Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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You and your twin sister are called to a family meeting where your parents tell you they're splitting up. Now, they want to have a clean break, no shared custody. Instead, each child will live permanently with one of the parents. And the way to decide which kid will live with which adult? Well, how about rolling a dice?
I'm Clare Nicholls, and this is The Book Show, where I bring you conversations with your favourite fiction authors. The Australian diplomat turned novelist Ian Chemish will join me soon. He's written a page-turner inspired by his experience in the Balkans in the 1990s. But first, let's get back to those parents deciding their children's future with a roll of the dice.
Now, this is the cruel and funny start to A Rising of the Lights, the new novel by Australian writer Steve Toltz. Steve famously shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his very first novel, A Fraction of the Whole. Hi, Steve. Hi, Claire. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. But this idea of rolling a dice to see which child will live with which parent, it's brutal.
Yeah, look, it is. And it serves a few purposes in the book. But the book is sort of, it's this book that lives at the edge of consciousness in a way. So there's all these kind of things that happen. Like there's characters that get PTSD from a dream. There's sleepwalking, sleep talking, hypnosis. And a lot of it is about kind of free will.
And I thought rolling a dice to decide one's fate early in life is probably a good way to do that. And it's, yeah, some people find it dark. Some people find it funny.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of rolling a dice in Steve Toltz's novel?
Can you read a little bit just from this prologue here where the parents have just rolled the dice? Can you read to us what comes next? Sure.
My father dragged a large red suitcase from the back of a cupboard. My mother shot him a hard stare. That's mine. He pulled it behind his back, holding it tightly. I was the one who paid for it. With our money. That I stole. While I was carrying your child. It went on like that.
They debated the ownership of this battered suitcase that seemed to have disproportionate sentimental value to these notoriously unsentimental creatures. My father claimed she only liked the red suitcase because it matched her eyes. My mother said that was a good joke, but the suitcase was mauve, not red. Let's agree to disagree. I never agreed to that.
My father eventually won the argument by yanking the suitcase from her hand, breathing heavily and retreating to pack. A border had been erected between us. We were all strangers to each other now.
And that was my first laugh out loud of the book, Steve, was let's agree to disagree. I never agreed to that because this book is funny and sad at the same time. Is this kind of the Steve Toltz trademark?
I guess so. I mean, I think that the style in which I write, which is kind of darkly humorous or, you know, dark comedy, blackly funny, whatever you, however you want to describe it, is just the kind of default style. style that I have. It's sort of like asking someone to describe their odour. It's very hard. This is the way it sort of comes out. And I guess it's kind of the way I see the world.
Why is being miserable funny?
Well, I don't know if being miserable is funny, but I think if you can't find the humour in difficult circumstances, then the misery will just be compounded. You know, it's probably basically I've probably made a living out of my self-defence mechanism.
Okay, well, look, tell me how this book started. I want to know what was going on in your life, what was on your mind when you sat down to write A Rising of the Lights?
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Chapter 3: How does Steve Toltz blend humor and darkness in his writing?
I like dreaming it up. I like writing the first bad draft. I like improving that draft. I like working with an editor and sort of fixing it up. Yeah, I just like the whole thing. I'm not as fast as I would like to be, but I really enjoy it.
Steve Toltz, your book is A Rising of the Lights. It's published by Penguin Books. It's been great to chat again today.
Great to chat with you.
On ABC Radio National, this is the book show. And Ian Kemmish is here now. He's a former Australian diplomat and now a novelist. And he's lent into his diplomatic background, particularly his memories of war in Yugoslavia in the 90s, for his first work of fiction. It's called Two Islands. Hi, Ian.
Great to be with you.
So as a diplomat, Ian, where have you worked?
I think you could divide it up pretty evenly between Australia's immediate neighbourhood, the Asia-Pacific, and Europe. So, you know, my head of mission jobs were variously in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, where I was High Commissioner. And Germany, where I was ambassador, I was also accredited there into Switzerland and other places.
But, you know, before I became an ambassador, I was posted variously in Southeast Asia, again in Europe, and I had this job that you just mentioned in your intro. formally attached to the embassy in Vienna in the 1990s, and that's where my family lived, it's where the house was.
But my job was very much focused on the western half, if you like, of former Yugoslavia, by which I mean Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia. And it was a time of extraordinary events. It was a time that in some ways we seem to have, or many of us, seem to have forgotten a little bit about. And, you know, it was an important time in my life.
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Chapter 4: What themes of loneliness are explored in A Rising of the Lights?
And the other involves an atrocity committed by Croatians against Bosnians, Bosnian Muslims. And, you know, I'm not trying to make a huge local agenda point here, but in the end...
If there were villains on any side, it was particularly the politicians, the nationalist politicians who, for their own purposes, manipulated and fanned the flames of century-old resentment that does, for historical reasons, exist in that region between some of these... These groups that we lazily call ethnicities, I mean, they're not ethnicities, they're cultural groups.
They're as ethnically different from each other as Catholics and Protestants are in Northern Ireland. In other words, not at all.
Yeah. Ian Kemmish, I'm so interested in your journey from diplomat to writer. It did occur to me that as a diplomat, you know, you're obviously dealing in facts, but it's also about crafting a narrative around those facts, right? Like, I'm interested to know how much storytelling is involved in diplomacy.
A lot. And I think you're onto something here, I have to say. Particularly, I think, as a head of mission, you get to that point of authority and a level of confidence that people have in you in the system.
You're looking to influence particularly your own capital, your own ministers, your own prime minister when it comes to the issues that you're dealing with in your country of location, in your location. And to do that, you're competing with a whole lot of other people who are trying to do the same thing. You have to tell your story in an interesting way and sometimes even in an entertaining way.
And I used to find ways of doing that. Papua New Guinea seemed to generate lots of opportunity to do that, I have to say. So absolutely, you know, I think people who haven't been within the system couldn't be expected to understand it. But, you know, at least half your job is about managing your own side, if I can put it that way.
You know, influencing your own government's thinking and approach when it comes to the issues that you're facing close up on a day-to-day basis.
So yeah, you've always had this storytelling ability, but I guess now with the shift into fiction, you can fully embrace it now and you can shake off any commitment to truth-telling, I guess. I mean, what does that feel like?
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Chapter 5: What is the relationship between the main character and his parents?
There are four voices, and I think we've mentioned two so far, Nico, Anita, our policewoman, and old Ronnie.
He is a lovely man and the people on this island are inherently good people, Ian Kemmish. And I know you've talked about this. You've said, I wanted to write a story about people doing good. I wanted to write a story about goodness. How radical is it to write a novel where the people are inherently good?
Yeah, it's interesting that people respond that way. And it's lovely that people respond that way. I've actually had one of the lovely things about writing fiction is I didn't know this, but you receive these lovely messages from people you've never met on, you know, Instagram and email and sometimes even text. I don't know how they get that number.
But the people are responding to that point really well. And perhaps that says something about the state of the world, anxiety about some pretty awful things that we've seen here. But in my view, the truth is that good things are being done by people amidst all this all the time. And, you know, my experience of conflict situations is that people do help each other out.
My experience of small communities, I'm sure this applies here in Australia in adversity, it certainly applies in the Western Islands of Scotland, is that people help each other out. My experience is that... Suspicion of strangers and even racism often doesn't survive contact between two individuals. And, you know, that's actually, I think, how the world largely is.
And I think it's worth reminding ourselves of that.
Yeah, I loved that this book did that. Are you going to write more fiction, Ian?
Yeah, I am. I've got an idea for the next one. I haven't quite got going yet, but I've got an idea.
Well, I loved this first novel. It's called Two Islands. It's published by UQP. Ian Chemish, it's been great to meet you today.
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