Michelle de Kretser

About Michelle

Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka and migrated to Australia with her family in 1972. She has taught English at the University of Melbourne, as well as working as an editor and book reviewer. Her novels, The Rose Grower (1999) and The Hamilton Case (2003), have been published across the world and translated into several languages. The Hamilton Case was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for South-East Asia and the Pacific, the Encore Award and the Tasmania Pacific Prize for Australian and New Zealand fiction. She lives in Melbourne.

Michelle is one of our Nottinghamshire reading champions.

We asked Michelle a few questions about reading and what has influenced her writing...

You are receiving a lot of attention as a writer. Longlisted for the Booker Prize, rave reviews from the likes of Hilary Mantel. When we talked you described yourself as a reader. Can you say a bit more about that?

I've written only three books, but I've read thousands. So, yes, I definitely think of myself as a reader - and I firmly believe all writers grow from readers. Books are the compost that nourish new writing. If someone were to hold a gun to my head and order me to choose between never writing another book and never reading one, I wouldn't hesitate. A life without reading would be unbearable.

You must know Francis Spufford's memoir, The Child That Books Built. It's a marvellous title and one that chimes deeply with my own experience. I was definitely a child built by books. I had a rather solitary childhood – I was the youngest in my family by a long way – and I grew up in Ceylon before that country had TV. So reading was the way I passed the time. I even played with books as objects, and delighted arranging and re-arranging them by colour and size!

So when I think of my childhood, one of the first things I think of is reading. And I think of reading in that amazingly concentrated way that children read, utterly immersed in the world of the book. Spellbound is the word that comes to mind when I think of that state. I’m sure you've experienced it: when you are in the world and not in it, when any interruption strikes you as an intrusion. I remember so vividly the frustration I would feel at having to stop reading because it was time for a meal or time to go somewhere or because some relative had come round and I was required to go and be polite to them. It’s an almost trance-like state; a little spooky when you think about it, that state of being present in two worlds at the same time.

Writing fiction shares that magical, other-worldly quality with reading. And another thing I love about both activities, is that you do them alone and in silence. There is so much noise in the world – not just literal noise but busyness, competing demands on our attention – and I love the fact that reading, like writing, grants us an intimate space in which to escape that noise.

While you are writing do you think of yourself in relation to your readers?

Not really. I try to write as well as I can about things I find interesting, and hope that other people will find them interesting too.

Readers Groups in libraries are increasingly popular. Have you noticed the phenomenon in Australia and how does the role of libraries compare to what you observed in England?

Libraries thrive in Melbourne (and elsewhere in Australia) and play a lively role in promoting reading - through reading groups, reading programmes, literary competitions, talks by authors, etc. I think they probably function in much the same way as in the UK.

Melbourne has recently been named a UNESCO City of Literature, the second in the world (after Edinburgh; Nottingham will follow, never fear!). I'm sure our flourishing library culture and dedicated librarians had a part in winning us the title.

I love public libraries and use them regularly. I live a five-minute walk away from my local library, which is networked to several others, and at any given moment, you'll find books from their combined collection beside my bed. For work I also use the State Library, which has an outstanding research collection.

And now, the obvious question. Which writers have had the most profound effect on your life and your writing?

You know, readers are much better at spotting influences than writers! I have decidedly eclectic taste and love all kinds of books (literary fiction, whodunnits, poetry, biography...). When I was a child I was allowed to read anything I wanted as soon as I could read it, and still, today, my reading at any given moment resembles the delicious hotchpotch of the best kind of remainder table. Right now, beside my bed, is an illustrated guide to architecture, Hermione Lee's life of Edith Wharton, Richmal Crompton's William The Good, the letters of Penelope Fitzgerald and Rosalind Belben's Hound Music. So as you can see I'm a magpie, picking up whatever bit of glitter catches my eye!

I also think that everything I've read has gone into making me who I am: and I mean everything, all the way from Noddy to Mme Bovary!

I want to say one last thing: over the course of my life, books have given me more sustained pleasure than anything else I've known. I can't say how grateful I am to their authors. I think that if my books can give even a tiny fraction of that delight to other readers, I won't have lived in vain.