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Hannie Rayson, playwright
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What's your favourite work of fiction set in Victoria?
My Brother Jack by George Johnson. This is my all-time favourite Australian novel.
Which Victorian writer do you admire the most?
Helen Garner. Helen's prose is like a perfect Pinot Gris: rich and full-bodied with a silken finish. She is devoted to language and even more dedicated to emotional truth-telling. Whenever I read Helen, whether it is fiction or non-fiction or journalism, I always experience an inadvertent little gasp - this comes from a revelation of such insight or a felicity with words which takes my breath away. I remember once she showed me a page in her diary. She had scrawled, "The tram shattered through the intersection of Flinders and Swanston streets". Every time I take that tram, I think of Helen's sentence.
Where do you like to do your reading in Victoria?
When I'm reading for work, I like to read at The State Library in the Dome Reading Room. I like to lean back on my chair and stare up at the dome. I think in a room like that, you can have the audacity to understand the universe. You can come at knowledge from any angle. When I'm reading novels, my favourite spot is curled up on the couch in my mother-in-law's house at Airey's Inlet. The sea air blows in and the day stretches out forever.
What do you believe is the best film adaptation of a Victorian book?
Death In Brunswick from the novel by Boyd Oxlade. To be honest, I don't remember this film very well, but I do recall laughing uncontrollably at John Clarke sloshing through the cemetery in the dead of night. As I recall it's fuelled by the glorious chaos of ethnic, inner-urban life - this is home turf for me.
What is your most treasured memory of a public library?
Curling up on a bean bag with my little boy in the Children's section of the Carlton Library on winter afternoons. Then when he could read by himself we took two beanbags. One year when I read Manning Clarke's History of Australia, he read 124 Enid Blyton titles.
What is your best holiday read?
Shadowboxing by Tony Birch. Shadowboxing is a collection of ten stories which depict incidents in the life of a boy growing up in working class Fitzroy in the 1960s. These are stories of such local colour: gut wrenching and full of profound insight about the ties that bind and the effects of poverty, alcohol and violence on family life. Tony's characters are exquisitely drawn - we engage with this world through the eyes of a robust and thoughtful boy and we are expected to roll with the punches as he does. Even though the family is not described as Aboriginal, I read and imagined it as such, because the author is an aboriginal man. (I'm not sure whether this is what he intended.) The delicacy of his portrayal of the relationships is masterful especially the guilt and rage and resentment the boy feels to his father made more complex as he ages. The belting of the butcher's wife in front of onlookers who slip off home, not wanting to get involved is truly chilling. And shockingly human.
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