04/07/2013 Meet the Author

imposed upon him. We appreciate your time. Thank you very much

indeed for coming on. Now on BBC News, it's time for Meet

the Author. Charlotte Grimshaw is a leading New

Zealand novelist whose latest book is set in a holiday home of a rich,

right-wing New Zealand Prime Minister who has a tendency to hang

his words, though the character, she insists, isn't based on New

Zealand's actual Prime Minister, though he too is rich, right-wing

and has a tendency to mangle his words.

The book is called Soon. You might think it's a political satire,

though she insists it's not that either. It is a book about

successful people with secrets they're desperate to keep, and it

also has a touch of the detective story about it. Charlotte Grimshaw,

this is a book whose central character is a successful doctor.

He's a friend of the Prime Minister. He and his wife are on holiday with

the Prime Minister in this palatial beach-side residence, and he has a

secret. He does have a secret. You're not prepared to say what

that is? I won't because I don't want to spoil the plot, but it is a

serious secret, and crucially, he is a person who, although he's on

holiday with - in his relationships with a lot of politicians, he has -

his own sort of take on the relationship that he has is really

one where he thinks that he is above politics and he is simply

what you might call a technocrat, and so although all of this

politics is going on around him, he really thinks he's somehow separate

from it. His brother also comes to say, and his brother is a fairly

left-wing individual, whereas the Prime Minister is fairly

conservative. At one stage you have the brother saying it's not

intellectually good enough to be apolitical. I rather think you'reen

the brother's side. Part of the question on the block is can Simon,

the central character, remain above politics? Is that possible? Can you

be simply a technocrat while all those around you are engaging in

politics? Is that possible? imagined here a National Party

Prime Minister. He's called David Horight. He's very rich, and he

mangles his words. Now, New Zealand has a Prime Minister who is very

rich, who mangles his words. Yes. You deny that he is modelled on him.

It seems hard to accept. I do deny it because I think this is the

mysterious thing about fiction because he does have certain

attributes of a National Party Prime Minister who has become

popular because he has a set of characteristics which appeal to

people, you know, the image of the simple guy, the man of the people,

not too, you know, flash, mangles his words, all that. But to my mind,

he is absolutely nothing to do with John Key because the character I

have produced in fictional terms is actually modelled on completely

different people and sort of exists to me as a completely separate

character, so it's really nothing to do with John Key. Now, a lot of

these characters were also in your previous novel, and some of them

also were in some of two collections of short stories that

you published before that. Now, I have to say, I didn't realise that

until I very nearly finished the book, and it works well as a stand-

alone read. It does.Given that's the case, how far are you

deliberately writing a sort of long, serial novel which is going to add

up to a kind of picture of contemporary New Zealand? Well,

this is my aim. This is what I wanted to do when I set out to

write, first of all, one book of connected short stories. I did have

the rather grand idea of Balzark and a human comedy, and I thought I

would love to - that is what I would love to do is to write about

contemporary New Zealand in a way that you could almost say is a

continuous novel. Now, we're sitting here in England as far away

as possible as it is to get from New Zealand. What picture would you

like us in Britain, a foreign country, to take away of your books

of contemporary New Zealand? What are you trying to say about it?

would like international readers to enjoy the New Zealand scenery, the

New Zealand - certain particularities about New Zealand,

some of the beauty, but at the same time, I would like the elements of

the story to be fairly universal. One of the striking things about

this book is that you have - your fictional Prime Minister has a

young wife and a five-year-old son, and the wife tells the son a story

- a made-up story about Soon, who is a fierce dwarf who lives under

the house and has lots of friends with names like The Green Lady,

Star Fish and Tiny Ancient Cousin - I like that one particulardy - two

questions about that - one is, what purpose - what function does that

story tell? It interyou wants the narrative ever so often - why is

it... Because I think my idea as a novel, and the books before it, are

partly about storytelling, and so the - having the child's fantasy

story as - it makes a sort of satire on the novel, and gives a

sort of hint of the action that's going on, although through, you

know, the particularities of the character who is telling the story.

The other thing that struck me, though, is the mother appears to be

able to tell this story, which is really a sophisticated narrative -

certainly the language is very sophisticated to five-year-old, who

is very bright and understands it. You think, this is very implausible,

but you, I'm told, told that very story over many years to one of

your children. Yes, to one of my children. These characters are

completely different from me, but I did tell my son a continuous story

for seven years, yes. I did. did you do that? It was very

exhausting. The reason why I kept doing it was because he would not

let me stop, so he simply, you know, just demanded it. Yes.And he

demanded it each day. We had to have another instalment, so it was

a sort of tyranny that went on for seven years. This child keeps on

interrupting his mother. "Make Soon talk" he keeps saying. I have this

sort of thing of saying, "Can't I be mummy for a moment?" No. One New

Zealand commentator remarked of this book that it was refreshing to

see a novelist tackling issues of contemporary New Zealand because

the people you would expect to be doing that - journalists, for

instance - weren't. Is that really the case in New Zealand? And if so,

how has it happened? Well, I think we do have a problem with public

discourse in New Zealand, and I think it's largely because we don't

have proper public broadcasting, so we have commercialised television,