First Chapters Q&A with Sonia Orchard

Sonia Orchard is the author of Something More Wonderful and The Virtuoso, which won the Indie Award for Best Debut Fiction of 2009.  She has a PhD in Creative Writing and lives in the Macedon Ranges with her husband and three children.

Sonia will be reading from her new novel Into the Fire at First Chapters on Friday 3 May.

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

Intothe Fire is the story of a female friendship, remembered by one of the women – Lara – shortly after her friend’s mysterious death in a house fire. In some ways, it’s an examination of some of the complexities of modern womanhood – balancing career and motherhood, gender politics, factional feminism – and the choices women make and the ramifications of these choices. The excerpt I’m reading is set after the first real rift in the women’s friendship – when Alice (Lara’s friend) becomes a mother, and Lara is struggling with her conflicted feelings around this. This is one of many times, during the novel, when we get a glimpse into Lara’s past, and start to understand why Lara does some of the things that she does. Lara is essentially a good person, but she ends up betraying Alice, and this has catastrophic consequences. Why ‘good’ people do ‘bad’ things is something I’m really interested in. For me, the seed of Lara’s betrayal can be seen in scenes like this one.

2. How would you describe the kind of books that you write?

Emotional survival always looms large in my stories – narrators trying to come to terms with devastating events. Memory also plays a big role – I’m interested in why people remember what they remember, what they leave out, what they fabricate – essentially how people create the stories of their lives as an act of survival. All of my narrators (including myself in my memoir!) are a bit deluded. But I think all people are deluded to certain degrees, about certain aspects of their lives – it could be regarding why they’ve chosen their line of work, their partner, their hairstyle, their political views. I think being a little deluded about your own motives, behaviour and leanings is quite normal, but it’s also extremely fascinating.

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

The Quangle Wangle’s Hat (the Edward Lear poem, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury). This was my favourite story as a kid – I remember sitting in my room and reading it over and over; even when I was well beyond picture books, I still loved it. I just wanted to be in that Quangle Wangle tree, dancing and making music with all those crazy animals. It has an incredible musicality to it, and it’s a fabulous celebration of friendship, joy and the ridiculous. I was devastated when my three kids didn’t love it as much as I did.

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

No. I think good novels should tackle issues around what it is to be human, but leave resolutions up to the reader. Novels, to me, are more like very wise, loving friends. So in the same way that friends can prompt you to work out your own answers to your own questions, I think books can probably do the same. But if a novel set out to provide a definitive answer to a ‘big question’, I imagine most readers would find that quite annoying.

5. Do you have any writing quirks?

Yes! I’m terrible with qualifiers. My first drafts are full of the following words: ‘quite’, ‘almost’, ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’. With the help of an editor, I remove a lot of them, but I also keep a few if they work for the narrator’s voice. My narrators all tend to be a little unsure of themselves, and grope around for answers, so this is reflected in run-on sentences and speech and thought that lack confidence.

6.  What is your favourite word or phrase?

I don’t have one, but I do love vernacular. If I was to set a book in Melbourne in the 1970s, there would definitely be a character, at some point, saying, ‘For crying out loud’. Whenever I hear a phrase like that it takes me straight back to my childhood. I love it.

7. What have you found most surprising about publishing a book?

My first published book was a memoir, so that threw me in the deep end in regards to the publishing experience. But with that book, and my novels since, I’ve always been surprised how seriously people take them – how people might take me to task about something I’ve written, or tell me how angry a character has made them. A part of me is really pleased people have responded so strongly, but I also sometimes just want to remind them that it’s ‘just a book’ and that in my fiction, none of the characters or events are real!

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

I don’t mind what I’m asked, as I can always choose how to answer a question. But I do get frustrated when people approach my novels autobiographically and ask me, for example, if a certain character is a certain person in my life. Fiction writing is such a complex process, and characters and storylines can take many years to take shape, and are affected by such a myriad of influences. Some of the influences are autobiographical, but many are not, and they all end up in the pot together, getting stirred around for years. To me, trying to extract autobiographical detail from a novel really undermines what a fiction writer is setting out to do.

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

‘How does it feel to have sold one million copies?’ Only joking. Any question that makes me feel like the reader has really engaged with and thought about my novel, is a good one, and makes me pretty happy. Sometimes readers have asked questions about Into the Fire that have caught me by surprise, and made me see my novel or a character from a different angle – I always love those questions.

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

That’s a hard one to answer, because many of my friends are, in my opinion, exceptional writers, and should be more widely read! So I’ll just go with the very last book that I’ve only just finished and am still thinking about: Julienne van Loon’s The Thinking Woman.

Find out more about the First Chapters event series on the Brunswick Bound website.