First Chapters Q&A with Roger Averill

Roger Averill is a Brunswick based author who also works as a freelance researcher and editor.  

Roger will be reading from Relatively Famous (published by Transit Lounge) at our First Chapters event on Friday 1 June.

We asked Roger some general bookish questions because we were interested in finding out more about him and this is what he had to say.

1. Brunswick Bound has asked you to read a chapter from your published work at First Chapters.  
Tell us what we can expect from the chapter you have chosen?

I think I’ll read from Chapter 6. This is where the narrator, Michael Madigan, meets his father’s would-be biographer. This chapter deals with a couple of the book’s key themes, namely the way we can never really escape our parents’ influence, and the fraught allure of literary biography.

2. What kind of books do you write?

RelativelyFamous is my second novel. In addition to those two books, I’ve also published a travel memoir (Boy He Cry: An Island Odyssey) and a biography (Exile: The Lives and Hopes of Werner Pelz).

3. What was the first book that you read (or had read to you) that left an impression on you?

I have a clear memory of my parents and my grandmother repeatedly reading The Three Little Pigs to me. I think it was one of those Ladybird Books from the ‘60s. I’ve no idea why I liked it so much, though as a narrative it’s got a bit going for it: danger, suspense, a villain who eventually gets his comeuppance, the reassuring sense of safety and security, order restored. If only I’d imbibed its conservative subtext and invested in Brunswick bricks and mortar!

4. Do you believe that books should answer life’s big questions?

Growing up, raised by Methodists, the answer was always to be found in the Good Book, and on some subconscious level I’ve never really lost that expectation, the hope that the next book I read will be the One, the one that changes everything. Perhaps that’s why I write them, too. Certainly, I write them in an attempt to assert meaning on the world. I also think that the very form of books, or stories at least, mimic the way we make sense of our lives. That is, that our senses of self are predominantly narrative, that we come to understand who we are through the stories we tell about ourselves.

5. What’s your go-to solution for writer’s block?

Fortunately I’ve never suffered from it, so whatever I have to say about it probably isn’t terribly helpful. To keep up the house-made-of-bricks theme –which, strangely, is echoed in Relatively Famous – I’ve always thought of writing as being like laying bricks: each word a brick, every sentence another row, each chapter a wall in the house you are building. When you get stuck, just lay another brick. One of my great-grandfathers, William Richard Averill, was a bricklayer, so perhaps my approach to writing comes from him!

6.  Which words or phrases do you overuse?

I’ve a tendency to construct ‘this, though that’ sentences. For example: ‘I’ve no idea why I liked it so much, though as a narrative …’ The curse of the liberal mind, perhaps, always looking to give both sides of the argument.

7. What do you put down as your occupation when asked?

‘Teacher.’ If it’s in conversation and I feel the need to make myself sound more interesting or I have a desire for the person doing the asking to know me a little, ‘teacher’ would be followed by a self-conscious explanation of my writing life. If they haven’t already drifted off in search of better company, I’ll then bore them by talking about the distinction between ‘occupation’ and ‘vocation’ (another theme running through Relatively Famous).

8. What is the question that you hope never to be asked in an author Q&A?

‘How would you describe your writing?’ I’ve already had this one, and cheated by quoting what reviewers have said about it.

9. What question do you hope you will be asked and why?

I like being asked about who has helped me in my ‘writing journey’, because I can then pay tribute to my friend Chris Eipper, who started reading and editing my work 30 years ago. Chris taught me that writing is a craft that has to be constantly honed.

10. Which book that you have read do you think should be better known or more widely read?

There are so many, but I’ll go with Mark Slouka’s brilliant coming-of-age novel Brewster. It’s a sensitive and superbly written book about those troubled teenage years. I could equally recommend his book of essays Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations. His politics and sensibility are in sync with mine, and he writes in a direct and accessible way, with bristling intelligence.