From Annie and Runt to the protagonists of novels such as Jasper Jones and Honeybee, Silvey’s stories tend to skew towards younger voices. That’s not a deliberate choice, he says, “but I do think that I gravitate towards characters who are on the cusp of a moment of great disruption and change. Never is that more pronounced than when we’re coming of age and losing our innocence and working out our own identities and who we are and where we fit in the world.”
What matters most to Silvey is getting those voices right. When he begins to conjure a new work he tries to listen to his characters as though they already exist out there somewhere. He says it’s like receiving a visit from a stranger with an urgent story to disclose.
“Somebody who you don’t know is trying to tell you something. I know it sounds a bit odd, but you need to earn their trust and think about them and give them the time and space to reveal themselves to you. Why it is they’re insistently entering your thoughts. A story starts to spiral from that.”
Craig Silvey says he feels profoundly empty after finishing a work. Credit: James Brickwood
Once you’ve proven yourself ready to hear their tale, he says, “you’ll find a hook and a structure and a time and a place, and ultimately a reason for why they might have chosen you. Your job as a novelist is to discover a language through which you can invite other people to learn their story too.”
He has described this process as like trying to fall asleep with your eyes open. He wants to inhabit the same liminal space of possibility a reader does when delving into a fictional world for the first time: “This imaginative universe that sits somewhere between your psyche and the real world. A novelist has to get to that space and allow it to happen to them rather than force it into being. But also preserve enough of an anchor to the real world to record it as it’s happening.”
It’s not an easy state to access, and even harder to remain in. Every writer will have their own methods, rituals or routines. Silvey is no different.
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“Look, this is far too much information, and I’m not sure this is interesting to anybody, but I tend to shower a lot. I was really heartened to read that Aaron Sorkin does the same thing. I thought I was a bizarre anomaly who should be thoroughly ashamed of themself. But if Sorkin is at the desk and it’s just not working, just feeling a bit itchy and restless and can’t quite get there, it’s a great refresher to go and have a shower. I always have a good idea in there.”
For Runt and the Diabolical Dognapping, Silvey was faced with a new dilemma that’s generally only encountered by novelists whose success has given them the privilege of writing a sequel. “You want to provide the familiar but also keep it fresh. You want to offer readers all the ingredients and elements that they delighted in the first time round, but also depart from it.”
He won’t be charged with retreading old ground. Where Runt was about a girl and a dog expanding their horizons, its follow-up sees the world crashing down on Upson Downs. The first book saw two isolated and marginalised souls coming together, whereas the Diabolical Dognapping sees our protagonists torn apart.
Silvey is looking forward to touring the new book. One salve for that “profoundly empty” feeling upon completing a novel is seeing it connect with readers.
“You recognise the fact that something that started as fragile and wispy as an idea in your mind is now a noun. It’s a book. It’s a thing. It occupies space in the universe, you know?”
Speaking of which: shortly before the original Runt was published, Silvey and his partner Clare Testoni welcomed their first child, Matilda, into the world. This time around, the book’s sequel was preceded by the pair having twins.
“There’s a pattern forming here which is frightening,” he laughs. “They’re little but chubbing up beautifully. But yes, don’t ask about Runt 3.”
Runt and the Diabolical Dognapping (Allen & Unwin) is out now.
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