Madeleine Ryan on ‘A Room Called Earth’: First Book Club
‘Conversations can be really dull compared to our inner lives, and I find that fascinating. The book was, for me, a real exploration of that difference.’
Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For April that debut is A Room Called Earth by Madeleine Ryan, out now from Scribe Publications.
A Room Called Earth is a brilliant debut novel from a neurodiverse author that explores a young woman’s magical, sensitive, and passionate inner world.
A young woman gets ready to go to a party. She arrives, feels overwhelmed, leaves, and then returns. Minutely attuned to the people who come into her view, and alternating between alienation and profound connection, she is hilarious, self-aware, sometimes acerbic, and always honest.
And by the end of the night, she’s shown us something radical about love, loss, and the need to belong.
Further reading:
Read Ellen Cregan’s review of A Room Called Earth in our April books Roundup.
Read Madeleine’s Shelf Reflection on her reading habits and the writing that inspires her.
Buy a copy of the book from Brunswick Bound.
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Let us know what you think by rating and reviewing in your app of choice!
TRANSCRIPT
Alice Cottrell:
Welcome back to the Kill Your Darlings podcast. I’m KYD publisher Alice Cottrell, and today I’ll be bringing you our April First Book Club interview. Our pick this month is A Room Called Earth by Madeleine Ryan, out now from Scribe Publications. A Room Called Earth is a brilliant debut novel from a neurodiverse author that explores a young woman’s magical, sensitive and passionate inner world. A young woman gets ready to go to a party. She arrives, feels overwhelmed, leaves and then returns. Minutely attuned to the people who come into her view, and alternating between alienation and profound connection, she is hilarious, self-aware, sometimes acerbic and always honest. First Book Club host Ellen Cregan spoke with Madeleine to ask her about the book.
Ellen Cregan: Hi, Madeleine, thanks so much for joining me today.
Madeleine Ryan: Thanks so much for having me Ellen, I’m excited to talk to you.
Ellen Cregan: We’re going to start with a reading from the book, so if you want to go ahead with that whenever you’re ready, that would be lovely.
Madeleine Ryan: Sure.
We’re driving through the city and I’m looking out the backseat window and thinking of the opening sequence of an American film that’s seen through a backseat window. Most of Melbourne’s streets are deserted, because everyone is making the most of the department stores being open after hours. Tomorrow night, on Christmas Eve, they’re going to be open around the clock. ‘Tis the season of overspending and overextending, and if people aren’t busy shopping, they’re attending office Christmas parties, and napping after seafood lunches, and smiling too much, and wearing too little, and getting sunburnt on rooftops, and balconies, and giving gifts that nobody needs, and watching children tire of playing with new toys within the confines of overly manicured backyards.
Or they’ve started their drives to the beach, or they’re flying overseas to visit Ant Ida in England or Holland or wherever, and the rest of the city is full and quiet in the heat. It’s just whoever’s left, and the steaming streets. All of the buildings, and the native and imported plants, finally have room to breathe and to rest.
Getting lost in Melbourne at this time of year is such a blessing. The common jasmine vines are singing sweet, sensual songs over every fence, and down every laneway, and the boronias are bursting. Mum once told me that even the roses turn up their scent after sunset in the summer, and it’s true. They do. I recently watched a documentary that said relishing in the scent of a flower—any flower—is essentially relishing in the scent of a sex organ. How hot is that.
Exotic trees and flowers and bushes line Melbourne’s streets. The lavender and the daisies and the jacarandas and the camellias take on an almost supernatural quality, because they’re slightly larger, slightly brighter and slightly stronger than the ones you’ll see in other parts of the world. The climate and the soil here have forced them to become the hardiest version of themselves. They’ve been pressed against the harshness of the red dirt, and orange dust, and dull greens, and small leaves, and silvery greys of native saltbushes, and wattles, and eucalyptus trees, which can be so ruthless and muscly.
The soil is often complex, dry, and heavy. Working it out and working with it is not for the impatient or faint of heart. Colonised Australia is a very young country, and creating a melodious, fertile, multicultural environment that can endure its unforgiving conditions requires time and effort.
I’ve managed to coordinate the garden in such a way as to make the most of what Melbourne’s summertime has to offer, and it accommodates all kinds of flora and fauna. I’ve carefully arranged the gardenias, hibiscus, and jasmine so that they line the walkways, and native wisteria weeps from each archway. I like coming home and strolling around—especially at dusk—because it’s such a symphony of smells.
Except the mosquitoes have a party around the same time each night, too. They flit about amongst the hares-foot ferns and ponds and fountains. Yeah. Don’t let those Nymphea Helvola waterlilies bearing extraordinary blooms seduce you into believing that protection isn’t necessary. Dousing in lavender oil at dusk is a must. Although, I read somewhere that being bitten by bugs represents guilt in our systems that needs purging. So, technically, the bugs are doing us a favour when they bite us.
Around the garden there’s heaps of light and shade and a few gentle wind tunnels. I’ve introduced soil that’s rich with nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, although not too much. The natives aren’t as keen on phosphorus as the exotics are. Everyone has dietary requirements, which are important to be mindful of if we want to be able to live harmoniously together.
I’ve had a very efficient and very intricate bore-watering system installed, and I fertilise when you’re supposed to, and I pull weeds, because isn’t it fabulous and satisfying to do that. I have a super-juicy compost bin filled with leftovers, and the gardener once told me that dried leaves make for great mulch, so I often gather them up and sprinkle them on different flower beds. Even the dead are useful.
I talk to most of the plants every day, and I don’t discriminate between the natives and the exotics. All of the interactions that I have are stimulating. I always learn something, and there’s always something to be learned. The crowded perennial beds are very chatty, and they absolutely thrive alongside the golden wattles—which smell like semen for some reason?—and the incense plants—which smell like bananas at a certain time of the morning? When differences are appreciated, and cared for, any conversation can be had.
Droughts always put the exotics in their place, though. They’re a reminder of the stubbornness and wherewithal of the natives, which evolved within the Australian landscape. The exotics didn’t, and they struggle to survive unless they work some shit out, and grow deeper roots and thicker thorns.
Ellen Cregan: Thank you so much, that was excellent. And I think that’s a really great chapter for me in the book as a reader, because that made, that chapter made me want to go outside for a walk at night and just marvel in the beautiful gardens that are all around my neighbourhood, and even the not-beautiful gardens that are around my neighbourhood, just like the the garden-ness of all of them.
Madeleine Ryan: (Laughs) The garden-ness of all of them. (Ellen laughs) Yeah, totally, there’s something about this landscape that is so sort of complex and dynamic because of the dance between the native kind of Australian, you know, bush and then what the colonies brought in, in a way. And I think it makes a really interesting mix. I think as a child, I probably idolised the kind of European plants and all of that, but as I’ve grown older and I’ve kind of been living out in rural Victoria more, I’ve grown to really appreciate the bush here, and its kind of, the roughness of it and the beauty of it in that way. And then seeing them dance together in the city, I’m much more conscious of that than I ever was before. And I think it’s a really—it’s very unique, it kind of makes the country very unique. And I love that about it, yeah.
Ellen Cregan: Absolutely. And our suburban landscapes too, like I can’t think of another country anywhere in the world that would have such a play-off between, as you said in the reading you just did, these sort of muscly, really tough, often grey and those muted colours—extremely beautiful native and Indigenous plants we have here, then you’ve got something flouncy, like a rose or something really ornamental and bright and crazy…
Madeleine Ryan: (Laughs) Yeah, lavenders and daisies, and all those things, yeah, and I think it’s…
(Crosstalk)
Ellen Cregan: It’s a really special… sorry, you go.
Madeleine Ryan: Yeah, no, no, no, it’s a really special mix.
Ellen Cregan: Yeah. So this isn’t just a book about plants. We’ve, we’ve maybe misled the listeners already. (Laughs) Can you tell me in two or three sentences what this book is about?
Madeleine Ryan: So this book is an adventure inside the mind of a dynamic, sensitive, sensual, contradictory young woman as she makes her way through a night in Melbourne on Christmas Eve Eve. It’s all inside her mind as she gets ready to go to a party and kind of cares for herself and very intimately interacts with her environment, which includes plants—I think there are lots of parallels between plants and people and life in general—but anyway, that’s a side note, I want to go on another tangent about plants. (Ellen laughs) But yeah, she spends a lot of time sort of caring for herself and preparing herself for entering into a social environment, which I find a very fascinating process that we all go through, consciously or not. And so she kind of goes through that, goes to this party and encounters different kinds of people, people she’s met as acquaintances, strangers, and then she sort of makes a connection with this guy in a slightly more deeper way. But each connection is kind of like a little universe in and of itself. And she has lots of observations and things to analyse, and because we’re inside her mind, all of her feelings and thoughts and memories kind of come into play as well. And then, yeah, the connection with this guy kind of evolves and she invites him back to her home, and then that opens up a kind of new understanding of her, because obviously we’ve been seeing it all through her perspective. So when someone else comes into it, in a bit more of an intimate way, and his questions come into it, and his awareness of her comes into it, it opens up our understanding of her a bit more beyond the confines of what she’s been focused on the entire time, which I find also really interesting about how we relate to one another, and the function of our relationships in kind of expanding our awareness. So, yeah, it functions on many levels, but in many ways it’s a very simple story, because it does just take place over, basically less than twenty-four hours. But it’s, yeah, an adventure inside her mind through this kind of magical night in Melbourne.
Ellen Cregan: And it is a very magical night, and Christmas Eve Eve is an excellent choice for such a significant night, and for setting a book. It is my mum’s birthday, I should say, but also… (Both laugh) it’s just like, it’s such a, it is such a house party night, it is such a last hurrah before you go off to, you know, whatever family’s house gathering you’re going to for Christmas, it’s, it’s a night that I think we can all identify in our memories.
Madeleine Ryan: Totally. And it’s like, yeah, I think it’s a really potent night-before-the-night of kind of, yeah, entering into this vortex that you sort of can’t really escape from possibly until New Year, really. But also, yeah, Christmas Eve is very different again. It’s yeah, it had to be Christmas Eve Eve. And it’s so funny it’s your mum’s birthday. What a, what a day for it.
Ellen Cregan: Yep, she… Yep. She’s definitely meant to be born on that day as well. Yeah. Big party energy from my mum.
(Both laugh)
Madeleine Ryan: Oh that’s great!
Ellen Cregan: So how did you approach writing a book with a limitation like this, that it’s set in such a short period of time?
Madeleine Ryan: I mean, it kind of dictated that to me, it felt like. Like, I followed the voice of the protagonist pretty much the entire way. And any time I kind of questioned, like, is this too narrow? Like, do you want to go somewhere else in time? Like are we… It was like, no, like we just need to go to the next thing that’s happening. And I was like, okay, so we just kept going to the next moment, you know, and what she was aware of kind of moment to moment. And it was like it never felt comfortable or correct to sort of move beyond that, and as I kept going I became aware that, oh my goodness, this is literally going to be one day, this book is going to be possibly even less than one day in this woman’s life, and that’s all that seems to be coming out that feels right. So it wasn’t kind of… Yeah, I mean, I, the times I went to sort of sample it, it just didn’t, you know, it made more sense to go into her memories of things, or into things that she sort of projects into her future that she wants, or thinks are kind of insights into existence. And in a way, she sort of expands, or the story expands through those aspects of her and who she is as distinct from kind of linear time, or like going somewhere six months ahead, she goes to a memory of her childhood because something someone’s just said to her brings up this memory of a time when her dad said this, or when her ex-boyfriend said that, or when a therapist reminded her to behave this way. And it was like she, kind of, that’s how she travels, in a sense, through the world. So it’s kind of… Yeah, but in linear time, it almost became a secondary thing as I was writing it, once I’d established that she doesn’t want to go anywhere else. And it was like, okay, well, let’s see where we go within the confines of this. And there was so many places to explore. So, yeah.
Ellen Cregan: And this question might have exactly the same answer. But something that I absolutely loved about this novel was that the pacing, I found the pacing so intoxicating. And as as I read on, I just found myself like having to read these huge chunks of text and I had to go to work, and I was like, oh, can I wait another five minutes and keep reading? And it kind of builds up and up and up towards the end, and it does it does sort of explode at the end almost, which is great. Did the pace, did you plan the pacing in any way, or was it similar that the story led you to that kind of structure?
Madeleine Ryan: The story definitely made me, but I mean, originally I didn’t even have chapters, like it was just one block of text, basically, and I was like, okay, this could be a bit much, you know, can, are there breaks or breathers here? And then as I kind of kept going through it, it became apparent that in a sense, where her thoughts, and where she seems to come to some kind of gentle conclusion about something, or a conversation kind of finds its natural end, those breaks kind of appeared and decided for themselves. And sometimes it’ll just be one paragraph that’s kind of potent, and was just like, okay, well, that’s actually quite a lot, like that’s quite loaded, whatever she’s just encountered or whatever she’s just thought about. So that can sort of, sort of stand on its own. Whereas other things, it was like it kind of evolved over, yeah, a few pages. But the pacing does, I guess, change once that interaction between her and the guy comes into it. I mean, there’s a real contrast between when we’re inside her head and when she’s having conversations with people.
Ellen Cregan: Yeah.
Madeleine Ryan: And on the one, yeah, (Laughs) which is kind of, yeah, there’s a lot—I like what you said, though, that it sort of builds up to an explosion and I think it does in, in its way, and it becomes almost circular as well in it’s, in how it propels itself through all the different sort of moments and experiences and thoughts. But yeah, it was never… Though it’s chronological in many ways it’s…yeah, I see why you were worried that the previous answer would be similar to this one… (Ellen laughs) But it’s like, you know, it is chronological, but it’s also yeah, multidimensional. But the, the way that the conversations kind of break up her, her thought processes was really interesting to me, because it turns out that conversations can be really dull compared to our inner lives, and I find that really fascinating, and the book was, for me, a real exploration of that difference, which I don’t think I’d ever fully considered until I, yeah, wrote the book.
Ellen Cregan: Something that’s great about those passages of conversation in here as well is that they’re actually very realistic. And as you say, conversations can be boring and…
Madeleine Ryan: Totally!
Ellen Cregan: You’re in this wonderful woman’s head the whole time, and she’s thinking about like, everything, basically, she’s thinking about the universe and what’s going on around her, and what’s going on inside her. And then you cut to a conversation with someone else, and it’s just so, you know, everyday and a little bit dull, I suppose. But that contrast, it really points it out, what we actually talk to each other about.
Madeleine Ryan: Yeah, and what feels comfortable and safe in a particular kind of social environment or context, and what seems appropriate can become extremely narrow, and sort of to the point of being stifling. And then if you bring into that whatever history you might have or not have with the person that you’re talking to, there are like so many different factors that come into play, that kind of crush, in a sense, the dynamism of our inner lives and what’s actually going on for any given person in any given moment, which is just a whole kaleidoscope of, kind of, possibilities and sensations and ideas and memories and dreams. And it’s like, ‘hey’, ‘hey’, ‘you been good?’, ‘yeah, you?’, ‘Yep. How’s the family?’, ‘Great.’ It’s like there’s these codes that we end up sort of falling into, I guess because we’re nervous or, I don’t even know exactly why, or it’s just habit. And yeah, I found that really interesting to to explore through it, for sure.
Ellen Cregan: So as we’ve talked about already, the novel takes place very much in the head of your protagonist. We don’t get a lot of insight into what the other characters are thinking or their inner lives, even though they are there. As a reader, I found it very delightful and also very intense the way that I was in this character’s head. And I want to know what it was like to write that character, because if I’m in her head, you’re in her head like twenty-five times more.
(Both laugh)
Madeleine Ryan: Yeah! It was um, it was an interesting dance between the two of us in lots of ways in that regard, because the way that she processes experiences, or the different places that she goes to make sense of something is very similar to how I do. Like in lots of ways I harnessed my own kind of wiring in order to structure her, the way she works through things. But in this other way, what, the conclusions that she comes to, or the choices that she makes about what to say or what not to say are very different from me. So it was kind of like… I spent a lot of time sort of—I think, not entirely consciously at the time—but looking back, I can say it was about, yeah, figuring out where she would go and where I would go, even though we kind of went somewhere together. And then it was like figuring out the different sort of perspectives that she might have, or that I might have, and it was a constant sort of unfolding of that. I don’t know if that entirely makes sense, but I guess basically that indicates that it was quite an intense process… (Laughs)
Ellen Cregan: Yep, yep.
Madeleine Ryan: As well, because it’s, she’s close to me, but also very different from me. So yeah, but it was very, like, liberating because I find her to be a very, you know, contradictory and delightful and joyous and kind of transcendent energy in so many ways—like in any given situation, no matter how challenging or confronting or awkward it might be, she’s always searching for a place that she can feel kind of connected with the universe and with everything around her. So it sort of didn’t matter what creepy dark corners we ended up in, I always could trust that we were going to kind of fly somewhere together from it. You know, and so that was, that probably got me through the more stifling times. And if anything, the more stifling times in the process of writing was when I would get in the way, because I wanted to vent some spleen about someone I went to school with. And it was, and she was kind of like, ‘no, like that doesn’t fit here, that’s boring,’ you know? And it was like, ‘Oh, I know, I’m just, I needed to get that out,’ you know, I’d cut that out like, oh, yeah, great, I’m back to actually the book now, and the world of the book because, yeah, the world of the book could be very, a very liberating ride to go on at the same time.
Ellen Cregan: I love your description of this, because I speak to lots of debut authors, obviously with this First Book Club, and everyone says some some kind of version of, ‘I put a part of myself into this book’, but I’ve never heard anyone describe it as you have, where it’s, your protagonist is like your comrade in writing. You’re kind of going on this journey together, you’re working through it. And I love that, that’s great.
Madeleine Ryan: Yeah, she’s like my imaginary friend, like literally.
Ellen Cregan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally! Well she is, yeah.
(Both laugh)
Ellen Cregan: Um, so there are quite a few depictions of ritual in this book. We’ve got beauty rituals when she’s getting ready for the party, the social, the social ritual of the party itself, and then when we get to the protagonist’s house, we have lots of rituals that she describes there, and even she has an altar. Does ritual play a role in your writing or in your life beyond writing?
Madeleine Ryan: Absolutely, and I think I think it’s very easy for some reason, I don’t know if it’s just the point that we’re at in our evolution, or what it is, but we all have, from what I can observe, have so many rituals that we don’t even realise that we do day in and day out. And obviously, hers in the story are very heightened, she’s very sort of preoccupied and invested in her rituals, they’re absolutely sacred to her. You know, her time at this altar, her time caring for her physical body, her time caring for her garden, her time making a sandwich. It’s like everything takes on this, like, technicolour beauty for various reasons in her life, kind of clinging to that and really savouring that just makes her feel so alive and so connected to her own existence. So, but from that, I became conscious of like, wow, we skim over rituals so much, you know? Just the ritual of making a cup of tea, the ritual of even just like going to the toilet, the ritual of having a shower, the ritual of walking the dog, like the ritual of, you know, getting onto transport in the morning even. It’s like, these are rituals, these are things we do repeatedly that we kind of, I think, have a tendency to skim over, take for granted, not realise is occurring. When actually, if we sort of honoured them consciously, and embraced them more, and the machinations of them and what they’re, how they’re functioning in our lives and how much we need them, in a way to, like, anchor ourselves or enable us to travel to where we want to go, I think our lives would feel a lot, kind of more… I mean, I keep wanting to use the word anchored, but like, centred, if those rituals and an awareness of those rituals became central to how we functioned. Like, I remember hearing this amazing talk, I can’t remember which Buddhist monk it was, but they were talking about how if you just observe the act of making a cup of tea, like each aspect of it fully, and you become, like, completely present with that, it’s like, one of the most…transcendent, beautiful, ‘oh, my God I’m alive’ experiences you can have, and then you become so conscious of the act of nourishing yourself and receiving comfort from that, and it’s so simple, you know? It really doesn’t take much. So, yes, ritual is central to my life, it’s central to the book, and I think it’s central to all of our lives. And a kind of a communal lack of awareness around it, I think is occurring, but I’d like to think that the book can highlight that again and really, and really celebrate it in lots of ways.
Ellen Cregan: It absolutely does. And this character is so present in everything she does, and even though we do have these little windows into memories and thoughts and sort of, as you say, projections into the future of what she might like to do, she, everything she does, she’s so there for it, which is a really centring experience. When you do, as you say, when you focus on what you’re doing, it kind of brings you back. You’re like, not thinking about all the twenty-six things you have to do later that day, you’re actually just there, and it gives you a totally new perspective.
Madeleine Ryan: Absolutely. And I think what’s also interesting about that, you know, including the memories and the thoughts, it’s like, in the present moment, if you can observe the thoughts and the memories that are occurring alongside the present moment experience, but not like, I think the phrase that lots of kind of, you know, self-help books have used that I’ve read, it’s like, if you don’t ‘hook into’ those things, but you observe them as they pass through, it’s like you can sort of master their pull on you. It’s like, it’s a very powerful sort of process. And yeah, she’s very much in the way of coming to that, I think, and reading her how she unfolds and what she has her attention on, I think is, I think is, yeah, a really nice reflection of what it means to sort of grapple with being present, or being present with what you’re doing, but also aware that there are lots of thoughts and lots of feelings and lots of memories and lots of desires that will always be coming at us, like, constantly. It’s such an integral part of who we are, but to not feel like you kind of need to, like, push those away, that they’re a part of the present moment, but they also don’t have to dominate it, you know, because there’s so many things going on in any given, yeah, second of our lives.
Ellen Cregan: Mmm, definitely. So one of the 62,000 things that I found extremely relatable about this book is the setting at the party.
Madeleine Ryan: (Laughs) Oh yeah.
Ellen Cregan: It felt so true to every house party I’ve ever been to in my life. How did you get the setting so perfect? Were you going to parties in 2019 with a little notepad?
(Both laugh)
Madeleine Ryan: Oh look, I wish—nah, that I was already living in the country by that point. I mean, I was still going to the occasional party in Melbourne for sure, but I, you know, I grew up in Melbourne and I’m, you know, I spent most of my 20s going to those kinds of parties, I guess. And they do have a distinct flavour, and a very, you know, and I’m so glad to hear that, though, that you could see and feel the ones that you’ve been to too, because, you know, I was wanting to make it kind of like, like, what is it, like a symbol for so many different ones that I went to in Melbourne, in different parts of Melbourne, but that ultimately have this kind of, yeah, unifying…yeah, I guess it’s flavour and energy about them. And yeah, if that translates then fantastic. But yeah, I guess a lot of parties for many years did go into the description of this one party, but there’s I guess, yeah, I don’t know, lots of aspects of lots of different experiences that go into it as well. Such a blend of things to sort of try and make something, like, universally relatable, but also distinctly of a certain place and a certain time. But you know, yeah, I’m so glad that it translates.
Ellen Cregan: For me it was it was almost like, you know when you have a strange dream where it’s, it’s different parts of your life sort of lumped together, and there’s no explanation as to why you step out of one room and then you’re in another country, it just, that’s just the reality of the dream. That’s what it felt like for me reading this book. I was like, I’m in this particular person’s house, in their kitchen now, but when I, when there are scenes in the backyard, I’m in this other person’s backyard.
Madeleine Ryan: Oh wow!
And then like the scenes in the bathroom are someone else’s bathroom, that’s truly what I felt like reading this. It was awesome.
Madeleine Ryan: Oh my gosh, I’m getting tingles because I reckon that was actually what it was like writing it.
Ellen Cregan: Oh, really?
Madeleine Ryan: Yeah, well, when I think about the different, like when I’ve got the house in my mind, of where, the house she goes to on the north side of Melbourne, it’s like, well, when I think about the lounge room and then I think about the kitchen that I’m seeing that she goes into, and the backyard, as you’re saying, they are actually all literal places that I physically have been to but then took on new life when it became her adventure and her reality. But like, yeah, they’re essentially drawn from like, literal physical places in Melbourne. That’s so kind of cool and creepy, that you also picked up on that…
Ellen Cregan: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Madeleine Ryan: In this like dreamy way. Wow, very cool.
Ellen Cregan: (Laughs) And I feel like lots of other people are going to have that reaction too. I hope they do, because it was, it was really cool to read.
Madeleine Ryan: I hope so too. (Laughs) Yay!
Ellen Cregan: This is quite a big question, but what do you hope people who read your book will take away from it?
Madeleine Ryan: I love this question, because I would love people to take a sense of belonging away from this book, that’s always been the most important part of it for me. And the sense of the individual experience as a universal experience, like in the kind of pure, narrow, idiosyncratic perspective of this book. I think that there’s yeah, a universal truth is sort of exposed. And from that, I would hope anybody who reads it would come to the end and feel like, ‘my existence is just miraculous, like, all of my thoughts, all of my feelings, every party that I’ve been to, no matter how sort of magical or how mundane it was, every moment of my life is just this, like, multidimensional technicolour thing that I ended up experiencing for whatever reason, here I am and like, wow, everyone else is having that same idiosyncratic experience.’ (Laughs) And because of that, we’re all connected with each other and with everything around us. So people can just get a glimmer of that, or a taste of that by the end, then that’s exactly what I would hope they could take from it. Yeah.
Ellen Cregan: That’s a beautiful thing to want to give to your reader. I think that’s really lovely.
Madeleine Ryan: Yay.
Ellen Cregan: And one of the really great things about this protagonist is she is just so much herself, I don’t know how to say that in an elegant way, but she’s just the most herself that anyone’s ever been.
Madeleine Ryan: (Laughs)
Ellen Cregan: And she, she has all these rituals, and she, and the most important thing is maybe she goes to this party alone with no expectation of seeing people that she knows. And even when she does see people that she knows, it’s, the reaction is not what you would think. Like she doesn’t cling, she’s just there, she’s doing her thing, and that is just somewhere that she’s so comfortable. And I loved that.
Madeleine Ryan: I’m so glad. Yeah, me too, I found that incredibly sort of relieving and, like, reassuring about her. She’s just down for an experience, like, even just her leaving her own space for her is like this massive adventure in and of itself, like, it’s, that almost is fulfilling and she’s almost like, she could almost go home after just walking out the front door. It’s like, ‘oh, wow, I got here. Look, there’s a world, right, that’s so satisfying. Now I can go back.’ Like, she’s so accepting of each thing that comes her way, no matter what form it takes or how long it goes for, or how awkward it is, or how beautiful it is, it’s like, she welcomes it. And I totally found that liberating about her as well, and kind of reassuring. And because I’m a very ambitious, very wanting person, I want things to go a certain way, and I’m looking forward to meeting certain people, and I have visions for things. And I mean, I think in lots of ways she probably has all that going on, too. But it was just never, it was never the focus of her attention, which was quite relieving. So I found that too, in experiencing her. Mmm.
Ellen Cregan: Um, I’ve only got time for one more question, sadly, but it might take a while. Can you recommend some books to people who’ve read your book and loved it? And maybe let’s lump into that question as well, were there any books that were really important to you as you were writing this book?
Madeleine Ryan: I have a very interesting relationship with this sort of thing, because I, yeah, it is a long, it is a long answer coming potentially, (Ellen laughs) I’ll try and keep it swift. But essentially, I grew up reading a lot of fiction, I grew up in a household with journalists and, and lots of books, and, you know, I happened to sort of study creative writing and literature, and, you know, I was always drawn to journalling and lots of things. But I got to my 20s, and for various reasons was like I couldn’t, I stopped being interested in fiction. And I don’t exactly know what happened, but I started reading heaps of spirituality and like, self-help books. It was like, all this space was being cleared, because I became conscious that when I did read other people’s fiction, I would mimic it, when it came to things I needed to do for uni, or like, I’d notice even in my journals, I’d be like, wow, that sounds exactly like what I just read. Like, that’s weird. And kind of consciously and unconsciously, it was like clearing a lot of it away, I think, in order to pave the way for her voice to sort of finally have room to say something to me, because I, I just wouldn’t have had space to hear her, I think if I’d had heaps of other people’s fiction, as beautiful and as awe-inspiring and as, you know, and I know that there are probably writers who really feed off different ideas and ways of saying things in a way that doesn’t, like, derail their centre or the voice that they’re hearing. But at the point that I was that, yeah, for a long time, I just couldn’t read fiction. And I’m only just starting to get back into fiction now, like, just, and I mean, I’m talking like, I bought Dostoevsky’s Demons recently, which is like, massive. And I’m just like slowly chipping my way through it and feeling like, oh, great, I can actually read it and not be sort of swayed by it in my own thinking or in my own life with my own voice or whatever’s coming through. Like, I don’t know why exactly I was drawn to that book of all books, but like, you know, that’s just how it’s gone. So I haven’t been hugely into fiction for quite a while, but this whole experience is probably going to shift and change all of that again and over and over. But I was reading a lot of, yeah, self-help and psychology and spirituality books as I was writing it. But I also even needed breaks from them sometimes, because I would sit down and I’d be like, wait a second, this is the voice of the person I was just reading. Like, it would still happen occasionally. And I was like, okay, that’s, you know, I need a break again. So I sort of had to be quite careful around that. But yeah, I mean, I think that functioning at the core of this story are probably a lot of what I see as, I guess, spiritual principles, because I believe that we are ultimately divine, you know, spiritual, beautiful beings having a human experience, or whatever the expression kind of is. And so, I guess those have influenced the story in many ways, but not to the extent that I know that if I’d read too much fiction, I literally would just mimic it, whether, yeah, so… It is a long answer to that question, (Ellen laughs), but like, yeah, I continue to read lots of, you know, I’m a person that has like, yeah, five sort of books on the go, and I like to dabble in different ones depending on my mood or like, what I what I have to do creatively or express. It’s kind of like, I’ll go to different ones for different things. But I also need to be mindful of the mimicry that can happen.
Ellen Cregan: And that’s so different for every author as well. Like some some will be, that’s an integral part of their writing process is, is what they see their peers doing, and what they see those canonical people doing. But others of others like you, they don’t want to absorb too much because it kind of bleeds out into what they’re trying to create.
Madeleine Ryan: Yeah, exactly. And I yeah, I just I mean, there’ll probably come a time where it’s fine and it even helps me, I bet, you know, next minute I’ll be all about it. But like, yeah, for the last few minutes it’s been, yeah, having to kind of isolate myself from it all.
Ellen Cregan: So do you have any recommendations for the fans?
Madeleine Ryan: (Sighs) well, you know, I was actually thinking about this in the last week, and the books that have probably influenced me and influenced the story that, in conscious and unconscious ways that I read years ago. But the philosophy of Andy Warhol, I actually think looking back, is a big one. Yeah. So it’s not fiction, technically, but it’s it’s the way that he’s, when I reflect on the book, I haven’t actually picked it up in, oh my gosh, probably like 10 years or something. But from memory, the way that he structured his observations and thoughts, it’s probably very similar to this. You know, and there’s probably a tone that would potentially be similar to, I’m not, I’m not sure, but that definitely comes to mind. And I know that _The Catcher in the Rye_ was a really big one when I was young, yeah. So that’s kind of written all over it in lots of ways, that sort of stream of consciousness, inside the mind for a short period of time—again, I haven’t picked it up in a really long time, but they’re the first two that come to mind. And, fairy tales—like, seriously getting into the fairy tales and the fables and, like, that’s actually one thing I did while writing the book, interestingly—I bought all of these picture books like fairy tale ones of, you know, everything, like, and all the Brothers Grimm ones. But then all the kind of glossy Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, you know, _The Secret Garden_, I—that’s one I actually reread during the process! Oh my gosh, I forgot that. I reread _The Secret Garden_ and was like, wow, there are so many parallels between what I’ve done in the book and that story. So _The Secret Garden_ is another one. Such an interesting mix of books. But the story does also have, like, an overarching what I find to be like, you know, a fable-like fairy tale-like quality, even though it is grounded in Melbourne in lots of ways, her experience of the world is kind of magical. And so I think a lot of those stories and also ones that have a moral core. But in this beautiful context, you know, this person who’s grown up in a castle and then everybody’s put to sleep, and then there’s the dragon and the, and the fairies and all the things, I think a lot of that has probably influenced me a lot, and this book a lot. So revisiting all of that could be nourishing, I hope, in a similar way. But, yeah.
Ellen Cregan: That’s the most eclectic group of books I’ve ever had an author give as recommendations.
Madeleine Ryan: (Laughs)
Ellen Cregan: And that’s, that’s awesome. (Laughs)
Madeleine Ryan: Well, yeah, that’s, that’s yeah. That’s pretty much, that you got the whole sort of spectrum there I think. Yeah. (Laughs)
Ellen Cregan: And it all makes sense to me, like having read this book, it all, that all is completely correct and everyone should go read those things. (Laughs)
Madeleine Ryan: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely.
Ellen Cregan: Thank you so much for chatting to me, it’s been such a delight. This is a wonderful book, and I loved it a lot. If you’re listening, please go and buy this book from your local bookseller, request it at your library, borrow it from your friend, just read it as soon as you can because it’s great.
Alice Cottrell: That was the April First Book Club edition of the Kill Your Darlings podcast. We’ll be back soon, but while you’re waiting, you should drop in on the KYD website for new commentary, criticism, memoir, interviews and reviews. If you’re in a position to, please consider supporting KYD by becoming a member. You’ll receive exclusive access to members only content, as well as heaps of great perks and discounts while also supporting independent Australian publishing. Thanks for joining us, we’ll see you next time.
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