Jane Goodall’s novel, The Walker (Hodder) has been selected as the Great Read in the March issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Q Congratulations on your debut novel, The Walker – it’s a terrific thriller. A Thank you, obviously it’s just lovely for me to have this happen – really lovely. Q I believe the plot for The Walker originated on a train trip in the UK? A Curiously enough that episode at the start of the book – which is about a young schoolgirl travelling by train in the UK – came to me while I was in Australia. And I was remembering the train trips I used to do, because like the girl in the opening chapter, I went to a weekly boarding school in Plymouth for a while and it specialised in taking the daughters of navy personnel who were away a lot and travelled around the world. I did exactly what she does, which was to carry my bag to the train station every Friday night, to go home to Exeter. Q Where was the train going in Australia when all this came to mind? A Umm, I was actually driving down to Hyams Beach in southern NSW. I’d been writing – I’d tried to write a couple of novels set in Australia, before. But they got too complicated and I couldn’t finish them. This one seemed to sort of come to me, almost like a dream. Not an idealistic dream but just like a book comes at you. Q It floated into your brain as you were driving down the highway? A Yes, I mean, my husband was driving and I was dreaming. But it’s odd that I chose to have this day-dream going right back to England, when I’d been trying to write Australian based fiction. Q I suppose the fact that you were on the move made you think of the train trips of your childhood? A Yes and it was quite a nice time, because we were going on holiday at the end of a hard year, so I felt a bit freed up in my mind. Q You were born in Yorkshire in the UK, then moved to Australia aged six and it was your father’s work that brought you out here? A Yes, he taught at Adelaide University. He was a lecturer in literature. Q Then you moved back to the UK during your high school years and attended the University of London, where you got what kind of degree? A English Literature. Q Why did you return to Oz after that? A I hankered to go back to Australia all my teenage years. I married quite young and I came here with my husband. He was looking for jobs and I encouraged him to look for one in Australia. Q What made you hanker to return here? A Everything about it. The openness of Australia. The climate. I think the social openness, as well. Adelaide in the 1950s was a real mixture. There was a lot of migration following the war. I remember people from Poland and Germany and Africa and all sorts of places. But I remembered going to a primary school where there were many different kinds of backgrounds. I think I’ve remained more comfortable in mixed environments. Mixed cultural backgrounds, interests and expectations in life. Mixed in the style of talking and thinking about the world. Q So Australia embedded itself in you by giving you an ease in those sorts of surrounds? A That’s right. And because of moving all the time in my childhood, I was always the outsider. I’m now very uncomfortable with someone who has a strong insider feel to them. It doesn’t really matter what they’re inside of (laughing), I can’t quite feel comfortable. I teach now at the University of Western Sydney, a classic place for people who are all outsiders in a way. Most people there come from somewhere else. Q You lecture in drama there? A Well, drama has been my main area. Q So what year was it you returned to Australia to live? A I’m strangely inaccurate about these things. I think it was 1975. Q How many years have you been married? A Hmmm, I think I was married in 1973. Q Husband’s first name? A Peter Q Job? A He works at Macquarie University as an English lecturer. Q I read that one of the reasons you wrote a thriller is that it’s because you enjoy reading the genre – are you a fan of any particular author? A A lot of them are historical. I love the Sherlock Holmes stories. And I love Wilkie Collins. I love Dickens. And Henry James’ ghost stories. And the ghost stories by M.R. James. I love thrillers with a touch of the supernatural. Like a flicker on the edge of your vision. Something you can’t quite get. Q Do you like contemporary thriller writers? A Nicci French is one of the most consistent ones. I think they are stunning with the kind of intensity they build. Q Once the idea for this novel took hold, you did a lot of research around London? A Yes, because my parents are getting quite old, I’ve been trying to go there every two years. I think I only had one trip to England during the process of writing the book over two years. I did do a huge amount of walking around London. That’s what I love doing anyway, walking around cities. So I walked all around the ‘Ripper Mile’. And I walked around the Vine Street, Piccadilly area. And the area where the girls in the book have a flat, I actually lived in myself. Q Were you just observing or taking meticulous notes? A I just soaked it in. I don’t really like research with a capital “R” in fiction. Fiction is not about research. Research helps to make it convincing. I had read a bit about Vine Street, station and that had intrigued me. It was only open for a short time and what I read about it, everyone complained about what a daggy place it was. There was something slightly comical about mismatched people going to a daggy station. I also read somewhere (I’m fascinated by what it is people want to read) that people want to read about working life. That really became the focus. That the police station was where working life takes place. There’s a sort of workaholic devil in Policewoman Briony, the main character in The Walker, who doesn’t know when to stop. Q I liked Briony’s persistence and strength of character – will we be seeing her in another book? A I’m trying to work on a new one now and on a slightly more mature role for Briony, who’s actually in charge of an investigation. Q I really liked the complexity and the depth of The Walker – did you let the plot roll and see where it took you or did you do a fair amount of planning first? A A bit of both. What I wanted to do more than anything was write a plot. Because that was what I found I was increasingly wanting to read. I couldn’t help thinking, surely if you get the plot right, it has to be good. I didn’t work it out in advance, I find I can’t really do that. I was very interested to read that Gabrielle Lord works her plots out in extraordinary detail, in advance. I write to find out what happens. And that’s what keeps me going, but I had to control it as well. Had to sort of balance it, figure out that there were certain places that you were going to get to. So some of it was plotted, but other things would be surprises. The trouble with the two things I tried to write before I abandoned them, was that I didn’t know what was going to happen and people kept going missing and I didn’t know where they were. And then a new character would turn up and I still didn’t know where they were. Both are about 70,000 words long and there are about 50 characters, with lost people I couldn’t find. So I had to get more disciplined (laughing). If you lose them you have to find them! Otherwise you don’t have a plot. I think what I’d written hadn’t worked was the reason I was absolutely determined to make The Walker work. I had learned from my mistakes. It was a lot of work. There was a lot of false starts that had to be re-done. Very radical re-writing and re-direction at various stages. Q Did you work as your own editor or did you bounce stuff off someone, such as your husband? A I used to bore Peter by telling him what was in it and his eyes would glaze over. Until I’d finished it. Then he said ‘I’ve got nothing to read.’ He’s the most critical person and he liked it. So that was quite a good sign. Q What was your reaction when the agent rang and told you she loved it? A That was amazing to me. In fact Peter taught the agent’s sister. And they were talking about cookery books. She and her sister have written a cookery book. And she was just telling the story how the book has stayed in print for 20 years. And he was fascinated by that. Then he mentioned that I’d written a thriller and she asked her sister if she’d read it. The convention is to send the first 50 pages. I can still remember I posted it off on a Wednesday – and I write academic books and I’m quite accustomed to not hearing anything for three months. But on Monday morning at 9am the phone rang and it was the agent saying, “well, you’ve got me in, so where is the rest?” And in fact I did have the rest. I had intended to do a bit more polishing and there were still a few unresolved things. I worked really really hard on it and gave it back to her within four weeks. She then read it and sent it to Hodder. Q You must have been amazed with the speed with which all this happened. A Well yes, in a way it’s slightly unreal. But it is one of the best things that can happen to you. To do something for pleasure and it actually works. It’s just been a lovely thing. And of course now I’ve got a whole new set of things to worry about. I’ve got to get the second one to work. Q It’s funny how you’ve lived in Australian all this time and yet you’re drawn back to the UK as the setting for The Walker, your first thriller? A That’s true and there’s an interesting kind of cultural thing … one of the things that intrigues me in thrillers is if someone can capture a sense of evil. There must be some real shiver in a thriller. To do that you have to send the evil back into history. It has to come from somewhere many generations ago. I feel quite comfortable doing it in a country like England, where there’s a culture that goes back many generations. In Australia I would have no right to try to write about something that goes back before white settlement. So there’s an interesting kind of issue there. I suppose, in a way, there is an indigenous kind of evil here that seems to belong to the land. Q In terms of spookiness, don’t you think London’s dark lanes and architecture is better than Sydney’s dazzling blue skies and water? A Yes, well there’s a huge tourist trade in spooky London. Also, I like the idea of London in the summer. And outdoors. For a writer it’s a bigger challenge than inside, night-time – winter is a classic setting for a thriller. Q The crimes in your thriller are very gruesome – where did all that come from? A I suppose I depended on historical stuff. Hogarth was a very sinister image maker. I went around the Hogarth collection … I think it’s just that ability to tap into history, but I fully intend to come back to Australia. To set a book in Australia. What I might do is send this character, Briony, out to Australia to work on a case. Q Has writing a novel been a long-time ambition? A It hasn’t been a burning ambition, but it’s always nagged at me. I can remember at one stage when my son was very little and I had a full-time job, I used to think if only there was an extra hour in the day I could use it for writing fiction. It was as if it was a metaphor for some other time, some other place. I suppose as my son grew up I started to get a little bit more space – I found if I was persistent I could do it in little bits of time. Because it was a kind of dreaming. I’d often write late at night. I used to think of scenes as I was going to sleep. It’s a very nice, other dimension to life. Q Any other authors in your family? A My brother Mark, he’s interested in ancient forms of civilisation. And I always learn a lot from him. He’s a couple of years older. And I have a younger brother who is an academic. And a step-sister as well. Q Are they all UK based? A Yes. Q How old is your son and what’s his name? A He’s 26 and his name is Jonathan. His great vocation is for martial arts. Q Do you have any pets? A Oooh yes … an elderly and very spoiled Jack Russell called Jack. Q You’ve made a program for Radio National called Science For The Popular Mind? A Yes, last time I was talking to them they were thinking of putting it to air right at the beginning of January. Q That’s an unusual combination. On one hand, you’re a lecturer in drama, on the other, you’re making radio programs on the history of science? A I’m a bit hard to classify. I’m a bit promiscuous (laughing). I have a very strong interest in the history of science and I have written a book about natural history and the performing arts, and the very strong relationship between them. Q You were born in 1951 – what month? A May. Q So what star sign is that? A Gemini.
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