Podcast Transcript
Nikki Gemmell “The Ripping Tree”
SPEAKERS
Nikki Gemmell, Nicole Abadee
Nicole Abadee
Hello, I'm Nicole Abadee and I write about books for good weekend. Welcome to the Books, Books, Books podcast in which I interview the best writers from Australia and overseas about their latest books. Thank you for joining me. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge the country where I live and work and from where I'm joining this conversation, the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. I pay my respects to their elders past and present to the elders of all communities and cultures across Australia, and to leaders of the future. You can listen to this podcast all of the episodes at nicoleabadee.com.au or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Today I'm delighted to welcome one of Australia's most loved writers, Nikki Gemmell to Books, Books, Books. We will be talking about her latest novel "The Ripping Tree" published by fourth estate, an imprint of Harper Collins. Nikki's first short story ever was published in Quadrant by Liz Murray. She is the best selling writer of 13 novels including Shiver, Cleave and The Bride Stripped Bare. She's also written five nonfiction books, the most recent being "After" a powerful memoir about her mother's death by suicide. Four of her books Shiver, Cleave, The Bride Stripped Bare and The Book of Rapture, have made the long list of favourite Australian novels as chosen by readers of Australian book review. Her books have been translated into 22 languages. And in France she has been called the female Jack Kerouac. Nikki writes a weekly column for the Weekend Australian magazine. One review has said about her latest book, the one we'll be talking about today, The Ripping Tree, "If ever a book deserves to become a classic, The Ripping Tree does." Nikki has said about her own writing, "I've always loved fearless, dangerous writing, where the aim is to disturb, that makes people uncomfortable, gets them to think." Nikki, welcome to Books, Books, Books.
Nikki Gemmell
Thank you, Nicole. It's lovely to be here.
Nicole Abadee
It's lovely to have you here. Now you have described this latest novel of yours "The Ripping Tree" as a depth charge of truth wrapped in the glossy package of a thriller. A Love Story. What's it about?
Nikki Gemmell
It's hard to encapsulate it in a you know, in a succinct way. Basically, I began with the idea of a stranger in a strange land. And I took that cuw from Viola in Twelfth Night. So a young woman 16 year old Thomasina Trelora, she is shipwrecked off the Australian coast, not specified where. She's the only survivor of the shipwreck. She's rescued by an Indigenous man and taken to an illustrious house called Willowbrae. And she basically thinks, "oh my goodness, this is amazing." Like Viola in Twelfth night, she thinks, "hey, I have a chance to reinvent myself." She changes how she dresses. She wants to become a boy in terms of how she dresses and she goes against the decorum of the time. I must say this is set in early colonial times. And basically what Thomasina, my Tom, realizes over a short, sharp seven days, she realizes that what she thinks is saving her initially in terms of this family and this wonderful house that she lived, that they live in, may actually be destroying her. And so the novel becomes a race to escape the clutches of this family.
Nicole Abadee
Nikki, thank you. Could you read a short extract from "The Ripping Tree" please?
Nikki Gemmell
Yes, of course. This is quite early on in the novel, when Thomasina is just getting to know the family around her. The woman leads me to the bed and at the strength in the encircling arms I wilt. The ocean is back through me and I sway and fall to the sheet like a mole wanting to tunnel into its home. Home, so removed from all this. When I depart this world I want my body slipped into the sweet wild Earth of my unbound girlhood, my balming Earth. But I fear I'll never get back to it now. This is my only certainty here that I'll never again sleep in the home that holds my heart hostage. My little tea pot of the cottage with its snug windows of warped glass and sooty candle knocks and narrow stairs to my attic lair. I'd always leap over the bottom five in my race to clutter into the day. I nestle on this strange bed now, want to weep. With my father I was exactly the person I wanted to be. I was found and now I need some kind of ballast. I am lost. Name? Age? 16. A softening voice. I think they're still something of the child in you yes? You do look very young. Poor poppet, what you have been through. My hair is smoothed behind an ear and smoothed and I nudge into the sudden tenderness like a dog wanting a pat, the woman's fingers hold my head firm on either side and find both temples and rub in a circular motion, and I shut my eyes and surrender to the authoritative feminine touch that's melting away my headache. My mother died of a lung disorder when I was four and all she left me with was a craving for a fingertip slowness down a cheek and a fierce female holding where everything is soothed right. My father left me with the memory of freedom in a life laboured by the earth. He didn't want his girl in corsets that restricted her breathing or skirts without the convenience of pockets. He wanted my hands ready for the world. You must have pockets for your fossils and sticks to collect the world Tommy Tom. And now an unreadable woman fusses around me. Her hands straighten the bed clothes and rearrange items on the Bureau and tuck Jack's knife under the Bible as if she'd sullied by the sight of it. Then she goes to the curtains and completely shuts out the light. "What dreams child?" "Pardon?" "This morning, you were crying and calling out clawing at the air to be saved" The mammy mimes madness in restless sleep. "Oh, I have no memory of it. Goodness." I'll have to watch that any signs of slippage. After my father's death, my brother had one thing over me when it came to stubbornness and strock. He threatened to have me locked in the county women's asylum more than once. And as my legal guardian he could have done it. "That look Thomasina it's too much. Would you care for the asylum perhaps? Would you it can be arranged just try me go on? I always knew that a charge of insubordination or willfulness was enough to have me banished. Women around me had been swallowed by less. Beth Time for being a grass widow. Although why she should have been punished when her husband was the one who got bored and ran off, leaving her to look after two small children, I don't know? Mary Harris for rebellion against domesticity. M snow for fret sickness after her baby came. Hetty Rattle for fret sickness when her baby didn't come. Ada Wilton hysteria. Cara Larkin hysteria. And what exactly did that word mean? My brother's solution to the vexed matter of my existence lay in a parish in the colonies, regrettably far from his own estate, but close enough to occasionally keep an eye on me. I could never be left in Nockleby, completely alone unwatched and penniless. Ambrose had burdened our Father's house with debt to fund his new life in the new world and now there's no family money left. And I was not allowed to be left behind to become the village eccentric in my perplexing boy clothes. But what Ambrose doesn't know is that I'll only marry for love and want and that decision will remain sacrosanct.
Nicole Abadee
Nikki, thank you so much for that. You've said about this book you mentioned before Twelfth Night and Viola but you've also said on other occasions that the books across between Henry James's book "The Turn of the Screw" and the film "Get Out" what are they about? And what was it about them that influenced you in the writing of this book,
Nikki Gemmell
"Get Out" and "The Turn of the Screw" I'd both describe them as psychological thrillers, with the trauma of the protagonist at their centre. And you really get into the head of both those, those protagonists. In terms of "The Turn of the Screw," I was fascinated by it. It's a very short book. I was fascinated by the building tension. You don't know what quite is going on. It's a very unsettling novel. It ends with complete trauma. You don't know if what you've read is a ghost story or not. It's a story that stays with you and I wanted that with "The Ripping Tree." I wanted to be this to be something that lingers in the readers mind. And like "The Turn of the Screw," hopefully something that you know, readers are staying up all night to find out what exactly happens to the protagonist. In terms of the film, "Get Out," "Get Out" a wonderful film, I was fascinated by that. It's about a young man who goes to his girlfriend's house in the country and illustrious house very isolated. And he gradually realises this this amazing, very wealthy family is not as they seem, and something very unsettling is going on there. So like, my Thomasina, he has to work out a way to escape. And his life is threatened. And I wanted my Tom's life threatened too. I'd never written in the thriller genre before, but I've kind of mashed it up with colonial historical fiction and as I said, you know, a psychological thriller, as well. So I don't quite know what I've created here. And I must admit, for ages, I thought, "Gosh, is this working? Is this is this? What have I done? I can't quite quite grasp, it will readers get what I'm trying to do here?" But amazingly, it seems like they do.
Nicole Abadee
Nikki, I want to ask you about the writing process. I know that you wrote it over a period of 10 years or so. And during that period, you wrote other books, you wrote other nonfiction books, you wrote some children's books, and a lot happened to you personally, you lost both of your parents in that time. And you had a newborn child as well. So when did you find the time to write it? How did you intersperse the writing of this book with the writing of the other books? How did it all fit together and with your life and your mother, your life as a mother of four children?
Nikki Gemmell
Oh, look, it was it was very hard. I find the writing process much harder as I get older. And that, of course, is the demands of home and motherhood. You know, when I was younger, I used to go for huge 12 hours, 16 hours stretches of writing, you know, up until midnight or beyond fuelled by champagne and chocolate, I just go and I have this enormous amount of energy. Now I get to 9pm. And it's like, That's it, I'm done. I just can't stay awake longer. So what I find is I have to write within school hours. So you know, I dropped my youngest off to school by nine, I'm back at my desk by 9:15/ 9:30 and then I just solidly work until about three o'clock when kids start coming home from school. They crash into my world enormously and I must admit, you know, my brain isn't what it used to be too. I just have so many competing things in there. "The Ripping Tree," the germ of the idea came just before I realised I was pregnant. At 44 I thought I was going through the menopause when my periods stopped and it was like, Oh my gosh, I've got a baby. But I've got a novel to write oh!
Nicole Abadee
And Nikki was that when you were still in London, or were you home in Sydney?
Nikki Gemmell
Yeah
Nicole Abadee
Still in London?
Nikki Gemmell
Yes, I was still in London and we after 15 years, we had finally decided to make the move home and I remember tripping into my agents office in Covent Garden and saying, "Godwin," I call him Godwin, David Godwin that's my agent. I just said "Godwin I'm going home." And he said, "Well, good riddance Gemmell, you've been wanting to say this, you've been wanting to do this for so long." But he said, "Go home and write your Aussie book, write your big Aussie book." Because I I'd been kind of sidetracked by England through several books. I mean, from the brightener. From "Love Song" and "Bride Stripped Bare" onwards, I'd written British centric books. And I hadn't written a novel based in Australia for a very long time. And so I wanted to, I wanted to write a love letter to my land, my home, my country, and that's what I've done with, for me with "The Ripping Tree." But I also wanted to pick up that scab of colonialism, you know, traumatic truths that often seem buried or we don't want to confront them or face them. You know, it's perhaps a gaping wound within the Australian psyche, but I wanted to dive deep with that one. So how did I find time to write this? You know, I I just gleaned time wherever I could and then you know, I put it aside to make some more money basically to buy me time to write fiction. So I guess I did a few other book projects along the way. I did um children's fiction, several series, and I did a memoir about my mother and her euthanasia death after, so I take six months or a year out of this writing process. And then when I came back to "The Ripping Tree" I had to read it all over again because, you know, I couldn't quite remember where I was up to or how far along I was. So it was a very, very lengthy process.
Nicole Abadee
Nikki, tell us about the title. There was a lovely story I think about where the title came from. Could you share that with us?
Nikki Gemmell
Well, when I came back to Australia, in 2011, I brought with me three little pommies who'd all been born in London and my youngest at that stage, my daughter, she was three, four and she arrived in Australia and she was fascinated by the trees, these amazing trees with long tongues of bark that you could peel away and play with. And she said, "Look, Mommy, look at the ripping tree. I love the ripping trees." And she kept on saying this word, this phrase, and I thought, Isn't that fantastic? My magpie, writer's brain thinks that would be the most amazing title, the ripping tree.
Nicole Abadee
She's talking about paperbark trees isn't she? That you actually can pull strips off.
Nikki Gemmell
Exactly. So that you know she as a as a young child was ripping the bark from the trees. So that's why she was calling them the ripping trees. And for me, I thought, I love that title. So in a way, I created the book around the title. And the ripping tree in the novel, it's the scene of a horrendous crime. It's, there's a paper bark there and I just loved the metaphors about you know, getting to the truth of something. So it all fit but it took me 10 years to make it fit.
Nicole Abadee
Let's talk now a little bit then about the main characters. Tell us first of all about Poss, what do we know about her childhood? And by the time we meet her, she's 16 what sort of a young woman is she?
Nikki Gemmell
Poss my protagonist, I fell in love with her as I was writing her. I set out thinking I want to write a character who could almost be a sibling of those wonderful characters in Australian, you know, 19th century literature, like Sybilla from "My Brilliant Career," Juju Judy, from "Seven Little Australians," these strong sparky, stubborn young women who were too honest for their own good, who haven't quite been tamed, who are a bit clumsy, a bit loud, don't quite fit in. I wanted a protagonist like that. So that's my Poss. She was raised in eccentricity, she, her mother passed away when she was very young. And she was raised by her father, who's a deeply eccentric, endearing character who decided that um, you know, if a girl wants to wear trousers and climb trees and and hunt for rabbits and all the rest of it, then why shouldn't they be able to do that? Because they were there. They were on a very isolated farm, she was, she was able to be raised in this way. I wanted to write several characters who are delightfully masculine. You know, there's there's a few examples of toxic masculinity in my book, but I wanted to counter that with very warm, tender portraits of masculinity as well. So the father is is one of those portraits.
Nicole Abadee
And Nikki just reminded she might have mentioned that what is Thomasina doing on this voyage, she's on a voyage with 132 people out from England, to the colonies. And as you've explained that the ship is wrecked and she's the sole survivor. What brought her to Australia?
Nikki Gemmell
She was being sent to Australia to be married off. This was after her father's death. Her older brother, who she doesn't get on with, decided that the only way he could contain and tame his untameable younger sister is to marry her off to a vicar in the colonies who he knows of. So Thomasina knows nothing about this man, except that he's twice her age and she is dreading it. Which is why when she is shipwrecked off the Australian coast and the only survivor, she sees this as a chance to become someone else entirely.
Nicole Abadee
So let's talk now about the family on whose doorstep she finds herself. The craw family. What we know about them is that they seem to be a very fine, illustrious family. I'd like to start by asking you about Mr. And Mrs. craw. What are they like?
Nikki Gemmell
Their world is saturated in the Bible. They see themselves as very pious God fearing people. Scos by ancestry, but very, very complicated in terms of how they've acquired their wealth, what has happened in terms of great traumas on their land. You know, not too long ago. A very secretive family, they live in isolation. And basically, it's a family under immense pressure and strain and it's cracking apart. And you know, Tom, unbeknown to her walks completely into this, and starts asking questions, you know about why things seem a bit odd or what's really going on. She doesn't know how to be nice and meek or quiet to have that curtain of niceness, which Edith Warton talks about, to have that put over her, she doesn't understand that. And this gets her into an awful amount of trouble that, you know, the book is about the silencing of a woman and how she fights against the silencing too. My passion, is fairness. And I think through most of my writing, you know, it's all about fairness in a way that there's a thread through it all. And this book as well has that passion for fairness in it. And Tom has that passion for fairness. So if she perceives that something is unfair she wants to question it, she wants to raise it. She hasn't learned to keep her mouth shut. And that's a problem for her.
Nicole Abadee
Now, Mrs. Craw is particularly delighted when she turns up, isn't she because she has three sons, and she's very sadly has lost daughters in the past. So she's very excited that this is a young woman that she can, in effect make into her own image that's, that's turned up. Could you tell me a little bit about the three Craw sons in particular Mouse and his relationship with Tom?
Nikki Gemmell
Yes, well, there's Virgil, who is very quiet and secretive and just kind of watches Poss but won't really extend a hand to help her. There's Tobin the looker of the family. Um, he reminds me of Jane Austen's Wickham, he is a bit of a cad and he sees his chance with Tom. And so there's an interesting dynamic there, she is initially taken in by him. And then there's little Mouse, who's seven years old, he comes across as a delightful, but very lonely little boy, because basically, this family is raised in isolation, a very isolated estate. So little Mouse has no peers around him and gradually, you realise there's something not quite right about Mouse either, within the context of the family. I was interested in the trope of the creepy child going back to Henry James and so I wanted there to be something very unsettling about Mouse that you keep on reading the book to kind of put your finger on what on earth is going on there or has gone on there with him.
Nicole Abadee
And how's this family regarded in the community, Nikki?
Nikki Gemmell
Oh, illustrious, you know, fine, upstanding people. But you know, there's a collusion of silence in that community, too. You know, there are a lot of secrets amongst the people. There's a church scene there where the community gathers. You know, there's a lot of dark history that has gone on among the white settlers within this community. And they don't want an outsider asking too many questions about it. Because you know, the, in terms of the authorities within the colony, they are starting to ask questions about certain things, because there has been an element of lawlessness within the land. I um, I did a lot of research over this decade. And I feel like you know, in many ways, it's all been poured into the novel.
Nicole Abadee
I want to ask you about that, because I know that you started your, you started your career as a journalist, with an ABC cadetship in radio, but you're still a practicing journalist, you write a column for the Weekend, Australian magazine each week. So I'm interested in how your training and your work as a journalist informs your writing, and in particular, your research.
Nikki Gemmell
Look I feel very grateful for my training in radio journalism, in terms of how it informs fiction, it seems like they're polar opposites. But radio journalism taught me various things, one really respect deadline and here I am, it's taken me 10 years! But with the other books that I wrote within that time, the deadline was always respected, and 2. not to be too precious about your work in terms of you know, as a radio journalist, you have to paint vivid word pictures that, you know, fill a 50 second news item or a 30 second voice report or so, so you learn to become very lean and distill the essence of the scene, and if it's going to be ripped and slashed Soviet, you know, by an editor or whatever. And so, you know, you learn just to let things go if they're not working. And I had two fabulous editors on this book through over the decade. And I must admit, I was all ears in terms of suggestions, and I'm very, very grateful for what we ended up with. And so radio journalism, it has really, really helped me but I must admit, for me, I write my column in the Weekend Australian magazine to buy me time to write my fiction. So basically, every week my head fills up with this panic on you know, maybe Sunday afternoon. "Oh, my goodness, what am I gonna write? What am I gonna write this week? the cupboards there yet again." And that takes up a lot of mental energy. But I always hope to have my column finished by Monday night, Tuesday, if I have to, which leaves me the rest of the week, to do what I really want to do, which is write fiction. I find it very difficult to write nonfiction and fiction at the same time, almost impossible. So I have to finish the column, put that away for the week, and then go to my fiction to make it all work.
Nicole Abadee
Let's go then to the research for this book. There are two areas I wanted to ask you about one, the description of the home of Willowbrae. It's described in elaborate detail and I wondered about what research you had done into early colonial homes?
Nikki Gemmell
Oh, look, I am I had a ball creating Willowbrae. I wanted to create a house that was that sits at the center of a novel in the way that Mandoli does with "Rebecca," or Wuthering Heights does, or even something like a Privet Drive, which is so central to that narrative of "Harry Potter." I just, I just love the idea of creating a really iconic colonial house mansion. And lo and behold, you know, Australia has quite a few. I traveled to Northwestern Tasmania, and no sorry, Northeastern Tasmania. It must have been about three quarters of an hour outside of Launceston there is a wonderful National Trust property that's this huge colonial mansion still with kind of convict out houses and stables and things attached to it. It looks like something out of the American deep south, it's it's beautifully restored, you can go through it, my phone is full of photographs. It wasn't the only colonial house that I looked at, I went up to Port Macquarie I looked at one here in Sydney as well. But you know, sometimes it was just a fireplace, I took from one place, or a kitchen from the other or wallpaper in another one or drapes, the curtains, the way they fell in another. So basically, my phone is just full of, you know, little tiny snapshots of, that I know it's going to end up in a scene somewhere. But it might be just, you know, one bit of a colonial house mashed up together with another one.
Nicole Abadee
So let me ask you about maybe the central theme, I think probably the way to describe it, of this book. And that is the relations between the European settlers and the Indigenous people. We're not going to talk too much about that, because there'll be no spoilers here but suffice to say that's a very important concern of the book. And I was interested to see in your acknowledgments that you said that Professor John Maynard, from the University of Newcastle, read your manuscript for you. Could you talk a little bit about that, and about the research that informed the aspects of the writing about relations between Indigenous people and the early settlers?
Nikki Gemmell
Yeah, so I've been reading for years, you know, accounts of oral histories in terms of what happened, what really happened, in terms of settler times the brutality is almost unbearable, almost unreadable, but I didn't want to shy away from that, because I do think we as Australians, you know, we too easily buried under the carpet, we don't want to know whatever. So I really wanted to confront the brutality and the horror of this history in a way wrapped, as you said earlier, within that glossy thriller package. Um, so I did a lot of research in terms of things that had happened and certainly what I write about there are no stories passed down that these things happened.
Nicole Abadee
There are some truly horrific.
Nikki Gemmell
Yes,
Nicole Abadee
Episodes, in this book, and I wanted to ask you if you had made those up, or if they were based in reality, hard to believe that they had really happened.
Nikki Gemmell
Yes. And in fact, they came from my year nine boys history. So he, he was bringing this material home from his high school, and showing me because he had no idea either. And I was I was really grateful for the school that he was at, for confronting this. And showing this. And having those year nine boys discuss this within their history classes, I had no idea until that time until my son showed me these these records. So I did want to, I did not want to shy away from the horror because it is so horrific and brutal. But I was very aware within "The Ripping Tree," I did not want to speak in the voice of an indigenous person, I did not want to write from their perspective, I didn't feel that was my place. I didn't feel I had the non knowledge or the right. I didn't want to tread on anyone's toes, I wanted to step back in terms of that. So yes, it's written purely from Thomasina's perspective, it's in the first person. So I was very aware of that and with my heart in my mouth, my manuscript was handed over to wonderful Professor John Maynard, in the Indigenous Studies Center at the University of Newcastle. We went back and forth, maybe over a year and it was such a rich learning process. You know, he had suggestions, some things like, in terms of the Indigenous names, he helped me in fact, he named my Indigenous characters, which was wonderful, you know, beautiful, beautiful names. Things like I had a scene with a bullroarer in there, and little Mouse, the seven year old boy was playing with it, he found it and he said, you know, that would just not have happened. So, and he asked me to consider removing that scene, I was absolutely fine doing that, with the central horror. He did not want to touched he did not want to change. And he obviously knew about these stories that it had been based on. And I got the feeling that there may have been gratitude that these things are, you know, talked about, are out in the open. And my thinking was, perhaps someone will pick up "The Ripping Tree," someone like my father who just loves these, you know, regular thriller, his historical thrillers and all the rest of it. He might pick up "The Ripping Tree," perhaps get absorbed by the story, and learn something in the process.
Nicole Abadee
I know the books dedicated to your father, and I've heard you say that you think this might be the first of your books that he'd actually read and enjoy? Why did you say that?
Nikki Gemmell
Oh, because my beautiful dad, years, decades ago, and I said in my early 20s "Dad, I want to write novels." He said to me, "Oh a waste of time that" he was an old coal miner, he left school at 16, his world was, you know, hard yakka down the pit. He did not understand the world of books and writing. When I was growing up I think we had like Linda Goodman "Sun Signs" on the bookshelf and in fact I don't you think we even had a bookshelf, and maybe some Judith Krantz and that was it and The World Book Encyclopedias. So I didn't grow up in a house of books at all. He didn't understand that world. When "Shiver," my first novel was published, that was about 23 years ago I think, I gave dad a copy, you know. Beautifully inscribed in the front, thanking him and all the rest of it. He opened the book looked at the first page, there was a word on that first page that he didn't approve of, he shut the book. He said, that's it. And he never, he never read anything of mine again. And sadly, he died late last year, just before "The Ripping Tree" was published. So he didn't get to read this one too. But um, I think it would have been one, only one out of all my books that he would have actually read and enjoyed.
Nicole Abadee
Nikki, I have to ask you about that. I've read you saying that before, that you didn't grow up in a house full of books, that your parents didn't read all that much. Where then did your passion for writing and writing come from?
Nikki Gemmell
Some wonderful teachers. You know, I went to Little Kirragal Public School, which is a school in Wollongong. I had an amazing teacher there called Mr. Rice. He published in the school magazine, it was called the Kirragal Kookaburra, a poem of mine and I was like 10 and it was it's an awful poem looking back, but um, Just I can still remember the thrill of seeing my name attached to that and thinking "this is wonderful." And then I was Dux of my school when in primary school and I got a gift voucher, a book voucher and my dad took me to the local bookstore. I was in Sydney at that stage. My parents split up but he was still living in Wollongong. Coddington's Bookstore in crown street in Wollongong. And he marched me up to the counter as proud as punch. He handed over the book voucher and he just said, "My daughter's just won this and she needs a book that she will carry through life." And the lady looked at me and she said, I know exactly what to give you young lady. And we walked up to the back of the store, and she slipped out this beautiful leather bound volume of Jane Eyre. And my dad was so proud. And it was, it was in the days where you could just go to a key change key cutting booth and they would emboss the leather for you. So dad got my name and the date embossed on this copy of Jane Eyre and I still have it and I still treasure it. So even though we weren't a house of books, my mom and dad both certainly valued reading and they knew the importance of it and my mom actually became when she moved to Sydney, she became passionate about the world of books. This was post divorce was kind of post housewife for her.
Nicole Abadee
Let's go back and talk a little bit more about Thomasina. One thing we should explain to listeners, we'll call her Poss from now on. That's her nickname Thomasina is the name that she's born with that she arrives in Australia with but when she has a chance to remake herself she she takes the name Poss, so I'm going to call her Poss from now on. When they first find, The Craws first find Poss on their doorstep and they ask her where she came from, she says "I searched for a voice to tell them who I was, and how I got to their house." And at various other times in the book at times of emotional intensity, she finds herself speechless. To what extent is this book about this young woman, this shipwrecked young orphan, finding her voice?
Nikki Gemmell
I think it's very important in terms of young women. Um, you know, I'm fascinated by how we render ourselves voiceless often when we're younger. I mean, Edith Wharton, she did talk about this curtain of niceness that falls over us. And you know, in a way, it's a quietening. It's a meekness that befalls us. We learn our place in the world, and it is kind of a lesser, quieter place. So I was fascinated by this concept and how Poss realises that if she becomes this woman, if she becomes a woman who can fit into this world, then life will be pretty easy for her. But it doesn't feel like an authentic self to her. And she's raging, she's you know, roiling underneath that and something is very, very wrong here. So, all the way through, I was fascinated about the silencing of women and women trying to find their voices, sometimes finding those voices, sometimes failing to. I was also fascinated by the concept of ghosting, you know, a very modern concept. But certainly, you know, it can be applied in situations at any time. And I wanted to write about that situation, too and how it can render a woman voiceless as well. What do you mean by that Nikki, by ghosting? Well, by ghosting, I mean, Poss sees something that, you know, is her truth. She raises questions about it, and people are going, "What do you mean, there's nothing, there's nothing here? What do you know? You don't have to worry about that. It's no big deal. It's not an issue. Just forget about that. You're a little girl who doesn't need to know anything. Just, you know, go back to your bedroom and be quiet." Basically.
Nicole Abadee
Mr. Craw actually says to her a few times, "you're imagining things you're seeing things"
Nikki Gemmell
Yes!
Nicole Abadee
"It must be the bump on the head that you got."
Nikki Gemmell
Exactly, exactly. Because she did get a bump. You know, she was quite knocked around with the shipwreck. So I wanted this concept of ghosting to be introduced, which you know, which is interesting with "Turn of the Screw" and what James does with his protagonists too. They think they're going mad, they question Are they going mad? are they seeing things? They start to question themselves, and it's deeply rattling and silencing. So I wanted my my poor lovely Poss to go through this situation too. I was fascinated by that as a narrative thread throughout the book.
Nicole Abadee
Nikki she talks a lot in the book about choice and about freedom. How much choice would there have been available to a young woman in her situation whose mother had died when she was four, her father died when she was 15? What sort of choices were available to her in England?
Nikki Gemmell
Well, there weren't many, you know, besides being married off, or becoming a spinster, her brother had basically taken any sense of choice over her future, away from her. And she raged at the unfairness of this, she wanted to marry for love and she was being denied that chance. And also with Poss she had hanging over her all the time, which was another strand of the research that I did, but if she was too willful, stubborn, stroppy, outspoken bolshie, she could be carted off to what's called the County Women's Asylum in England, where she came from, or, you know, a female factory in Australia.
Nicole Abadee
I want to, I wanted to ask you about that. Let's go back to the asylums in England. I'm not sure if they were the same as as the asylums here at that time but you, you mentioned in that passage that you read, there were references to several friends of hers who had found themselves in an asylum. What did that mean for a young woman in that, if you, if you found yourself locked up for hysteria in an asylum in England? What would your life be like?
Nikki Gemmell
Well, you can disappear, you know, behind those high walls with all the research that I did, it was tragic. Some women just basically disappeared behind those walls, and were never seen again and Poss within the context of the story, she has a dear friend who this happened exactly to her. So she is aware of the threat of being incarcerated, you know, for for the most spurious reasons. And it was a very real worry for her in terms of the power that her brother had over her, and how he could decide her fate and her future if she didn't go through with this marriage to this Vicar that he had arranged.
Nicole Abadee
So Nikki, you've mentioned how Ambrose tried to control her in England by this threat of the asylum and as you've hinted, so much of this book is about power and control about men, though not just men. When she gets here, it's Mrs. Craw as well trying to control strong women. When Poss arrives in this household, she really turns it upside down. She challenges them in all sorts of ways. What does she do? What's it about her behavior that they find so confronting?
Nikki Gemmell
Well, she just refuses to conform. She refuses to do what they want, what they, you know what they want her to do. And this enrages them, it baffles them, bewilders them at the start, but then it completely enrages them. You know, the way she's been raised with her father is in a very free spirited way that he encouraged her to have a voice and to use it and to use her physicality. You know, she's a wild child. She's like a Kathy, in Wuthering Heights. You know, she just, she loves the land, she just wants to immerse herself in outside and I wanted to create a really strong difference between the interior and the exterior worlds of Willowbrae. Someone like Mrs. Craw the matriarch of the family is terrified of it, has never got used to it. You know, it took one of her children her only daughter. It's spiky and and it's it's got, it stings you and it bites you and there's nothing about the Australian landscape that she finds attractive. And I must admit, for me, coming off the back of 15 years in England, I kind of used my outsider eyes, you know, I am an Aussie and I've been an Aussie my whole life but when I came back into Australia to live in it after being away for so long, I suddenly saw it the way you know, British people around me had talked about you know, in terms of they, they considered Australia ugly. They said "you know, it's just yellow grass and our overhead powerlines and everything bites you and stings you and it's the leaves are spiky and they prick you" and all the rest of it. I suddenly saw my land through outsider eyes. So I wanted to give Mrs Craw those outsider eyes too, but Poss as well but with her it's all wonder it's all you know this this young open hearted childlike wonder like Viola in when she gets to Illyria of like, "what is this? Where is this and this is amazing." Whereas for Mrs. Craw it's like, "Oh, I just want to go home. I hate this place."
Nicole Abadee
She doesn't want to go outside. She's very frightened of anything outside and she tries to keep us inside. So one of the things that Poss does that drives them mad is something that her father's allowed her to do at home and that's to wear boys clothes. And there's one classic scene where she is, she goes out the front of the house and meets a whole crowd of people from the town and The Craws are most embarrassed that she's presented herself in this way, wearing men's clothes, one of their son's clothes, How did they, The Craws, try to control her?
Nikki Gemmell
Well, um clothes very important throughout the book, and eventually they forced corsets and petticoats and all the rest of it upon her. So, you know, she begins in a very free spirited way, you know, she's borrowed some trousers, she's able to roam the property, when she starts discovering things on this property and about this property, and in terms of how it's been acquired, and who might still be living on this property, She's, and she asked questions about all of this, she is very quickly brought into line and forced to conform as a woman. Which, you know, she's like a horse, she's like a wild pony, you know, trapped in a in a strong box or something, she, she's kind of kicking out at everyone around her trying to find a freedom. So basically, the tension of the book is who wins this tussle? Is it The Craws? Or is it Poss?
Nicole Abadee
So Nikki unfairness is a very strong theme in this book, as it has been in your others and I wonder, is telling these stories in the way that you do in your fiction, a way of addressing that unfairness and perhaps trying to remedy it?
Nikki Gemmell
Yes. yYou know, I don't know, that I can ever remedy any of the unfairnesses that I've talked about throughout my writing. Um, I just, you know, go by the adage, that knowledge is power. And if I can contribute a little bit to that knowledge, then I have done a good thing, even if I, you know, it's only one or a handful of readers. That's why in a way, I like writing for the Weekend, Australian magazine, you know, that newspaper is not my world, my politics in a way. I'm a stranger in a strange land, writing for The Australian. But you know, I think, why preach to the, why preach to the converted, why, why write within an echo chamber? It's, it feels much more effective, and dangerous and terrifying, but necessary in a way to talk to those that don't necessarily agree with what I'm writing about. And if I can change the mind of just one of them, I feel like my job's done, or just get my readers to think differently, then that's a good thing. You know, I'm, I always want to write compassionately. And with "The Ripping Tree" my compassion was poured out to, you know, Indigenous people, and also to women. You know, early colonial times, white women, in terms of the hardships that they all faced.
Nicole Abadee
Let's talk a little bit about the language that you use in your books, you're known for using very poetic, beautiful language and I've heard you say, I need to have the right rhythm in my sentences to make the words sing. So I know the sound of the writing, the rhythm of the language is very important to you. There's so many examples of beautiful language in this book, but that there was just one that I picked out as an example where it's in the early days of Poss talking to Mouse and she swears in front of him and that's not something that he's used to hearing and he finds that quite thrilling to hear, sort of quasei adult swearing. And you talk about that, I'll try and say this, it's a tongue twister, "the salty salary cussing, that's now tipping into him, that it's now tipping him into thrillingly illicit territory." How important is it to you to choose the right words? How much polishing is involved to produce writing like that?
Nikki Gemmell
Oh, look, it's so important. For me Poetry is always my tuning fork. And I find when I'm writing my own fiction, I can't read anyone else's fiction around me. I, I read a lot of poetry, though. I love the way it is language distilled to its essence. And I love how effective it can be in conveying things. So it's very important to me to write with beauty. I've always tried to, but I've always been very, very aware of the rhythm of my prose as well, as you were saying. To me, it's all about the rhythm. You know, it has to sing it. It can't be repetitive. It's, It's so important with a full stop and the commas and all the rest of it.
Nicole Abadee
How do you find that rhythm Nikki, do you read it aloud to yourself or to someone?
Nikki Gemmell
No, no, I read it in my head but I can tell instantly if the rhythm isn't right. And I must admit, when I write my columns, I use that discipline with my column writing as well. And often I find that the newspapers, sub editors, they don't quite get what I'm doing. Because you know, they're used to a different world in a different way of writing. And they'll just put commas in everywhere. And to me, it's like, oh, no, no, please don't. You know, in a way, I'm breaking rules all the time, grammar rules all the time. I'm not a parent, when it comes to, you know, grammar and words and all the rest of it. It's just how effective it is to convey meaning and whether that means rules are broken, so be it.
Nicole Abadee
Nikki, you said before "I write to answer questions, there's something unknown, or bewildering, and I write to either answer the question of why, or what's going on here." What questions were you answering with this book, "The Ripping Tree?"
Nikki Gemmell
I wanted to dive deep into the world of what really happened in our Indigenous past. I'm sick of the cover ups, I'm sick of the evasions. I'm sick of people not dealing with it. I feel like it's a great guilt that we carry within us as a nation. So I wanted to examine all that through through fiction. I mean, Dr. Anita Heiss, she said, recently, wonderful Indigenous writer, she said recently "that if you want to write a big Australian book, you cannot avoid the question of our Indigenous past." And I certainly did not want to avoid that at all. I, I can't see how you could write a colonial novel without addressing it. So that was one injustice I wanted to look at. And also, you know, I've, we've all had the #metoo movement over the last four or five years. And for me, that has been very, very strongly with me, you know, the resonances hroughout history, as I was creating Tom, as I was creating her claustrophobic world that she was railing against. As I was, you know, having her bound in clothes she didn't want to wear and thinking she's going mad, because she's seeing things that are deeply unfair but she's not allowed to talk about them or question them but they're treated as normal. I felt they were resonances with the #metoo movement too. So many instances of injustice came into this book. And those two are the main ones.
Nicole Abadee
Nikki, of course, as it turns out, this book about a strong, feisty young woman who resists attempts to be silenced, couldn't be more timely at the desert. Turns out that the book actually came out. Just at about the time of the rape allegations by Brittany Higgins. You've written about this and you said, this "anger changes the world for the better. This is a watershed moment, the rage is real and still seething. It is seamed like an underground river, right through so many women." To what extent is "The Ripping Tree" and expression, really a howl of rage, at attempts to control and silence women down through the ages?
Nikki Gemmell
It's absolutely a howl of rage in terms of what happened early this year in Parliament House in Canberra. You know, I wrote I am rage. And in one of the articles that I wrote, I listed all the ways that I am rage and there are 20 you know, the different ways that I'm just enraged by the whole situation. But yes, I do feel rage is seamed through me in terms of the treatment of women and I carry that rage from my grandmother from my mother. You know, the stories that they've told me? Yes, we can function in the world and all the rest of it. But we do carry that deep seated rage at unfairness and injustice. So I do feel like "The Ripping Tree" is very timely. And it's really just it, it carries through a generational rage, that I think a lot of women will recognise.
Nicole Abadee
Nikki, thank you so very much for talking with me today on Books, Books, Books. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. I've been reading your books for as long as I can remember, and I wish you the very best with this wonderful book.
Nikki Gemmell
Oh, Nicole, thank you so much. What a joy. Thank you.
Nicole Abadee
Thank you for listening to Books, Books, Books. If you liked what you heard in this episode, please go to my website. nicoleabadee.com.au to listen to all the episodes and find out more about the podcast. You can also find me Nicole Abadee on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and look for my reviews in Good Weekend. You can subscribe to Books, Books, Books at Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google and all the usual places. It would be lovely if you could go to any of these platforms and your give Books, Books, Books a rating or review. Thank you. I look forward to talking books with you again soon.