Karen people because he was a Burman.
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
But that kind of memoir had a power and an authenticity which has never left me.
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
the novel, this novel, doesn't have that same kind of power.
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
There has to be some of that missing because of the form shift, because there has to be artistic licence and creative licence in the novel.
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
I think also perhaps because we have a novelist here writing about her mother and her mother's parents and her mother's parents' lovers and other people in the community.
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
So that sort of distance...
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
How much did those parents tell this child?
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
How much does she actually know?
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
Therefore, how much does she have to recreate to make it a story?
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
So you can see why she may well have gone for the novel form, but it doesn't have the overarching power, I think, of a memoir.
The Bookshelf
On Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, Charmaine Craig's Miss Burma and David Peace's Patient X.
Reading it, writing it.