“I feel like they’re characters who can’t stop trying to figure out who they are. I feel like each time, I’ve been deep in the head of a woman with too much going on in there.įrew with her ARIA Award-winning band Art of Fighting. But I also remember Silver, the daughter of a reckless alternative lifestyle seeker in Hope Farm, and Bonnie, a suburban wife, mother and former musician juggling all of that in House of Sticks. I’ve only read three of Peggy Frew’s novels. It’s her tangled head we live in as she deals with a sister, Amber, whose unknowable headspace sucks up the lives of everyone in her orbit. It strikes a chord in this conversation because of Nina, the main character in Wildflowers, who has so much of it that she winds up lost in the weeds. And I feel like those struggles are inside me now.”Įmpathy is not strictly a writer’s affliction, of course. I can’t switch that off, which actually can get exhausting … I had coffee with a friend this morning and she was talking about some struggles that her kid is having. “I think maybe that is the writer part of me. “That’s kind of how I feel myself,” Frew says. Someone asked a guy if he’s ‘involved with anyone’ and he says ‘everyone’.” There’s this line in a Gary Lutz story that I love. There is such emotion in just one subway car. “When I lived in NYC,” goes Offill’s story in turn, from a bookshop chat in 2020, “I found it almost impossible not be drawn into all the small dramas around me. “That makes me think about this fantastic piece that I read by Jenny Offill,” she says, outsourcing her train of thought to another writer, as writers do. Her latest, Wildflowers, dwells in the deeply observed head of a woman who sees and feels and thinks maybe a bit too much. Except she’s since published four novels. The cafe character study was a fun exercise when I was at writing college – the same one Frew went to, as it happens. But it’s not like I sit here with a notebook writing down whatever the dude in the beanie just said.” “I do notice that I borrow from things that I have observed. I think I do it subconsciously,” says Peggy Frew as the Brunswick cafe hits peak lunch. The furtive loner peering over his laptop? Novel writer for sure. Can’t hear a word they’re saying but check out the synchronised eye rolls.
The older couple by the window are worried about one of their kids. The dude in the beanie is talking about his bike like it’s his best friend. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size
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