Interviews
I wish we had critics reviewing books who weren’t writers or academics but who were simply passionate readers involved in various walks of life. At present, criticism seems a mixed bag. Some reviewers are terrific, others seem to merely describe rather than come to grips adequately with what they are reviewing.
... (read more)Many of my dreams have to do with the sea. Sometimes they concern Antarctica, an exciting prelude to going into the interior with other people.
... (read more)A Confederacy of Dunces always makes me laugh. The book I’ve read the most number of times is a collection of essays about animals and insects called The Red Hourglass, by Gordon Grice.
... (read more)Why do you write?
It seems to be the only way I can make sense of things. I am often surprised that everybody doesn’t feel like this. It is such a profound thrill to work with fiction and to see the patterns emerge, to feel the rhythm of the story as it develops.
Are you a vivid dreamer?
There’s a thing that happens – I am asleep, but I seem to be awake watching a full colour dramatisation on a kind of screen. If I shut my eyes the scene disappears, but when I open them, it resumes and does not stop.
... (read more)Are you a vivid dreamer?
Yes, in general I am, but I have three kinds of dream: those that are dully bureaucratic at root; those that revisit the emblematic landscapes or cities of earlier dreams; and wild, coloured dreams with a green welcoming ocean or dark monsters.
... (read more)At the moment, my hero is Rimbaud’s self in his Les Illuminations. Who knows who it will be tomorrow? And my heroine? Always Lo.
... (read more)Ramona Koval: I once had a conversation with an Australian writer who envied my parents’ war experience and refugee tales, because he said at least you have something to write about. But in this memoir you have proved that an Australian beach-based childhood can be as compelling and strange and moving as any European story. This Australian story had been brewing for a while, hadn’t it?
Robert Drewe: It had certainly been brewing for a long time. I have written novels touching on this period. But for some reason, perhaps because of the rather harrowing experiences of my family at the time, I had pushed it aside. But in the end I found it was more and more on my mind. I realised that my whole generation of people growing up in Perth were still subject to the same myth. I decided finally to deal with it in the manner I have.
... (read more)