Big Weekend of Books talks murder with Richard Osman and fantasy with Samantha Shannon (2024)

Thank you so much for joining us today, it was a pleasure to have your company!

We heard from so many amazing authors, including Richard Osman, David Nicholls and Samantha Shannon, so we hope you enjoyed listening along.

You can catch up on all the interviews here on the ABC Listen app.

Don't forget to join us tomorrow right here on the ABC website as the Big Weekend of Books continues from 10am AEST.

Expect a stacked line up featuring Paul Murray, Rachel Cusk, Tim Winton and plenty more!

We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, happy reading.

If you had to name one book that really spoke to you, what was it and why?

As a reader, I love feeling like I'm in the hands of a master. I think you can tell from the first few paragraphs when a writer really knows what they're doing ... The last time I really felt that was when I read Karin Slaughter's After That Night. I think Slaughter is a phenomenal writer, who always has something to say. She's also blisteringly smart and she brings all of that to the page.

What's the one book you think students would get a lot from studying in senior school?

God, I'd love to see some more humour on that list. The last book that made me laugh out loud was John Scalzi's Starter Villain. It is utterly ridiculous in the best possible way and would, I think, appeal to the teenage sense of humour. If we're hoping that studying will introduce or deepen a love of reading in our kids, I think some laughs might be helpful.

Which new release have you most enjoyed?

I'm travelling right now and I'm reading Emily Henry's Funny Story, which is just a romp and a joy. Highly recommend it.

Surely the critically acclaimed and utterly beloved Irish-Australian author is totally zen when it comes to finishing a book, right?

Nope! McTiernan laughed with The Book Show host Claire Nichols as she recounted her writing process for her latest novel at a live event in Perth.

"I basically closed off everything else. I mean, I even stopped looking at my email for a while, I shut down social media, and I just did nothing but write and write and write right up to the last minute.

"You're just trying to get the book as far along as you can, as polished as you can, as sharp as you can, and then it goes to my editor. And I will get a very long, beautifully written, compliment sandwich letter, which will say, 'Dear Dervla, I love your book. It's amazing. These are the things I loved about it and here are eight pages about all the things that are wrong with it. But I loved it.'"

So, does that rejection hurt?

"Yeah, it really does," McTiernan says.

"I'd like to pretend that I'm immune, but I'm not. There's always at least a 24-hour period where I rant at my husband and I say, 'This is crazy,' and then six hours in I go, 'Oh, actually, yeah, she's 100 per cent right.'"

What Happened To Nina? is the latest novel from bestselling crime writer Dervla McTiernan (The Murder Rule).

The story centres on a young couple, Nina and Simon, who head off on a romantic getaway — but only Simon comes home. What follows is a war between two families: one protecting a son, the other set on finding their daughter.

McTiernan says many have drawn a connection between the book's plot and the real-life disappearance of US social media influencer Gabby Petito.

While she says the parallels are "obvious", she wasn't thinking specifically about Gabby when she wrote the book, but other "similar cases" of gendered violence in the news cycle.

"It started me down that line of thinking about being the parent of a son accused, being the parent of a daughter missing," she says.

"You absolutely believe that your son is innocent because you know your son, you know there is no way he would have had anything to do with this.

"Or you're the parent of a missing daughter, and this story that he is telling does not make sense. Why would he lie unless he's covering something up?

"It just set me thinking about this situation with two sets of parents who have the strongest motivation you can have, and who are set in opposition. What would happen if you wrote a story like that?"

Attention, true crime fans!

Up next we'll be hearing from beloved Irish crime writer, Dervla McTiernan.

You might have read her novels, The Ruin, The Scholar, The Good Turn and The Murder Rule, or perhaps her novellas, The Roommate, The Sisters, The Wrong One and The Fireground.

She'll join Claire Nichols, the host of ABC RN's The Book Show, shortly to discuss her latest novel and how she approaches the ethics of true crime.

We asked our ABC Book Club members on Facebook where they've been listening to the Big Weekend of Books and here's what they said.

Listening at home in Bundjalung Country. We were captivated here by Sophie Elmhirst's discussion. My husband wants to read Maurice and Maralyn. That's VERY surprising! - Marg

Listening while knitting - Linda

Listening at home while reading as it's raining and going to catch up on what I've missed tomorrow or in the week. - Ashleigh

Amor Towles planned to start writing fiction seriously when he was 25. But he was broke, life happened, and his debut novel hit shelves when he was in his mid-forties.

"I am aware of the fact that if I had been writing actively at the age of 25 instead of building the [investment] firm, I would have five more novels written at this point. And that is a little sad to consider.

"But on the other hand, the career really bought me the freedom to pursue my art without concern for anybody else.

"When I was writing Rules of Civility, I didn't need to do it to earn money. I didn't need to do it to impress my friends. I didn't need to do it to make my father proud, I didn't need to do it to put a roof over my children's heads. I didn't do it in competition with the other authors that were out there.

"I could do it entirely for myself, and that is actually a liberty that is is unusual for a young artist and one which is very valuable.

"Could I have written to A Gentleman in Moscow as a 25-year-old? Probably not."

• Catch up with ABC RN's Big Weekend of Books interview with Amor Towles below.

If you're anything like me, you can't get enough of hearing about how writers write.

Towles studied literature at Yale University in the 80s where the attitude among academics was that "high art never considered its audience" — which Towles thinks is hilarious now.

"What I'll do is I'll make my first draft for myself," he explains.

"It could be anything in the draft that I want to put in there, any vanity, any obsession, any redundancy, any cliche, I'll put it all in. I do it for myself and myself alone.

"And when I'm done with the first draft, I turn it around in essence and start to edit it, but from the perspective of an ideal reader.

"We as artists, I think, owe our audience consideration of them to ensure that our work is clean, effective, sharp, rich. All these various things that it can be at its best."

Well then you'd be familiar with its author Amor Towles!

You'll be hearing from him next on ABC RN's Big Weekend of Books when he chats to ABC Sydney'sRichard Glover on how he finds his stories and writing from a place of fascination.

...for today, that is.

By 5pm we'll only be halfway through our huge line-up that we have planned across this very big weekend.

We'll be capping off the day with conversations from Amor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow) and Dervla McTiernan (What Happened to Nina?)

But I have a question for all of you: who have you loved hearing from today?

I loved what Richard Osman had to say, and couldn't get enough of Samantha Shannon talking about how more women are writing fantasy.

Lisa Ko's novel Memory Piece is set in the 1980s and 1990s before jumping forward to imagine what life will be like in the year 2040.

She made The Art Show's host Rosa Ellen's jaw drop when she said her novel had been "catalogued and spoken about as historical fiction."

"It's interesting to sort of explore our relationship to time, time passing and the way that technology has also mediated our relationship to time," Ko says.

"I think for me, you know, I just feel like it's … done something interesting to our ability to remember and to sort of both hold on to too much memory and at the same time not quite enough."

• Catch up with ABC RN's Big Weekend of Books interview with Lisa Ko below.

Lisa Ko joins ABC RN's Big Weekend of Books and chats with The Art Show'sRosa Ellen about her new novel Memory Piece, which traces the lifelong friendship of three women and the choices they make to create lives of meaning.

"I think I'm drawn to what haunts me and I am obsessed with my mother and I love her so much, and I also don't always feel known by her," she admits.

"And I think it was that kind of wondering, what would it take for me to feel known and what kind of efforts do I have to make to know her?

"And is it even possible when you're coming from a dynamic where someone sees themselves as your caregiver and your protector, but not necessarily your friend?

"You may not have that trust, or you may not have had the moments of vulnerability to be each other's confidence. Can you get there?

"And I think it's probably why in all of my books, there are these moments where the characters are engaging with their parents and just trying to figure out, is there more tenderness to be found here or is this the way this relationship will always be?"

• Catch up with ABC RN's Big Weekend of Books interview with Elizabeth Acevedo below.

Family Lore follows three generations of women preparing for a living wake, and was partly inspired by Elizabeth Acevedo's mother, who had 14 siblings, including eight sisters.

"I had always been obsessed with how these nine women loved each other and bickered and had cliques," she says.

"Like the older sisters were always looking down on the younger ones. And the younger ones are like, 'you're old and stuff.'

"I mean, the WhatsApp is just insane, right?

"And so I was just so curious about what it was that made them break out into these little groups, but then come together."

Elizabeth Acevedo has published several poems in addition to writing three award-winning novels for young adults, as well as Family Lore.

"If I had been less afraid of the sentence, I probably would have arrived at fiction in the novel much sooner," she admits.

"I think poetry gave me the freedom because I was super insecure of, like, I don't have the grammar, I don't have the grasp of prose to do what I want to do with language.

"But I've always been a reader of fiction more voraciously than a reader of poetry, right?

"And so to this day, fiction is where I turn to for comfort. It's where I turn to for escapism. It's where I turn to for information.

"Poetry holds a special place, but I think that the novel, the idea of a character getting from one place and and you meet them there, and then you arrive by the end somewhere - that is both inevitable and also ultimately surprising - that project of a book is why I turned to literature.

"I like the expansiveness of a character study, and sitting with a character for a while and kind of figuring out what they're trying to tell me about myself and my loved ones in the world."

Elizabeth Acevedotalks to Mia Hull about slam poetry, the rhythms in her storytelling and fiction about family secrets, superstitions and Dominican-American cultural inheritances.

Her latest novel, Family Lore, follows three generations of women preparing for a living wake.

Candice Fox's Crimson Lake, Jane Harper's The Dry, Chris Hammer's Scrublands … Why do we have such a fascination with outback murder mysteries?

Nicola Heathdug into this very topic. Tap the link to read her story.

In his chat with ABC RN's Big Weekend of Books, Abraham Verghese said his mother wrote out her life story by hand, which helped inspireThe Covenant of Water.

The other day he shared some photos of her notebook and handwriting on social media.

Abraham Verghese's novel The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on India's Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction.

The novel was partly inspired by Verghese's mother, who went to great lengths to write down her recollections before she passed.

"My mother was quite a unique individual. She finished college with a degree in physics in the 1940s just as India got its independence from Britain after centuries of occupation," he says.

"But there were no jobs to be had, so she saw this ad for a teaching position in Africa and made her way there.

"It still boggles my mind to imagine a young woman in a Sari taking off sight unseen on a steamship to take up this teaching position in the place she had to find on the map.

"And when she was in her 70s, my five year old niece asked my mother, her grandmother, she said 'what was it like when you were a little girl?'

"And my mother was just, you know, blown away by that question, because how does she begin?"

• Catch up on ABC RN's Big Weekend of Books interview with Abraham Verghese below.

The author of The Covenant of Water talks withSarah L'Estrange from ABC RN's The Book Show, about his intergenerational novel set in India, hardships and family lore.