Back to work but still time for a holiday read

I’ve mentioned earlier my love of Penny Vincenzi novels so you can imagine my excitement when, just before Christmas, I noticed she had a new book out. My idea of escapist reading has always been a 700-odd page saga with a cast of more than 20 characters that explores the huge, messy themes of life. My perfect holiday read.

To be honest, it’s my perfect-any-time-of-year read as her stories are so readable. Page-turning. As she said in a recent Sydney Morning Herald interview, “I write to entertain my readers and hopefully make their lives just a little better, not to win prizes. What I like best is when I get notes from readers who tell me they've had a long spell in hospital and my book has helped them get through it; that makes me very happy.''

I laughed. In the last few years, I have only been able to convert a few friends to becoming Vincenzi fans during enforced rest time: late-stages of pregnancy, or looking for something ‘easy’ to read during all the hours spent breast-feeding and most recently, a friend who spent a spell in hospital.

While pregnant with Ned, I had the opportunity to interview Penny for Good Reading magazine and leapt at it. Despite her success – 16 bestsellers and seven million books sold to date – she is extremely modest, spending much of our interview time asking me questions about my pregnancy and telling me stories about her own four children and grandchildren.

But, about her career and her writing, here is what she had to say...

First published in Good Reading magazine October 2005

Penny For Her Thoughts

Watching Penny Vincenzi pour our tea from across the table, I am struck by how unaffected she is. Despite having sold over five million books worldwide, she is more interested in my pregnancy and chatting about her husband and four daughters, than promoting her latest novel, Sheer Abandon. Settling back into our armchairs, the pregnancy conversation segues towards the idea for her latest novel.

Sheer Abandon follows the lives of three women who meet aged 18 on their way to Thailand. Nine months later, one of them returns to London, giving birth at Heathrow Airport and abandoning the baby. The book moves forward 16 years, when the women are reunited and the now-teenager begins the search for her natural mother.

“The original idea came from a story in the paper. I thought it was an irresistible idea for a book but there needed to be more. Then I thought of the three girls, not knowing who the mother was and the story slowly unravelling. I also realised that the emotional fallout of everyone finding out years later would be as hard to cope with as the discovery.”

As with all Penny’s books, she doesn’t know how her stories will end: “I start with the idea, marshal a few of my characters…it’s a bit like going to a party and thinking ‘He looks interesting’, ‘she looks smart’ and I gradually get to know them. Then I wind them up, off they go and I follow them. They very much shape the plot as they take on a will of their own.”

Indeed, she is often as shocked as the reader with plot twists: “I remember with one book, after writing all day I went for an evening walk with my husband. I was telling him about the terrible day I’d had with one of the characters and then I realised, oh my God, she’s died! And it really was a shock. The minute I said it, I knew it had to happen for the story to work.”

Any fan of Vincenzi’s work will know that all her books are at least 500 pages — and you still don’t want them to end — packed with extraordinary detail of the characters, their careers, and the era and society they live in. Unsurprisingly, research is one of the things Penny loves most about writing:

“I used to be a journalist and it was such a lovely, chatty job; whereas fiction is incredibly isolating. Doing research is like being a journalist again.” Politics plays a major role in Sheer Abandon; a world she knew little about: “I spent a lot of time at the House of Commons talking to MPs and political journalists, going to their restaurants and bars…soaking up the atmosphere. You have to get the tone of voice right, so I spent a lot of time listening and immersing myself in their world.”

With Penny’s natural flair for creating such readable escapist fiction, it is a shock to discover she never intended to write a book, or that even after writing the first one she would become a novelist:

“I was approached to write a novel and I had an idea so thought I’d do it and then go back to being a journalist. It was a complete surprise to me how much I loved it and how it has turned into something really wonderful. I’m amazed that I have all these plots and sub-plots in my head!”

After writing a book nearly every year, and Sheer Abandon being her 12th novel, it does seem the ideas have never stopped flowing: “I’m very workman like about what I do. While I have days when I can’t write, I just sit there and sweat it out. I think it’s a bit of a luxury to get writer’s block. I’ve always got a deadline, so have to keep going.”

Up at 6am every morning, Penny walks her dog and during this time does her plotting. She is at her desk and writing by 9am. “I work office hours really but as a deadline gets nearer, I’ll do six days a week, then sometimes seven.”

She is also very aware of balancing her life: “I have a family and it’s not fair to them so I do stop work in the evenings and cook my husband supper. I’m a good 50s housewife: I cook, shop and keep house for him because that’s how I was brought up and I can’t change it! My children and grandchildren take up a lot of time too…they’re the only ones I will stop work for.”

As we sit with our second cup of tea, analysing her characters as if they were real friends, it is evident that Penny is a long way from running out of fresh ideas. “I love finding these people, seeing their foibles and strengths. It’s my favourite part and it’s a hideous blank when you finish.”

As it is for her readers.

Sharing a home: The Life of a Biographer

Ah, the break between Christmas and New Year. A perfect time to sit down - regularly - with a good book. For this book it would make sense to enjoy it with a good wine... and a good meal to follow.

What’s it like to inhabit the home of another person? A person you have never met and has already died? This is the parallel universe biographers have to absorb themselves into, but what happens when they return to their own homes? Do their subjects travel with them?

Anne Zimmerman recently published a biography about the great American food writer, M.F.K. Fisher titled An Extravagant Hunger: The passionate years of M.F.K. Fisher. She never set out to write a biography. Instead, while looking for a subject for her thesis, she stumbled upon one M.F.K. Fisher book in the library and was fascinated.

‘First, I fell in love with old black and white photos of her. I remember shots of her lounging in a hammock by Lake Geneva, at the World's Fair in Paris, or travelling through Italy. Very soon after I discovered that her writing was even more evocative than those beguiling photos. I quickly realized that I wanted to know everything about her and her life. Needless to say, what I found in her life and her work was so inspiring, I wanted to share it.’

‘M.F.K. Fisher led me to a love for food and wine -- sort of! I grew up in a family that valued food. My mother is an amazing cook and we sat down to dinner together every night. But I was a picky eater until I studied abroad in my early twenties. I was just discovering food and wine when I moved from Portland, Oregon to San Diego, California for graduate school. I was very lonely in San Diego and missed my friends. Fisher's work inspired me to take care of myself. I'd cook elaborate meals each week even if I had no one to share them with. It really made me understand that food is love, and that it's possible (and advisable!) to nourish yourself if you are lonely.’



Before realising she would write a book, M.F.K. Fisher already had a strong influence on Anne.

‘I used Fisher as a writing tutor of sorts. I would come home from a long day and write food focused mini-essays. I wrote about peaches, about making an onion pie, about eating alone. I think I was vaguely lonely and unsatisfied at that time, and writing helped. It also helped me realize that the dramatic events of M.F.K. Fisher's life definitely inspired her prose.’

Anne says that working on the biography only made her feelings about how much she loved food and wine, ‘and the conviviality that comes from sharing meals with people’ stronger.

‘Cooking is my daily hobby -- finishing up with work and walking into the kitchen at the end of the day is one of my favorite things. And of course, food and wine are a magic pairing. Nothing makes me happier than to sit down to a home cooked meal and open bottle of wine. It doesn't matter if it is a Tuesday or a Saturday, this is always a great ending to the day.’



‘The other day someone asked me which room we spent the most time in (aside from sleeping!). When I said the kitchen, the person looked surprised. But I'm surprised by people who don't spend time in the kitchen! It is undoubtedly my favorite room in the house. I like cooking and [husband] Sean does too. At the end of the day you'll usually find one of us prepping dinner while the other one sits and watches (or helps). Next we're in the dining room eating and then it's back to the kitchen to clean up. It's an essential part of our home and married life.’

But what was it really like for Anne to inhabit the world of someone she had never met so intimately? Did Fisher’s world ever filter into Anne’s?

‘It was a great gift to be able to spend 18 months writing about M.F.K. Fisher almost every single day. And it's funny -- I don't ever think that her life encroached on mine, but I will say that I went through a very major heartbreak when I was mid-way through the book. Many people close to me have commented that my own writing became richer and better afterwards, and I was definitely able to "tap" some of that emotion when writing about the end of M.F.K. and Al Fisher's marriage.’

‘I've heard that a lot of biographers end up hating their subjects by the end of their books and I feel very lucky that this did not happen to me. The best part of book writing was writing. I loved waking up early and working hard till midday. Even when I was exhausted, hungry, and in my pjs in mid-afternoon, I was still insanely happy to be doing the work.’

‘Surprises only added to the fun. I'd done so much research prior to starting the book that there weren't any big surprises about M.F.'s life -- the big surprise came when I traveled to Smith College to do more research on Al Fisher. It turns out that after the two divorced he became quite a lothario. This image of Al as a sexual beast was quite different from the pensive poet I'd grown accustomed to -- and the book is richer and more dynamic because of it.’

‘Writing a book is hard, much harder than I ever thought. I'd argue that writing a biography was "easier" -- only because I knew what would happen next! Still, as challenging as it was, it was such an amazing time. I was totally focused on one thing -- my writing, my book -- and got to be very selfish. Even if I write another book I am not sure it will ever be quite like it was that first time.’

So how did it feel when it was all over and Anne had to completely slip back into her own life without sharing it with her subject?

‘Ha! I carefully timed my wedding to coincide with the end of my book tour. Thus, when book events started to putter out, I immediately had a new creative project to focus on. It was nice to have something to work on that wasn't related to books or to writing -- it took some of the pressure off. When people would ask me about my next book I could always say, "First, I have to get married...!"

‘Looking back at my wedding photos it is easy to tell that Fisher inspired my day. We had a small wedding with a long, luxurious lunch. There was lots of wine and amazing food. My dress and other details were inspired by the 1930s. It was a beautiful day.’

While Anne felt it very ‘bittersweet’ to finish the book, she has managed to continue her relationship with M.F.K. Fisher.

‘I selected some lesser known Fisher essays to be included in a book called Love in a Dish... And Other Culinary Delights. This Spring, I have another book coming out: M.F.K. Fisher's Musings on Wine and Other Libations (Sterling Epicure). M.F.K. Fisher is an amazing subject -- I think she is sort of like a first love. It will be hard to find someone to top her!’



For more information about Anne Zimmerman and her writing, visit her blog
Poetic Appetite or her author website, here.

All photos © Anne Zimmerman

When Home is... Eating Well. An Interview with Cookbook Author Kathleen Gandy

It’s Sunday morning, you’re about to face the weekly grocery shop but you are 10 weeks pregnant, feeling sick and tired. You love cooking and food but you can’t bear the thought of meat or standing over the stove for hours preparing meals. You barely have the energy to make it through a week of work, let alone a week of cooking dinner.

Or, it’s Sunday morning and you have to somehow squeeze in the grocery shop between kids soccer games, ballet classes and birthday parties. You remember the days when you spent weekends reading through cookbooks, preparing dinner parties and meandering through farmers markets with a coffee in one hand and a bunch of flowers in the other. Now you are struggling to think of meal ideas beyond spaghetti bolognaise. Anyway, who has the time?

It’s a dilemma everyone faces during the years of pregnancy and raising a young family; even cookbook editor and author Kathleen Gandy who has always loved cooking and turned her passion into a career.

‘I always loved reading as a child, applying for my first library card when I was five and I always loved food. My mother is Cantonese and I grew up surrounded by that food culture. Later when I went to boarding school the food was awful: boiled chicken, boiled potatoes, boiled cabbage. I’d look at it and cry. When I’d go home in the holidays, mum and I would plan our days around meals rather than activities.’

After working as a recipe developer and food writer, Kathleen joined Gourmet Traveller’s food team. Then she fell pregnant with her first child. While researching what she couldn’t eat she decided to focus instead on all the foods she could eat.

‘There were so many different cuisines. I had never been a “food is fuel” person and even though I suffered morning sickness I still looked for pleasure in my cooking. As Nigella Lawson once said “there is no excuse to eat a bad meal”. I kept a food diary of all the meals I ate and felt like during the different trimesters of pregnancy and realised, while looking for different recipe ideas, that I wanted a book that celebrated all you could eat during this joyful time. I was completely overwhelmed by the What to Eat When You’re Expecting-style regimen of calculating and combining units of food groups.’

So the idea for a foodlover’s guide to pregnancy developed. Kathleen’s first book, Eating for Two, was published last year in Australia and will be published later this year in Germany.



‘The recipes were developed from the perspective of flavour first. All are simple and quick to cook as I found cooking smells difficult to deal with during both my pregnancies. I wanted the book to speak from a shopping list point of view rather than units of food, so at the beginning there is a list of pregnancy superfoods that form the basis of the recipes. They are the superfoods I still buy weekly.’

While all the recipes and information were checked by an accredited practising dietitian and written within the Australian food safety authority pregnancy guidelines, Kathleen emphasises that this is not a ‘health’ book as such.

‘It’s more a celebration of that exciting time in your life by highlighting all the fabulous things you can still eat. I approached my dietary needs of pregnancy through the eyes of a guts. I love eating; why should pregnancy be any different?’

And why should mealtimes with a young family be any different as well?

‘The recipes are very "family friendly" and have come to form the basis of my ongoing weeknight repertoire, as they are healthy and generally fast to prepare. My kids have particular favourites (I guess they got a taste for some of the flavours during pregnancy).'

Pregnant or not, particularly helpful are pages such as ‘Ten things to do with a packet of pasta’ or ‘Ten things to do with a can of tuna.’ Who has ever stood in front of their pantry wondering what to do with a lone can of tuna or realised that the pantry is bare aside from a packet of penne?

But if you are pregnant, it’s hard not to go past the ‘Ten quick fixes for morning sickness’ page.

‘The book is authentic to my food experience of my two pregnancies – I kept notes of recipes I created to deal with the different phases such as morning sickness, carpal tunnel syndrome, heightened sense of smell; and cravings (citrus was big, hence the citrusy salads). I also went through a protein phase, where I just wanted to eat loads of meat.’

After the book was published, Kathleen began a blog titled Next Week’s Dinner which tackles the stresses of menu planning. Working fulltime as a senior cookbook editor with a six-year-old and four-year-old who need to eat by 6pm, Kathleen quickly realised how organised she would have to be to get dinner on the table every night.

‘The blog came about as an extension of my life now,’ says Kathleen. ‘I am lucky to have 45 minutes to prepare dinner. There are no shops on my way home, so I have to know what I’m cooking beforehand.’

As she writes on the blog’s ‘About’ page, ‘On the spontaneity–stress-relief continuum, meal planning literally saves my bacon every week.’ The blog acts as a food diary, recounting the family dinners eaten each day and also how sometimes the plan goes straight out the window.

‘Rules are made to be broken – if my train is cancelled it might just be that we eat pasta on Thursday night instead of Friday, or say there’s a school event in the middle of the week, I may just dish up the re-purposed Sunday night leftovers then instead of on Monday.’

The blog is a great read for anyone who is sick of worrying about what to cook for dinner or has stood in front of a full fridge or pantry and feels like there is nothing to eat...

‘What is most important to me about the book and now the blog is that they are authentic and capture my everyday experience; how the daily act of nourishment and a love of good food intersects with family life,’ says Kathleen. ‘The two are not mutually exclusive.’

For more information about Kathleen’s book, Eating for Two, click here.
To read Kathleen’s blog, Next Week’s Dinner, click here.

Author Image by Richard Birch
Cover image, Eating for Two by Kathleen Gandy, photography by Mark O'Meara, published by Viking, RRP $35

When Home is... Boarding School. An Interview with Author Jacqueline Harvey

I think I have reached my favourite moment of motherhood so far... Lily and I reading the same book and both of us loving it. After reading at bedtime, Lily has started bringing the book downstairs so I can continue reading it while she’s asleep.

‘But don’t go past Chapter 29,’ Lily cautions, ‘because I don’t want you to find out what happens before me.’

Secretly I do read past Chapter 29, not out of competitiveness but because I really do want to know what happens next and I can’t wait until tomorrow night. I write her a note and paperclip it to the front of the book, returning it under her pillow where she will find it in the morning.



‘I can’t believe what Miss Grimm said!’ one note may exclaim. Our notes continue to shuffle back and forth over the nights until we come to the end. But it’s not really the end as today we plan to walk to the bookshop together and buy the next instalment.

The Alice-Miranda series written by Jacqueline Harvey has been a delightful surprise for me; finally, a well-written and crafted story for parents and children alike. A chance for Lily and I to talk about the magic of books and reading; of characters feeling like friends and talking about them as though they really are. I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t get lost inside the pages of a book so it is extremely satisfying to see my daughter skipping off to bed because she can’t wait to keep reading.

But what is it about the first book in this series, Alice-Miranda at School, that has captured us both so?

Alice-Miranda Highton-Smith-Kennington-Jones is seven-and-a-quarter years old; a determined and optimistic little girl she has decided she’s ready for boarding school. All is not as it seems at the Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale-Academy for Proper Young Ladies and so begins Alice-Miranda’s adventures at her new home.



Throughout the generations, boarding school adventures for children have always seemed popular favourites. But why?

‘I think that’s probably because most people don’t attend boarding school so it does hold a degree of mystique and perhaps even romanticism,’ says Jacqueline. ‘I know whenever we were naughty my mother and father would threaten to send us to boarding school – so there is also that idea that it could be a rather nasty and foreboding place. I never actually went!’

Instead Jacqueline became a teacher and has always worked at schools with boarders, some with children as young as nine living there.

‘I always admired the courage of the little girls who were away from their families often as a result of difficult circumstances like parents working overseas or a family breakdown. I thought that the concept of boarding school would allow a lot of freedom to set up the characters and really show Alice-Miranda’s independence, her courage and generous spirit.’



The idea for Alice-Miranda first began as a concept for a picture book.

‘I had at the time recently won Honour Book in the Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Awards (2006) for my picture book, The Sound of the Sea and I remember thinking that maybe I was destined to be a writer of picture books. I’d also had another series of junior novels published earlier and was a little confused about my writing identity. So the idea of a little girl who takes herself off to boarding school was born.’

‘But the more I thought about it, the more obvious it became that this was longer than a picture book – and in fact had potential as a series. Initially I envisaged 4 books but now there will be at least 8 and possibly more.’



Setting the book inside a boarding school allowed Jacqueline more writing freedom.

‘I love the quirky characters. Writing about boarding school lets me invent a whole ‘family’ of people who look after the girls. There’s a certain freedom in not having the parents around all the time.’

Throughout Alice-Miranda at School, there is a strong feeling of home, belonging and family despite mean girls, a principal who hasn’t been seen in 10 years and a garden bereft of flowers. How did Jacqueline manage this?

‘I think the food is a big part of creating that feeling of home. The fact that poor long suffering Mrs Smith has now had a holiday and returned a new woman – and also become firm friends with the Highton-Smith-Kennington-Jones’s cook, Dolly Oliver who has superb culinary skills, means that the children look forward to their delicious meals together.’

‘Howie, the Housemistress is a very firm but lovable character and after Miss Grimm’s personal epiphany she too becomes very important in creating the homeliness of the place. The children have animals at school too (Alice-Miranda gets to take her pony Bonaparte in the third book) which creates a feeling of home.’

Perhaps it’s also because Alice-Miranda feels so at home at school.

‘I think Alice-Miranda loves being with her friends and she certainly adores her clever teachers and all of the things she gets to do. Right from the beginning she said that boarding school would be helpful to her parents as well because they are both busy people and they didn’t need to be running around after her all the time.’



Ultimately, Alice Miranda’s strength of character is such that she would make a home for herself no matter where Jacqueline decides she has to go.

‘Alice-Miranda is such a joy to write because she takes everything in her stride. She looks for and usually finds the good in everyone. There is nothing that’s too much trouble for her and she delights in helping people,’ says Jacqueline. ‘Of course she comes from a family with vast resources but she is in many ways blissfully unaware of her privilege but at the same time realises that not everyone lives the same life.’

‘I guess she really challenges the stereotype of a spoilt little rich girl.’

And thankfully ignites the imagination of my very own seven-year-old without a fairy, princess or ballerina in sight.

To read more about Jacqueline Harvey and her books, click here.
To read more about the Alice-Miranda series, click here.

Author photo & book cover images © Random House Australia

When Home is... your Grandmother’s Kitchen. An interview with authors Laura Clarke & Claire Wallace

With Mother’s Day just around the corner many of us will be planning to spend time with our families; sharing a meal with our mothers at some point that weekend. But really, how often do we talk to our mothers – and if we’re lucky enough our grandmothers – about their lives and our families stories?

There may well be a favourite family dessert we have been enjoying all our lives but how many of us know the origins of that recipe? Why our mothers or grandmothers used to cook it, who gave the recipe to them and why it has become such a family favourite? We may never think of how these stories began. It’s just a fact that this is our family’s cheesecake recipe; or our family always glazes a ham at Christmas time.

Usually by the time we reach an age when we want to know more; when we’d appreciate the wisdom and seek the comfort of the older generation, our grandmothers aren’t here anymore to give it. It was this realisation that gave Laura Clarke and Claire Wallace the inspiration to record grandmothers stories from around the world. The result is the just published, beautiful recipe book My Grandmother’s Kitchen

.

Both women had recently met and both were at turning points in their lives when the conversation about this joint project began: ‘My grandparents brought me up’, says Laura who lived with them in England from the age of 11. ‘When my grandmother died she left me three things: her engagement ring which I wear every day, her kitchen table which we used on the cover of our book, and her recipe book filled with her handwritten sheets of recipes.’

'A couple of years ago, after my grandfather died, I missed them both horribly. I realised I was working in a job I wasn’t passionate about and thought what am I doing? They didn’t raise me to be unhappy so I quit my job and thought about collating my grandmother’s recipes during my time off work.’



‘It was around this time that we met,’ continues Claire, ‘My grandmother had died many years before Laura’s, when I was only 19. Laura and I were talking about our grandmothers and their cooking and I realised I didn’t have any of her recipes written down at all.’

The conversation moved on from their cooking to a desire for both women to talk to their grandmothers again; to ask their advice about all aspects of their lives. ‘It felt like we realised too late how much they had to teach us,’ says Claire.

‘They had lived such amazing lives already and we have so much to learn from them. I remember my grandmother saying just before she died that she still felt 19 and that it was only when she looked in the mirror she realised differently.’

The concept from the beginning was always to include other grandmothers in their book. ‘It was never to be just about our own grandmothers,’ says Laura, ‘We were both passionate about the importance of grandmothers in the home and how great an influence they can be.’



‘So much importance is placed on youth in today’s world and I remember my grandmother saying to me in her 80s that sometimes she felt invisible. We were inspired to find everyday grandmothers for the book who were inspirational because of the lives they have led bringing up their families.’

This book was always going to be much more than just a collection of recipes from around the world. ‘We wanted to fill the book with the kind of information we knew we’d want from our grandmothers if we’d had more time with them,’ begins Laura, ‘we wanted to share these women’s life stories, we wanted them to pass on their wisdom.’



Both women interviewed the 17 grandmothers and their families for up to four or five hours each. They spent numerous hours cooking with them, spending time with their children and grandchildren, calling them constantly to ask more questions and in all cases Claire and Laura cannot emphasise enough how welcomed they were into each household.

It was a hugely emotional journey for them. ‘These women were so positive,’ says Claire, ‘despite some of the stories they shared. It was a reminder of all the things you don’t ever know are behind a face. You don’t know what anyone has been through and you certainly can’t judge their life journey by looking at someone’s face.’



The most emotional part of this journey for Claire and Laura was the death of one of their grandmothers, Cherie Keetley. Cherie died nearly a year ago and while she didn’t live to see the book’s publication, she loved being a part of its creation.

‘Cooking, like love, should be undertaken with wild abandon’, was a piece of wisdom Cherie shared and after her death her family were so grateful as they realised that without this book they would never have written Cherie’s story down. ‘Her recipes were completely embedded in her head’, laughs Laura.

‘I have notes and notes from cooking with Cherie,’ continues Claire, ‘as she had no idea about measurements cooking purely from instinct. Of course, we needed measurements to write the recipes so there was much laughter and trial and error!’

‘This project was so fulfilling,’ continues Laura, ‘we had no idea of the journey this would take us on and we realised again through Cherie’s death how important it is to capture your own families stories.’

The end result is a beautiful tribute to grandmothers everywhere with a chapter at the end to capture your own family’s story.

‘We wanted every page to be unique,’ says Claire, ‘we wanted it to look like a real grandmother’s recipe book with fingerprints, remarks and drawings by kids, splotches of jam.’

And intertwined within it all: those longed for comforting and inspirational words gained from years of perspective, endurance and experience.

No matter what your age who doesn’t need to be reminded that ‘things seem worse in the moment’ or ‘do not always think about your problems: you will see one day they are not so important’ and, finally, ‘Friends are like elevators. They either take you up or take you down. Hold on to good friends and let go of the rest.’

Recipes not only for food but for lives lived well.

************************

As the seasons in Sydney begin to turn and the weather is cooling down, Laura and Claire thought it would be fitting to share with us a wintry recipe from their book. And a drizzly, cool day like today is the perfect time to try it a warming pumpkin soup...

Rosa Munoz's Pumpkin Soup Serves 6

A friend gave me this recipe many years ago and I have been making it for my family ever since. Over the years I have adapted it and added the nutmeg and coriander. It is a delicious, warming recipe in the winter months.

Ingredients
1 whole Queensland or other pumpkin (it should be approx. 2.5 kg when peeled, deseeded and cubed)
3 medium potatoes
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon oregano chilli flakes to taste
1 teaspoon cumin
1 pinch nutmeg
½ bunch fresh coriander
1 litre cold water or vegetable stock
salt and pepper to season
chives and sour cream to garnish

Start by peeling and deseeding the pumpkin. Cut the flesh into cubes. Then peel and cube the potatoes, thinly slice the onions and roughly chop the garlic. In a medium pot, heat 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil over a high heat. Add the onion, garlic and coriander and cook until the onion is lightly browned. Add the spices and stir well for about 1 minute. Add 1 litre of cold water or vegetable stock and then the potatoes. Bring to the boil. Turn heat to low, cover pot, and simmer until potatoes are almost cooked. Add the pumpkin and season to taste. Cover and simmer until the pumpkin is cooked. Remove from heat. Remove half the liquid from the pot and put aside in a bowl. With a hand blender, purée the pumpkin mixture and add the reserved liquid until it becomes a soup (thickness to your own preference). Pour into bowls and garnish with chopped chives and a dollop of sour cream.

For more information about Laura Clarke and Claire Wallace, or to buy a copy of the book visit http://www.mygrandmotherskitchen.net/

Their Facebook page also reports on the latest book news and gives you an opportunity to ask questions or contact Laura and Claire direct. Visit www.facebook.com/mygrandmotherskitchen

All photos © Laura Clarke and Claire Wallace

When Home is… A Mother’s Cooking. An interview with Food Blogger Jules Clancy

For Jules Clancy, food scientist, self-published cookbook author and creator of the minimalist home cooking blog Stonesoup, cooking has been a passion since childhood.

Little has changed during the intervening years; ‘It's how I relax and unwind but also how I earn my living these days. The thing is I never get sick of it. There are always so many new things to explore and perfect. Food and family are intimately linked for me. It's all about sharing. My boyfriend loves his food as well and we spend hours talking and planning what we're going to cook and eat.’

Growing up as the eldest of five children on a sheep farm, Jules says her mother was an ‘inspirational country cook’. ‘But it wasn’t until I went to boarding school and had to make do with convent food that I realised just how special my mum’s cooking was.’

Jules says that her mother was ‘a pretty classic country Australian cook’; one who created comforting, nurturing classics – roasts, steak, spaghetti bolognaise – that her family never tired of. ‘It was simple but she always used fresh, high quality ingredients. She was also a whizz when it came to cakes and sweet treats. She loved to spoil us!’

And it was ‘something sweet’, such as her pikelet or scone recipe, that Jules first learnt to cook as a small child.



When a little older and at boarding school, Jules and her mum had a ritual; ‘Mum would always make me a batch of lamingtons to take back to school with me after holidays. I used to help her. We'd sit at the kitchen bench and chat and just hang out. My contribution was rolling the lamingtons in the coconut. I still remember how good it tasted licking my chocolatey coconut fingers when we were done.’

Her mother’s kitchen was the centre of the family’s home. ‘It, like me, was a child of the 70s with green linoleum floors and bright yellow bench tops. It had big windows and was always where the action was happening. Everyone used to naturally gravitate to the kitchen. If someone popped in to visit we'd always sit in the kitchen drinking tea. It was rare that our formal lounge room got used.’

After Jules’ mother died suddenly in 2007, Jules decided to pull together a collection of her recipes for family and friends and with the help of her sisters she tested and photographed all the classic family dishes they had grown up with.

It was an easy task, says Jules; ‘My mum was very organised and kept her favourites in a little recipe book so they were all automatically included. It also helped that I have three sisters who also contributed their favourite things that mum had taught them - it was funny but we all remembered different things.’

Once finished, Jules realised she wanted to share her mother’s simple, no-fuss Australian recipes with a broader audience, so decided to self-publish the book to celebrate the ‘recipes that anyone can learn to cook and that everyone will love to eat.’

Titled and the love is free, the book has been well received. ‘I've had some really lovely emails and notes from people who used to eat the same things when they were kids. And some touching notes from people who have also lost their mums to cancer.’

So, was it cathartic to revist her mother’s kitchen without her mother? ‘It was super comforting and fun. I was especially happy when I followed the recipes exactly and they ended up tasting just like mum used to make.’

‘Normally I can’t help myself and tinker with a recipe so naturally things end up tasting different. I felt like mum was in the kitchen with me when I stuck to the recipe - a wonderful reward.’

For those times when Jules wants to feel closer to her mum, she simply cooks her mother’s tuna mornay. ‘We called it tuna dish and when I make it with processed cheese slices it makes me feel like mum made it especially for me.’

Cooking this meal always evokes strong memories such as; ‘Helping mum mash up the tuna with a fork. Sneaking bits of hot penne when mum wasn't looking and licking the bowl while we waited for it all to bake.’

While Jules has her eyes on her jam-making pot and the big ceramic mixing bowls her mother used for mixing the Christmas cake each year, she was lucky enough to inherit her sunbeam mix master. Originally belonging to her grandmother, it is stuck on high speed. ‘This is fine,’ says Jules, ‘because I mostly just use it for making pavlovas or whipping cream’.



As Jules writes in her book, ‘no family recipe book would be complete without a recipe for pavlova or ‘a pav’ as it was known in our house.’

So enjoy this classic Clancy family recipe, particularly as we near the end of summer…

‘The strawberries from Mum’s garden were always the fruit of choice when in season but mixed berries from the shop would also work when we didn’t have access to mum’s bursting-with-flavour fruit. In the height of summer sliced mango and passionfruit were also lovely.’

‘A word of warning. While it seems so easy to be able to leave the pav to cool and finish cooking in the oven, it can be dangerous. Especially if you have an electric oven like my Mum. I remember one time I’d made a pav and left it to cool and then came back a few hours later, completely forgetting what was in the oven and turned it on to preheat for dinner. Woops. Lets just say that burnt pavlova is not a pretty sight.’

2 egg whites
1 1/2C (330g or 12oz) caster sugar
pinch salt
dash vanilla extract
1t white vinegar
1t cornflour
3T boiling water
whipped cream, to serve
fresh fruit, to serve

Preheat oven to 150C (300F). Line a baking tray with baking paper and grease lightly in a circle about 20cm (8in) diameter. Place all ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 10 minutes or until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is very stiff.

Spread mixture out on the tray to cover the greased circle. Place in the oven and decrease temperature to 120C (250F) and bake for 1 hour. Turn off oven and leave door ajar for pavlova to cool in the oven.

To serve, carefully peel foil from the base of the pavlova and place on a serving platter. Generously smother the top with cream and decorate prettily with fresh fruit.

The pavlova base will keep in an airtight container for a few days but once the cream has been added its best if served straight away.


To find out more about ‘And the love is free’, click here.
To read Jules’ blog, Stonesoup, click here.

All photos © Jules Clancy

When Home is the Kitchen... an Interview with Food Writer Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan

Six-and-a-half years ago, Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan’s husband Maxwell started a blog called Apartment Therapy. His mission is ‘helping people make their homes more beautiful, organised and healthy by connecting them to a wealth of resources, ideas and community online’.

When the blog began, Sara Kate was a food writer. She says, ‘We both believe that if you talk about the health and vitality and style of the home, you cannot ignore the kitchen and the cooking that goes on there.’

She began writing a weekly food column for Apartment Therapy. ‘When I had time, I wrote more. I was also doing freelance print writing. At a certain point we held our breath and took the leap for a dedicated cooking site. That was five years ago. We haven't looked back.’

And so began The Kitchn, an inspiring blog filled with food information, recipes and kitchen tours. With more than one million readers, it is obvious that many of us believe that a kitchen is central to our feelings about home.

For Sara Kate, her favourite kitchen is the one she cooks in now; ‘It's where I feed my family every day. It's not fancy. I have a pretty crappy 24" stove and a small refrigerator, one drawer, two upper and one lower cabinet all along one wall. Then a long Ikea butcher block for chopping and serving. But from it I sustain my daughter's life and her love of food, so for that reason, it wins.’

‘My least favourite kitchen was probably the one I had in a shared apartment before I was married. Roaches, ants, you name it. New York City shared living at its best.’

Having a small kitchen means that Sara Kate is forced to ‘pare down constantly. I don't have anything that I don't use.’

What she loves most about the kitchen is it’s ‘(tiny) skylight’. ‘I can watch the sun pass, sometimes a full moon, and pelting rain. I also love that the "bar" (butcher block) allows people to be in the kitchen with me without being in the way.’



Anytime is a good time to be in her kitchen; ‘Whenever something is cooking. Also, that time when the sun passes over the skylight. The light is magic.’

Although the family has a small, round dining table, they have most of their meals at ‘the bar’.

Since becoming a mother, Sara Kate’s feelings about her kitchen have not changed. ‘It has only reinforced my belief that cooking is one of the most important things we can do for our children.’

For Sara Kate, the kitchen will always be the heart of the home; ‘It feeds us. We need that to be alive, and we also get so much pleasure from it.’

As for a favourite meal to cook in her kitchen? It’s Sara Kate’s mother’s Italian Wedding Soup.

‘When it comes to soups, I can easily say I have a hands-down favorite. My vote for this soup is heavily influenced by nostalgia; it was one of the first real meals my mother fed me when I was a baby. The legend is that I'd slurp it loudly and the broth would dribble down my neck and into my clothes.

The recipe was handed down to my mother, and adapted at each stop, from a man named Fran, whose daughter was my first babyhood friend. I don't really remember Fran — he passed away when we were still tiny — but he lives within me every time I make this soup. Now I feed it to everyone — from my own little person, who also slurps and dribbles it, to Saturday night company, who usually use a napkin.

We always call it Italian Escarole Soup, but it's also known as zuppa di scarola, or Italian Wedding Soup because it is a traditional course at Italian nuptials. It is simple to prepare, but has enough flourishes — herby meatballs and a last-minute addition of cheesy egg ribbons — to make it special enough for guests.

Italian Wedding Soup is highly adaptable; try other greens like kale (as I did in the photo below) or chard, add grated lemon rind to the meatballs and some lemon juice to the broth for brightness, or consider spicing it up with some ground red pepper flakes added with the onions and garlic.’

Italian Wedding Soup

Serves 6-8

3/4 pound ground organic meat (chicken, turkey, pork or beef)
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
3 large eggs
1/2 cup grated Romano cheese, divided
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 medium yellow onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
8 cups chicken stock
1 bunch greens trimmed and torn into bite-sized pieces (about 6 lightly packed cups)

Combine the ground meat, bread crumbs, 1 egg, 1/4 cup of each cheese, oregano, salt and pepper in a bowl. Mix thoroughly, then form the mixture into 3/4-inch to 1 1/2-inch balls. You should have 20 to 30 meatballs, depending on how large you form them.

In large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons oil over medium high heat. Add the meatballs in batches, and cook, turning, until browned all over, 3 to 5 minutes. (If they are still a bit pink in the middle, don't worry, they will continue to cook in the broth.) Set them aside on paper towels to absorb excess oil.

In a 4 to 6 quart soup pot, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon oil over medium high heat. Add the onion and garlic and sauté until onions are tender and garlic is soft, but not browned, about 5 minutes. Add the stock and bring to a boil. Add the greens, reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the meatballs and cook another 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine remaining 2 eggs and remaining cheeses in small bowl and stir with a fork to blend. Slow pour the egg mixture into hot soup, stirring constantly. Cover and simmer just until egg bits are set, about 1 minute. Season to taste with salt and black pepper, maybe even a squirt of lemon juice, and serve immediately in a low bowl if possible so the meatballs are visible.

To re-heat, simmer gently over low heat.



To receive more of Sara Kate’s recipes, cooking tips and stories, subscribe to The Kitchn here.
To follow Sara Kate on twitter, click here
To find out more about Apartment Therapy, click here

Sara Kate also has a new recipe book coming out next week, February 1st. Good Food to Share is available here.

Photos of Sara Kate and her kitchen © Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan
Photo of Italian Wedding Soup and recipe reprinted courtesy of The Kitchn

When Home is left... then returned to. An Interview with Author Kylie Ladd

Australian author Kylie Ladd published her first novel, After The Fall, two years ago. Focussed on the impact of an affair for two couples, her novel explores much of what ‘home’ means in the context of a marriage and how ‘homeless’ these characters feel once they are all, in their own way, betrayed.

When I approached Kylie to discuss her thoughts about home and relationships, she and her family had only just returned to Melbourne after being away for a year. For now, thoughts about home are closely tied to her personal experience of travel and very soon our conversation moved completely away from her fiction.

With her second novel out in June, we will have another opportunity to return to the world of make believe. For now, Kylie is firmly grounded in reality...

************************



Having lived in her home, located in the inner north-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, for the last 17 years, both Kylie and her husband Craig loved the house as soon as they saw it; ‘It’s an Edwardian/Federation mix, with lots of lovely Edwardian detail (eighteen foot ceilings, fretwork, leadlight) but also the odd quirky Federation touch, such as the art deco ceiling roses. I loved it at first sight.’





‘My then-boyfriend Craig and I had only been house hunting for six days when I saw it. Though it was out of our prescribed area and a whopping $40,000 over our price range - an enormous sum in 1994 - he agreed to look at it, did so without me, made a lower offer to the agent half in jest, and an hour later we owned it.’

I remember us lying in bed that night, unable to sleep – he hadn’t checked the stumps and I had no idea how I was going to cope with a laundry situated in the old stables at the rear (the trough was the one the horses used to drink from). But to our great relief the house was in fact sound, and has been a big part of our life together... Craig proposed to me on the day we moved in.’



Today it is also home to their two children, a son aged 11 and a daughter aged eight. Apart from a five year stint overseas when their children were babies, the family have happily lived in and loved this house. Until last year. With a desire to see more of Australia with his children before it got too difficult to pull them out of school, Craig suggested a move to Broome for a year.

As Kylie explains, ‘We’d been to Broome on holidays in 2006 as a couple and loved it, plus I knew he was restless... nonetheless it was a bit of a surprise in November 2009 when Craig emailed me from work to ask me if wanted to go live there for a stint, then two days later, after my tentative yes, sent me the link to the house he’d just bought in the town.’



Having already experienced leaving their home and Melbourne once before, Kylie wasn’t concerned about the move, ‘We love our home city, but we both knew that nothing much would change in our absence. I’m sure that earlier, longer stint made it easy to pack up and go. Lots of people couldn’t believe that we decided and left so relatively quickly, but the timing was right with work and school, and it just seemed a great opportunity for a little adventure.’

Their home in Broome was completely different to the one they had left behind. ‘It was an apartment/townhouse at a small resort in old Broome, near the famous Cable House (now the town’s courthouse). 'There were a lot of advantages to buying in a resort: our 2.5 bedroom apartment came fully furnished and well maintained (lucky, really, given we didn’t lay eyes on it until the day we moved in), and with access to a beautiful pool and gorgeous tropical gardens.’



At first it didn’t feel like home, but a long holiday. ‘It was so HOT for a start and we ate all our meals out of doors, under the fan on the balcony.’



‘The kids shared a room, which they’d never done, and took a while to adjust to this rather than just regarding it as a slumber party every night; Craig and I kept banging into each other in the kitchen (tiny compared to our one at home, which is built around a central Aga - an influence of our Edinburgh days) until we agreed he should just do all the cooking.’

For Kylie, once she started writing again, Broome finally felt like home, ‘I remember sitting down at my desk the first morning the kids had started at Broome Primary, hearing the birds and the geckos and the wind in the palm trees, feeling the sweat already on the back of my neck at 8am and wondering if I would ever be able to write in such a bright, busy environment. But I could, and once I knew that, Broome wasn’t just a holiday – it was where I lived.’

It was still hard being away from their Melbourne home, which Kylie describes as ‘a fifth member of the family’ but ironically, the novel she was working on meant she was never that far away, ‘I missed my books; we have a floor to ceiling wall of bookshelves in the study, and I never tire of feeling these watching over me as I write. In a strange way though, I still felt very connected to Melbourne as the novel I was working on is set there, around my home, and thus the area was always in my mind’s eye.’



When it came time to say goodbye, leaving was difficult for the whole family, ‘We always knew we’d return, and we do love Melbourne, but it was hard to leave the fabulous lifestyle and a year that had seen us enjoying lots of travel and the beach most days after school, which finishes at 2:10pm up there. My son in particular absolutely hated leaving all the wildlife and his pet geckos, my daughter hated leaving the surf club, where she’d had a great time at Nippers, and my husband just hated the idea of leaving and going back to work full stop.’

It wasn’t so much leaving the house behind but the relationships they had discovered and created during this year away, ‘We made some great friends in Broome, and we’d also become much closer as a family, having to rely on each other far more initially, and spending lots more time together. All that was as hard to leave behind as the place itself.’



Arriving home on an overcast summer’s evening was felt with mixed emotions, ‘The house had had someone else living in it, and while nothing was wrong it simply didn’t smell right to me; didn‘t smell like us. I couldn’t find anything in the kitchen, and the garden – after months of drought-breaking rain – was almost unrecognisable.’

‘I think my daughter summed it up best of all; after an hour, Cameron came to me in tears. “I’m glad to be home, but it all feels strange,” she wailed. “I can’t tell if I’m happy or sad.” I knew exactly how she felt: happy, sad and disoriented.’

The best aspects of returning to their long term home include ‘seeing friends and family, seeing Melbourne, being back in our beautiful house... being reunited with our toys, books, pictures and clothes is still a novelty- I’d completely forgotten I owned six pairs of boots. I only wore thongs in Broome.’



But, as Kylie says, ‘The hardest is harder to quantify – an ongoing sense of loss and dislocation, I guess. Craig and I have been through this before, and we know it passes, but while it lasts it’s a form of mourning. I wake up and am surprised to see roses through the window, not frangipani: I reach for the paper towel and suddenly realise no, that’s where it would be in my other kitchen. Every little jolt is a reminder that you have moved, that your head and your heart haven’t quite yet aligned.’

The experience of moving from one home and returning to it after a period of time away has changed what ‘home’ means to Kylie; ‘Years ago my sister was an exchange student to the USA. During her time there, the organisation who had arranged her stay put on a month-long tour of the country for all their current students. While they were away, she later told me, they devised nomenclature to refer to where they were staying: “home” was the hotel, motel or inn they were at that evening; “homehome” was where their host family was located, and “homehomehome” was where they had come from originally.’

‘I still think about that idea. Melbourne is homehomehome to me, but Broome and Edinburgh (where my son was born) are homehome; places in my heart, places that have been home and hearth to me for a significant time too, in terms of both months and experiences.’

‘Home is my family, of course. No matter how magnificent, nothing would be home without them. But home, I’ve found, is also my writing, that place inside my head where I am most myself, that I just can’t live without. And home, physically, is now mostly Melbourne, but we’ve kept our house in Broome and I know we’ll return there.’

‘Home is splintered for me at the moment, but that’s OK. It hurts a bit, but I’m much richer because of it.’



For more information about Kylie and her books, visit her website here or on Twitter here.

All photos © Kylie Ladd

When Home Falls Apart... an interview with Author Isabel Gillies

When Isabel Gillies gave up an acting career in New York to move her family to Oberlin, Ohio she felt her life was close to perfect. Her husband had a teaching job at the University and they could give their two little boys a more carefree childhood in the country.

When they bought an 1877 redbrick house, built by a mason, Isabel felt all her dreams had been realised. The perfect house for the perfect family. As she notes in her book, ‘I’ll never be able to write about how great it was.’ Only it was not meant to be. Within months of moving in, her husband announced he was leaving Isabel and the boys; her perfect home metaphorically falling down around her.

Last year, Isabel published a memoir Happens Every Day chronicling this crisis time of her life. Beautifully and intimately written, it reads as a conversation between friends and is extremely difficult to put down. Told without anger but with insight, understanding and compassion, Isabel’s story is compelling and will leave readers wanting to know more... thankfully, her next book is due to be published in August 2011.



Home has always been important to Isabel, even when she was young, ‘When I got married and really had to make a nest for little ones, I don't think the idea or feelings about the home changed very much, it's just that before I felt like I was playing house and then suddenly it was the real deal.’

In Ohio, her redbrick house became an emblem for a perfect family that Isabel soon discovered no longer existed. Did such a devastating experience change those feelings about what ‘home’ really is for her?

‘I never in my life thought I would live in a house like that. I had grown up in apartments, and this house felt so REAL. I felt I had to treat it like a respected elder in the community. It sort of felt like mine, but really I felt it belonged more to American history. I respected it more than I lived in it. I think I would have grown to feel like it was mine, but I didn't live in it for very long.’

‘There were bats in the attic of that house, and 100 year old glass windows. It was a trip. I felt that had my kids grown up in that house, it would have sunk into their bones - all that history. I thought they would be able to feel that house wherever they were in the world.’

Renovating it into their ‘dream house’, Isabel could imagine her family growing old here together. As she wrote in her book, ‘Everything was planned out for our big family life for the next 20 years. Anyone who walked in the doors could feel that.’

When she became concerned about her husband’s feelings for a colleague who was also a friend of Isabel’s, she felt their home would communicate the stability of their family, ‘I wanted everything to look as calm and pretty as possible. I also wanted her to really get the picture of just how lovely the life going on inside this brick house was.’

She writes in the book that when she realised the marriage was falling apart, she still believed the house would save them, ‘The room started spinning, but my eyes found the side of the counter. Josiah and I had spent hours deciding what shape the curve of the counter should have. There are many different grooves you can choose or you can have it quite plain. We chose to have one groove in the middle of the curve. Elegant and simple. I held onto the counter and felt the groove under my hand, reminding me that we had built this house. We had chosen colours and fixtures and a life.’

But it was not enough. As Isabel tells me later, ‘It was an important place because as much as I loved to have it, it also taught me that home is a lot more than a house.’

‘When I think of that house now, it seems sad to me... Maybe you never can feel anything but pensive about the place where a family you loved ended, or rather, changed.’

‘When I think of the frumpy, funny faculty house we rented before we bought the brick house, I feel happy.’ Despite being ‘worn from years of professors and their families making their lives for a bit of time in it’, Isabel felt very strongly about this home, ‘It was a bird’s nest that just stays in the tree for years while different birds use it to raise their young. It was warm, generous, and smelled of must and wood.’

Leaving Ohio meant moving back into her parents’ apartment in Manhatten, the home Isabel had grown up in. ‘All my feelings about home and what I had built and what had gone away and what was ahead of me, had been put in a powerful blender and I didn't know which way was up.’

‘However, all the good feelings about a home are inside you and are impervious to the blender. They travel with you no matter what is going on in your life. So, in many ways, my feelings about home in my twenties and when I was in Ohio, and then when I was back in New York and even now, are very much the same.’

Now remarried, Isabel, her husband and her sons still live in Manhatten in an Upper West Side apartment. ‘Again, even though our home is probably the most grown up home I have ever made myself (I am 40 after all), I still feel like I could be in the apartment I lived in when I was 23.’

The relationship she has with ‘home’ is no different today; ‘I love the time at the end of the day when I know the kids will be home soon from school and then my husband will follow soon after from work. I wander around and plump the pillows, neaten the mail table, turn on lights in the bedroom and start to heat up whatever is on the stove so it smells good when they walk in.

Home, for Isabel, is still and will always be about creating a safe, happy nest for her family; ‘I hope that maybe if I do all that stuff, it will go into their insides and they will take a homey feeling with them wherever they are, whoever they are with, and for the rest of their lives.’



For more information about Isabel, visit her website here.
For more information about her memoir, Happens Every Day, click here.

When Home Has Its Own Story to Tell... an Interview with Author Kate Morton

"Have you ever wondered what the stretch of time smells like? I can’t say I had, not before I set foot inside Milderhurst Castle, but I certainly know now. Mould and ammonia, a pinch of lavender and a fair wack of dust, the mass disintegration of very old sheets of paper. And there’s something else, too, something underlying it all, something verging on rotten or stewed but not. It took me a while to work out what that smell was, but I think I know now. It’s the past. Thoughts and dreams, hopes and hurts, all brewed together, shifting in the stagnant air, unable ever to dissipate completely."

And so we enter the crumbling castle of Kate Morton’s third book, The Distant Hours. It’s a castle that feels so alive it’s a character itself. As a reader you feel the weight of its secrets, the burden of bearing witness, the consequences of acts occurring within its walls.



There is no greater joy than to be transported to another world through the pages of a book and in all Kate’s books that other world happens to be between the walls of a home. A grand house, a walled garden and little cottage, a castle: all remain as vivid as the characters who inhabit them.



Says Kate, ‘It’s one of my favourite parts of writing; creating the home in which my people move.’

‘For me, as a person, not just a writer, I adore old houses and buildings that feel like they bear the imprint of previous lives... the generations of people who have lived and loved and fought and worried and dreamed within their walls.’

Growing up in one of the original farmhouses on Tamborine Mountain in South East Queensland was a reminder to Kate they weren’t the only family ever to call this house home; ‘It was the sort of place where you’d open a built-in cupboard and find traces of people who’d been there before... an old to-do list, a single shoe.’

‘My mother is a second-hand dealer and she’d go to deceased estates to help families sort through belongings and work out what was valuable and not. I’d go with her sometimes and I felt I was seeing a house without its inhabitants but still wearing the clothing of the inhabitant, which was extremely poignant.’

‘We’d sort through old journals, letters, doctor’s reports, minutiae of someone’s daily life that’s not really valuable to anyone else but paints a picture of them. Even as a child I really got that and was moved by it.’

And now as a writer, Kate remains fascinated by such stories, ‘My favourite thing is the way the past and present touch one another. I’m not interested in the past without the present.’

In all three books, the past leaves an indelible print on the present and it is through the built environment that Kate so evocatively captures her characters’ journeys; ‘The atmosphere of the house pretty much parallels the atmosphere I want the book to have: the feeling it gives the characters when they are inside and the feeling it gives the readers when they inhabit it with the characters.’



The built environment, fully formed before Kate begins writing, also helps her get to know her cast; ‘I learn more about my characters as I watch them go inside and walk around the rooms, I see how they live and breathe there. It’s like a film inside my head, but a film where you can feel things and smell things. The atmosphere is so alive and I just write that down as I’m experiencing it.’

When reading The Distant Hours, it’s hard not to feel transported into a ‘whispering’ castle that ‘bore the unmistakeable signature of stillness... a depth of aloneness – loneliness almost – cloaking me’.

Or feel anxious; ‘the ominous creep beneath my skin? Perhaps it was only that a gust of autumn chill came then, seething beneath the door, angering the lock so that the key fell to the floor.’

When Edie, the young woman who comes to visit the castle, ends up having to stay the night Kate skilfully conveys the oppression and fear she feels; ‘Things are otherwise when the world is black. Insecurities and hurts, anxieties and fears grow teeth at night. Particularly when one is sleeping in a strange, old castle with a storm outside.’

But what about when one is sleeping in her own art-deco era home amongst the hills, antique shops, cafes and workers cottages of Paddington in Brisbane? ‘The atmosphere of my home is definitely created by sounds from outside’, says Kate. ‘The possums and turkeys on the roof, so clumsy and loud, the possums sneaking under the eaves and running under our ceilings, branches scratching against windows.’

‘But after a boiling hot, humid day, one of the best sounds is those big, fat raindrops starting to fall on the corrugated iron roof... and a vivid childhood memory would have to be the noise of the iron roof contracting under the really hot sun.’

Since becoming a mother, Kate feels she has been searching for ‘the house’; ‘The one where your children will look back and think “that’s where I grew up, that’s where I skinned my knee, those are the stairs we fell down, this is where we had Christmas”, all those markers of a human life. I don’t know that I have found that house yet. Maybe it doesn’t exist or maybe it’s a dream.’

Or perhaps she has already found it; ‘Home really comes to life with the sound of my husband playing the piano and my children making noise. Suddenly I’ll turn around to see a seven year old wearing rollerblades inside or I’ll hear the sound of little bottoms sliding down wooden stairs... All the people I love most are within its walls, making noise, being themselves and living their lives.’

Much the same as her characters really.


For more information about Kate Morton’s novels, visit her website here.
To read her journal, click here.

Author image © Fiona Harding
Book cover images courtesy of Allen & Unwin