Steve Toltz rolls the dice in his new dark comedy
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Hello, it's Lisa Leong from This Working Life, helping to make your work life better with advice from the world's top experts, like psychotherapist Esther Perel. Many conflicts are about power. Power is when I dismiss what you're bringing up. Power is when I magnify a problem. And Professor Adam Grant. We need to take our critics and our cheerleaders and turn them into coaches. Free coaching. This working live on ABC Radio National and any time on ABC Listen. Picture this.
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.
Yeah, I think I found it a bit of both. But I want people to get a bit of a sense of the tone and of the relationship between these parents who are probably some of my favourite characters in the book.
What is the premise of Steve Toltz's novel 'A Rising of the Lights'?
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.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:43
2
What is the premise of Steve Toltz's novel 'A Rising of the Lights'?
2:43–8:04
3
How does the theme of fate play a role in the characters' lives?
8:04–26:06
4
What influences did Steve Toltz draw from his life while writing this book?
26:06–40:45
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from The Book Show
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