BENDIGO, Saturday 8 August 2015
At twenty past nine I was sitting in the front row of the Bendigo Bank Theatre at the Capital, my note book and camera phone at the ready, waiting for the first session of the Bendigo Writers Festival 2015. The session, Together Apart, promised a discussion by one of my favourite writers, Graeme Simsion and his wife Anne Buist, talking about what it’s like having two writers under one roof.The stage had a rustic feel to it. Old wooden boxes stamped ‘Pyrenees Wine’, a couple of pumpkins, an old tin kettle used to hold flowers. A rolling pin and sifter that would fit in a 50s or 60s era country kitchen. A rusty dip-tin. Comfy arm-chairs sit behind the display, empty until Graeme and Anne arrive on stage.
Graeme makes an appearance before the session starts. He’s wired for sound and ready to go, making small talk with members of the audience. His way of dealing with the fear of public speaking.
This is a routine I’ve seen before. Graeme was at the 2013 Bendigo Writers Festival, promoting his newly published book, The Rosie Project. After seeing him speak, I was hooked. Graeme has a pragmatic way of dealing with life. An intensely h
umorous, pragmatic way of dealing with the ordinary and the mundane. Everyday social interactions that most of us take for granted, Don Tillman, Graeme’s protagonist, sees as incursions into an alien and uncertain world. Graeme weaves Aspergers Syndrome into his two Rosie novels, The Rosie Project, and The Rosie Effect, in a brilliantly humorous way, and leads his readers effortlessly into Don’s world.
“Is it ok to laugh at this? Are we laughing at a disability?” is a question from the crowd.
Graeme responds that Don wouldn’t see himself as being disabled, but as being in a minority. At no time does Don ask for sympathy or special treatment, and at no time is the reader moved to offer it. Moved to applaud perhaps, sometimes to shake our heads in wry amusement, often to laugh out loud, the book is hilarious and compelling.
Graeme’s wife, Anne Buist, is a clinical and research perinatal psychiatrist, professor and director of the Women’s Mental Health department at the University of Melbourne. She has released her first novel, a psychological thriller called Medea’s Curse. She discusses child abuse, infanticide, and child murder, and in the many cases she has been involved with on a professional basis, Anne says that she has never seen evil. Because of the pain and trauma for those involved, she has stayed away from true cases. She describes the main character in Medea’s Curse as a real, flawed person, suffering from bi-polar disorder.
The two authors are obviously in tune with each other. When the facilitator, at the beginning of the session, suggested the two sit on either side of her, they objected, Graeme sitting companionably at his wife’s side. They spoke of supporting each other, of helping with each other’s characters, bouncing ideas off each other as in a mini writers room.
The important questions were answered. Yes, there will be a third Rosie book, and a sequel to Medea’s Curse. The Rosie Project is in the pipeline to be made into a Hollywood movie starring Jennifer Lawrence, and Graeme’s has a new book coming out, The Best of Adam Sharp.
A great start to a thoroughly enjoyable Bendigo Writers Festival 2015!