AustLit

Show notes

• Graeme read Enid Blyton as a child, including the Noddy and Secret Seven
• He graduated to science fiction, and read all of Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula K. le Guin, Philip José Farmer and Michael Moorcock.
• In his final year of school, Graeme read and was influenced by One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Plague by Albert Camus, Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa and Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
• In his early twenties, Graeme was heavily influenced by Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller.
• Graeme recommends reading The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of a Blockbuster Novel by Jodie Archer.
• He has also read John Irving, John Fowles, Joanne Harris and Philip Roth. At the time of this interview, he had just read On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.
• Graeme and Nic refer to the ‘Dan Brown syndrome’, which refers to a good story and publishing success in the absence of good writing.
• Graeme is married to author Anne Buist.
• Graeme refers to High Fidelity by Nick Hornby when Nic asks for his favourite songs, and then lists Bob Dylan’s ‘Visions of Johanna’ and ‘Angelina’, as well as ‘Anthem’ by Leonard Cohen.