1. 1HERSA1 H006
6 SUNDAY, MARCH 11, 2012 THE SUN-HERALD
booksextra
Sisters, I’m
doing it
for myself
Write on ... from swimming teacher to author, Nicola Moriarty has sampled many careers. Photo: Simon Alekna
The youngest in a family of successful authors is
giving it a go, writes Louise Schwartzkoff.
THE idea of three sisters writing
books has been a sexy one since the
Bronte girls took up male
pseudonyms and published a
volume of poetry. It is hard to know
whether there was much sibling
rivalry between Emily, Charlotte
and Anne but, posthumously at
least, Anne has often been
overshadowed by her sisters. Some
have her pegged as a younger sibling
battling to keep up.
Nicola Moriarty can
sympathise. The youngest
of six, her two eldest sisters
published their first books
to almost instant success.
Jaclyn Moriarty’s debut
novel for young adults,
Feeling Sorry for Celia, won
a NSW Premier’s award in
2001. Liane Moriarty’s first
book, Three Wishes, sold to
publishers in the US, Britain, Spain,
Sweden, Holland, Italy and
Germany. Both have since written a
slew of bestsellers. Most online
reviews for Nicola’s debut, Free-
Falling, mention one or both of her
sisters in the opening paragraph.
The Sydney author laughs at the
Bronte comparison, though it only
stretches so far. So-called literary
novels have never been her thing
and she happily classes Free-Falling
as ‘‘chick-lit’’. The plot swings
between two women grieving for the
same man. There is Evelyn, a
bereaved mother, and Belinda, who
would have been her daughter-in-
law. Though it begins with a young
man’s death, Free-Falling bounces
along cheerfully enough, propelled
by text messages, flashbacks,
coincidences and melodrama.
‘‘I like being able to escape,’’
Moriarty says. ‘‘I like reading stories
that are not necessarily predictable
but you know that the outcome is
going to make you feel good.
‘‘After my second daughter, I had
post-natal depression, so when
I read a book I want to escape into a
happy world. I don’t want to read
something that’s really heavy-going
or hard work.’’
She wrote Free-Falling
while working as a
swimming teacher,
focusing on it more closely
after giving up full-time
work to look after her
children. She is not sure she
would have finished it had
her sisters not been
published authors.
‘‘I definitely would have
still been writing because I was
always writing short stories and
things but whether I would have sat
down and written a whole novel?
That’s a really hard question,’’ she
says. ‘‘I might have attempted it but
I might not have had the confidence
to keep at it. Having them as
inspiration helped me keep going.’’
Their contacts helped, too.
Jaclyn’s agent was the first stranger
to read the manuscript and passed it
on to a colleague. Moriarty is frank
about the advantages of her family
name (‘‘I think it probably did help’’)
and somewhat anxious about
expectations that stem from it. She
is relieved to have her own agent.
‘‘This way it feels a bit more like
it’s happening on my own,’’ she says.
‘‘They’re not just saying, ‘Oh,
Nicola? We’ll publish her because
her sisters did well.’’’
Nevertheless, there have been
moments of self-doubt. When her
publisher praised Liane’s writing,
Moriarty briefly wondered if they
were using her as bait to lure her
sister. She is ‘‘terrified’’ her book will
fall short of their success.
‘‘I have to try and remember that
they’ve got quite a few years and
books behind them and I’m only just
starting out,’’ she says. ‘‘But it’s hard
not to think about the fact that Jaci
had a bestseller straight away and
that Liane sold in so many different
countries straight away ... My
husband had to keep saying, ‘You’re
getting a book published. You’ve
sold it to other countries. Just be
happy about that.’ Then I think, ‘Oh
yeah. If I don’t compare myself to
them, it’s actually quite good.’’’
Makingsuchcomparisonsisanew
experienceforMoriarty.Sheisthe
babyofthefamilyandthereismore
thanadecadebetweenherandher
twoeldestsisters.Growingup,they
feltmorelikeextramothersthan
sistersandtheirwordwasgospel.
She abandoned dreams of a
teaching career because Liane
(‘‘I think it was Liane’’) advised
against it, saying it would be too
exhausting to teach and have a
family. ‘‘She probably thought
nothing of it – she was just giving her
opinion and thought I’d make up my
own mind – but I immediately
thought, ‘Well, if that’s what Liane
thinks, then she’s right.’’’
While her sisters stacked up
intellectual achievements (Jaclyn
was a university medallist and one-
time defamation lawyer; Liane
blitzed the HSC and worked in
advertising; Kati, the third daughter,
was school dux) the youngest
Moriarty dabbled in art and drama.
‘‘We do sometimes joke about the
older three of the family being the
good ones,’’ she says. ‘‘They all went
to the same school, went all the way
through and went off to uni.
‘‘The next three kids were a bit
more rebellious.’’
It took years of floating between
careers before Moriarty found her
passion. She worked for a chocolate
company, taught swimming, tried
marketing, sold home security
systems and had a stab at setting up
a gift hamper business. Quite a few
of these experiences made their way
into Free-Falling.
Finally, as well as remembering
that she liked to write, she returned
to the old dream and enrolled in a
teaching degree. ‘‘I’m writing and
I can be a teacher as well. I’d like to
throw those two together.
‘‘This is the first time I’ve been
clear about what I wanted to do. I’ve
found it.’’
Free-Falling by Nicola Moriarty is
published by Bantam, $32.95.
DIANNE BLACKLOCK THE BOOKS THAT CHANGED ME
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Dickens is one of my favourite
authors and an inspiration. In this,
the central character, Pip, is
sometimes infuriating, often
arrogant, but flawed and human like
the rest of us. One of the original
‘‘aspirationals’’, Pip dreams that
becoming a gentleman will make
him happy and help him win the
cold Estella. While the story is very
rich and complex, it is the
characters who drive this novel; in
my mind, Miss Havisham remains
one of the most extraordinary
creations in literature.
The Women’s Room
Marilyn French
I read thisempowering novel when
I was a young motherin the 1980s.
An intimate, attimes claustrophobic
account of theway childbirth and
domesticity trapped women in the
1950s and ’60s, it follows Mira’s
journey to reclaim her life. The
Women’s Room re-energised my
values at a time when I could so
easily have been swallowed up by
the demands of others.
The Beauty Myth
Naomi Wolf
This was one of the most shocking
books I’d ever read at the time. Wolf
examines the way the demands of
‘‘looking good’’ prevent women
from achieving more important
things, claiming we are constrained
and distracted by the pressure to
conform to a largely unattainable
concept of female beauty. Although
Wolf has subsequently admitted to
having overstated some of the
statistics, her thesis remains
compelling and disturbing.
Families and How to
Survive Them
Robin Skynner and
John Cleese
This book takes the form of a
conversation between psychiatrist,
Skynner, and the well-known
comedian, thus making
psychological concepts accessible,
often amusing and, ultimately,
meaningful. One of the few books
that has made me burst into tears
when it touched on a painful nerve,
it also informed my fundamental
approach to bringing up my sons.
Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates
I read this remarkable novel only
last year but it has left an indelible
impression. It’s the story of Frank
and April, who decide to flee the
suffocation of suburbia in the ’50s
and start a new life in Paris. But
circumstances, inertia and fear stop
them. Many people have found it
depressing but I took it as a
cautionary tale. I want to be able to
say in a decade that this was a novel
that changed my life.
Dianne Blacklock is a Sydney author
who writes chick-lit and romance
novels. Her latest book is The Secret
Ingredient (Macmillan, $25).
TOP 10 MYSTERY
Data supplied by Nielsen BookScan’s book sales
monitoring system from 1000 retailers nationwide.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Celebrity in Death
J.D. Robb
(Piatkus, $32.99)
Private: No.1 Suspect
James Patterson
(Century, $32.95)
11th Hour
James Patterson
(Century, $32.95)
Phantom
Jo Nesbo
(Harvill Secker, $32.95)
Kill Shot
Vince Flynn
(Simon & Schuster, $29.99)
The Thief
Clive Cussler & Justin Scott
(Michael Joseph, $29.95)
Believing the Lie
Elizabeth George
(Hodder & Stoughton, $32.99)
Private Games
James Patterson
(Century, $32.95)
The Janson Command
Robert Ludlum & Paul Garrison
(Orion, $32.99)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson
(MacLehose Press, $19.99)
THE SUN-HERALD SUNDAY, MARCH 11, 2012 7
The long road to freedom
BIOGRAPHY
Intimate ... Aung San Suu Kyi’s soft side is revealed. Photo: Getty Images
The Lady and the Peacock:
The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi
Peter Popham
(Rider, $29.95)
Review by Daphne Guinness
WITH Aung San Suu Kyi making
headlines again and US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton hand-hugging
the Burmese pro-democracy leader
on telly not long ago, this biography
couldn’t be more topical. Peter
Popham, its author, must
have been ecstatic to
observe his subject
splashed globally with
such panache.
But why did he write the
book knowing others had
told the famous story of a
43-year-old woman
standing up to a brutal
regime and imprisoned in
her house for 15 years with no
contact with the world outside?
The answer: he got his hands on
her friend Ma Thanegi’s diaries,
which showed Suu Kyi’s previously
hidden intimate side and answered
criticism that she was hard and
unfeeling. How else could she bear
to be parted from her dying
husband, Michael Aris, when given
the choice to go to him in England
and never be allowed to return to
Burma or stay and continue the fight
against the tyrannical regime? With
his consent, she stayed.
Suu Kyi’s party, the National
League for Democracy (NLD), won
the 1990 election with a huge
majority but still the odious
National Unity Party stayed in
power, placing her under house
arrest. Finally, on November 13,
2010, she was freed and a youthful-
looking 65-year-old was greeted by
cheering masses at her home.
It’s at this point that the reader
wonders what good Suu Kyi is doing
in her attempt to democratise her
country. And will she ever succeed?
Another chum, author
Peter Carey, says: ‘‘She is
there bearing witness ...
but even if she dies, what
she’s doing will resonate
into the future.’’ Not exactly
a thrilling endorsement but
perhaps caution is his style.
Popham covers the story
like a thriller, with
cliffhanging chapters.
What to do with ‘‘this woman’’ asks
one enemy, General Than Shwe.
‘‘Have her eliminated,’’ he decides.
So for the lay person wanting to
understand the Burmese
problem in general, and Suu
Kyi in particular, this book turns out
to be highly readable.
Popham visited Burma four times
undercover as a tourist, his day job
as a journalist guaranteeing
expulsion. He spares us nothing: the
cruelties, the massacres, the
terrorism are spelt out in detail, as is
Suu Kyi’s insistence on non-
violence (an aspect ignored by other
biographers, Popham says).
Suu Kyi was her father Aung
San’s daughter, carrying on his
fight after his assassination in
1947. With her ‘‘cut-glass Oxford
accent’’, she became a darling of
the Western media.
Popham’s talent is knowing how
to tell a complicated yarn and still
keep the narrative alive. He says the
biography was conceived in 2006,
with Suu Kyi under house arrest,
when he saw thousands of monks
outside her residence holding their
food bowls upside down. ‘‘I knew
then there was still a story to tell.’’
In a shocking twist, Ma Thanegi
leaves the NLD, angry that Suu Kyi
won’t back tourism. Popham
believes the traitor was turned by
the Military Intelligence during a
spell in prison. But in June last year,
the NLD announced a U-turn:
‘‘While not encouraging package
tours and cruises, to study the
country’s situation might not be a
bad idea.’’
Last year, Clinton became the first
US secretary of state to visit Burma
in 50 years but Suu Kyi still insists: ‘‘I
don’t want to become a personality
cult.’’ It’s too late. She is stuck with
that forever.
CRIME
The Drop
Michael Connelly
(Allen & Unwin,
$32.99)
LA veteran cop Harry Bosch is
running two cases simultaneously.
The first stems from fresh DNA
discovered in a 21-year-old rape-
and-murder cold case – except the
DNA belongs to a rapist who would
have been eight years old at the
time. The second involves top-level
police politics and an apparent
jumper suicide – ‘‘the drop’’ in cop
talk. After 17 novels, Bosch is a very
well-developed character. Former
LA crime reporter Michael Connelly
not only postpones Bosch’s
retirement but also opens the door
for Bosch’s daughter to follow in his
footsteps. That news will please his
legion of fans. Frank Walker
PHOTOGRAPHY
Lady Gaga x
Terry
Richardson
(Hodder &
Stoughton,
$59.99)
Lady Gaga as neverseen before. Her
pal, snapperTerry Richardson,
follows the popstar for 10 months
and clicks non-stopin the bedroom,
bathroom, on/offstage, with/
without makeup. “I amso real, he
says I am unreal,”she purrs, adding
“it’s okay to viewyourself as hyper-
human.” Thiswrist-achingly heavy
volume of 350 shotsshows her being
fitted for meatboots and, more
alarming, with an IVdrip in her arm,
rehydrating. Elsewhereshe poses
naked and there’san excruciating
end pic of hercrying and bloodied at
a concert inMexico City, 2010. Fans
(aka her Little Monsters) will drool.
Daphne Guinness
Big Fat Lies:
How the Diet
Industry Is
Making You
Sick, Fat & Poor
David Gillespie
(Viking, $29.95)
HEALTH
David Gillespie’s third book
continues the crusade against sugar
he began in Sweet Poison. Diets and
exercise did not work for him but
when he cut out sweet things, he lost
40 kilograms. In analysing why, his
culprit is the processed-food
industry. It heavily relies on two
ingredients not found in our diets
until recently: fructose (fruit sugar)
and polyunsaturated fats. Both are
health hazards in bulk – even in diet
and low-GI foods. Gillespie’s
response to the obesity epidemic is
to make as much of his food at
home. Thus, he eats heartily and
stays thin. Thought-provoking.
Lucy Sussex
Angels of
Vengeance
John
Birmingham
(MacMillan,
$32.99)
FICTION
There is chaos in the new world
order in the third of John
Birmingham’s trilogy of novels
(behind Without Warning and After
America) examining what the planet
would look like following the end of
the US as the dominant superpower.
In a rollicking ride encompassing
global politics and individual
heroism, President James Kipper’s
right-hand man, Jed Culver, must
choose between loyalty and what he
believes to be right, while Jackson
Blackstone, maverick governor of
the Republic of Texas, looms as an
increasing danger to the new USA.
This is a fast-paced and thought-
provoking novel. Winsor Dobbin
Stalking through the tangled threads
CINEMA
Zona
Geoff Dyer
(Text Publishing, $22.95)
Reviewed by Thornton McCamish
THIS is the book that many Geoff
Dyer fans have been hoping for
since they first discovered his 1997
cult hit Out of Sheer Rage. Like that
book – a book about not writing a
book about D.H. Lawrence – Zona is
a genre-bending homage, this time
to Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic 1979
film Stalker. It is not a critical study
but an idiosyncratic meditation on
‘‘the film’s persistent mystery and
my abiding gratitude to it’’.
You don’t need to know the film to
enjoy this book: by the end of Dyer’s
adoring shot-by-shot account you
will feel you know it backwards. The
film’s ‘‘Stalker’’ is a guide, a man who
leads people into the mysterious
Zone, a forbidden and depopulated
wasteland in some
unspecified, godforsaken
country. Inside the Zone is a
room where your deepest
wish will be granted.
‘‘Completely weird and
completely ordinary’’, the
Zone’s uncanny
dreamscape is – and this is
what Dyer really likes about
it – ‘‘a place ... a state ... of
heightened alertness to everything’’.
Stalker’s enigmas suit Dyer’s
purpose perfectly – they provide a
frame for 200 pages of thoughts
about art, life and belief on and
beyond the screen. Musing on
Tarkovsky’s hypnotic, infamously
long shots, in which every banal
object seems luminous with
significance, Dyer asks: ‘‘Is anything
especially worthy of our
attention? Everything is, or
may be.’’
Zona is by turns
profound, grouchy, candid
and witty.
‘‘Whatever else he may
be,’’ Dyer quips, reflecting
on the Zone’s streams, icky
puddles and slimy sumps,
‘‘Stalker is a man with a
MacArthur-like indifference to
getting his feet wet.’’
Dyer’s prose can be surgically
precise but it is the charming
looseness, that improvised air of
friendly cleverness that makes his
voice so distinctive. References to
everyone from Rilke and Zizek to
Thomas Mann and Larkin fight for
space with thoughts on taking LSD,
on Dyer’s greatest regret (that he
has never participated in a
threesome) and a bracingly long list
of personal dislikes.
Digression has always been a
signature of Dyer’s style. Here it is in
the structure, too. Zona has
footnotes so long and chatty they
gobble up whole pages. Sometimes
it is hard to follow the tangled
threads but a book about Stalker
probably should be.
The book is funny and thoughtful
on the difficulty of art. On the
pleasures of art, and our souls’
responses to it, it’s exhilarating.
booksextra
FOOTNOTES
Indie gongs for Funder
Sydney author Anna Funder
cleaned up at the Indie Awards last
night when her debut novel All That
I Am, about real-life anti-Hitler
activists, won the awards for book of
the year and best debut fiction.
Funder is the author of the
acclaimed nonfiction book
Stasiland, which is about the secret
police in the former German
Democratic Republic. Last year’s
Indie book-of-the-year winner,
Anh Do, won the award for best
children’s book with his wife,
Suzanne Do, for The Little Refugee.
The award for best fiction went to
Elliot Perlman for The Street
Sweeper and the award for best
nonfiction was won by
William McInnes and his late wife,
Sarah Watt, for Worse Things
Happen at Sea. The awards, which
are selected by independent
booksellers, were presented at their
annual conference in Melbourne.
Ladies’ man shortlisted
Amanisamongthesixshortlisted
authorsforthe$35,000Barbara
JefferisAward,whichgoesto“thebest
novelwrittenbyanAustralianauthor
thatdepictswomenandgirlsina
positivewayorotherwiseempowers
thestatusofwomenandgirlsin
society”.FrankMoorhouse’snovel
ColdLight,thethirdinhisLeagueof
NationstrilogyaboutdiplomatEdith
CampbellBerry,hasbeenchosen
alongwithGeorgia Blain’sTooClose
toHome,ClaireCorbett’sWhenWe
HaveWings,AnnaFunder’sAllThatI
Am,GailJones’sFiveBellsand
Gillian Mears’sFoal’sBread.
Moorhouseisnottheonlymanto
havebeenshortlistedforthisaward
sinceitstartedfiveyearsago.
Steven CarrollwasafinalistforThe
LostLifein2010.Thewinnerwillbe
announcedinMay.
Sights for young eyes
Four Australian authors have been
honoured in the United States Board
on Books for Young People’s
Outstanding International Book
List. They are Deborah Abela for
The Ghosts of Gribblesea Pier
(published in Australia as The
Remarkable Secret of Aurelie
Bonhoffen), Shaun Tan for Lost and
Found, Gabrielle Wang for The
Garden of Empress Cassia and
Sonya Hartnett for The Midnight
Zoo. The board selects an honour
list of international books for young
people each year.
Writers round-up
Those who enjoy reading war
history would be interested to know
that the former Defence Force chief
General Peter Cosgrove launched
Fighting to the Finish: the Australian
Army and the Vietnam War
1968-1975, by Ashley Ekins and the
late Ian McNeill, in Canberra last
week. It is the ninth and final
volume of the official history of
Australia’s involvement in south-
east Asian conflicts from 1948 to
1975. Novelist and former park
ranger Carrie Tiffany will be talking
about her book Mateship with Birds,
set in 1950s rural Australia, at the
Bathers’ Pavilion in Balmoral on
Wednesday from 6.30pm. And West
Australian Kim Scott has picked up
two more gongs – the 2012 South
Australian Premier’s award and
fiction prize – for That Deadman
Dance, his novel about black and
white relations. The book has now
won most major Australian book
awards including the Miles Franklin
and a Prime Minister’s award.
Marc McEvoy
footnotes@fairfaxmedia.com.au