All These Perfect Strangers (36 page)

What is your writing process like? Do you do lots of research or work to a strict schedule? Where's your favourite place to write?

I can write anywhere and at any time, but if I could choose it would be somewhere quiet in the morning. I try to write every day, but life often does get in the way of that. I only tend to research when I have a specific question to answer otherwise I suspect I would fall into the same trap as I did at university, where I would treat photocopying/printing articles as actually doing work.

At one point Pen writes, ‘This is one of the advantages of telling the story. You get to choose where it starts and finishes.' As an author, why did you choose to finish Pen's story as you did?

At the start, Pen tells the reader that this is a story that could be ‘told a hundred different ways', because I wanted to give the reader space to come up with their own interpretation of the events that take place and Pen's culpability in them.

The main story of
All These Perfect Strangers
is Pen's time at university interwoven with Pen back in her hometown. This is interspersed with snapshots of Tracey and Pen's relationship, starting at the last time they saw each other and moving backwards in time. So I wanted an ending that brought all these strands together while also telling the story of the beginning of their friendship, which is at the heart of the story. In short, I wanted an ending that captured the essence of the book.

You explore some dark issues in the novel, yet the narrative always maintains a certain hopefulness due to Pen's resilience. How did you find this balance?

University and early adulthood are times of many emotions, including resilience and humour. I wanted to try and capture that in the book, even though the events I am writing about are bleak. Pen, in particular, is a character determined to succeed at all costs. That leads to some terrible decisions but it is also the reason that allows you to hope that she will prevail.

Which authors do you most admire?

A few years ago, I listened to a Mariella Frostrup interview of Jane Gardam, where Jane said that she started writing on the very first day her youngest child went to school. At the time I was home with my babies (pregnant with my third) and could identify with that feeling of not wanting to lose another minute. Only, I thought that I couldn't wait until they all got to school, so I began writing straightaway. So I owe Jane Gardam a debt of gratitude for giving me a push.

Whenever the character Gabriel Betteredge in Wilkie Collins'
The Moonstone
has a problem, he opens a page of
Robinson Crusoe
and always finds an answer. For me that book is Allan Hollinghurst's
The Line of Beauty
. Every page is a masterclass of character, of structure, and of dealing with the issues of the time while grappling with what it is like to be human. It is perfect.

There are too many other writers that I admire to list, but I included references to a few in my novel as homage. These include Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie and Evelyn Waugh. I even named some minor (and disreputable) characters as a cheeky nod to some of my favourite Australian crime writers Peter Temple, Shane Maloney and Garry Disher. The most unlikely reference in the book (which probably no one will see, other than me) is that the Academic Night chapter owes a lot to Anthony Trollope's
Barchester Towers
and the Sub-Dean is my modern-day equivalent of Obadiah Slope. I tried desperately to fit in Mrs Proudie but I couldn't make it work.

What are you working on next?

Once, at law school, we were studying a particular case in a lecture. By coincidence, in an Arts tutorial on the same day, I met a member of the family who had been the defendants in the case (he had an unusual surname and I asked him). His story about the case was very different to the ‘facts' set out by the court and in our lecture. That tension informed
All These Perfect Strangers
and it is feeding in to my next novel, which focuses on the aftermath of a girl's murder in a small country town. The main character is a friend of the victim, the local policeman's daughter. She becomes convinced that her father, a good man, has deliberately charged the wrong person and is determined to find out why and what really happened.

If you weren't a writer, what would you be?

I would love to be a children's book illustrator but I'm not that good at drawing. In fact, my school art teacher said the most artistic thing about me was my signature. Probably I would be a lawyer of some description as that is what I studied at university, but amongst the billable units and an office covered in manila folders, I would still be dreaming about books and writing.

NICHOLAS PURCELL

This is Aoife Clifford's debut novel. She has won the two major Australian crime-writing prizes in short-story form and has been shortlisted for the UK Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger. In 2013 she was awarded an Australian Society of Authors' mentorship for
All These Perfect Strangers.
She lives in Melbourne with her husband and three children.

ALL THESE PERFECT STRANGERS

First published in Australia in 2016 by

Simon & Schuster (Australia) Pty Limited

Suite 19A, Level 1, 450 Miller Street, Cammeray, NSW 2062

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© Aoife Clifford 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator: Clifford, Aoife, author.

Title:  All these perfect strangers/Aoife Clifford.

ISBN:  9781925310726 (paperback)

     9781925310733 (ebook)

Subjects: Suspense fiction.

Dewey Number: A823.4

Cover design: Christabella Designs

Cover image: Alessio Albi/Trevillion Images

Typeset by M Rules, UK, with adjustments by Midland Typesetters, Australia