:00:02. > :00:05.imposed upon him. We appreciate your time. Thank you very much
:00:05. > :00:10.indeed for coming on. Now on BBC News, it's time for Meet
:00:10. > :00:14.the Author. Charlotte Grimshaw is a leading New
:00:14. > :00:18.Zealand novelist whose latest book is set in a holiday home of a rich,
:00:18. > :00:21.right-wing New Zealand Prime Minister who has a tendency to hang
:00:21. > :00:26.his words, though the character, she insists, isn't based on New
:00:26. > :00:28.Zealand's actual Prime Minister, though he too is rich, right-wing
:00:28. > :00:32.and has a tendency to mangle his words.
:00:32. > :00:36.The book is called Soon. You might think it's a political satire,
:00:36. > :00:39.though she insists it's not that either. It is a book about
:00:39. > :00:47.successful people with secrets they're desperate to keep, and it
:00:47. > :00:51.also has a touch of the detective story about it. Charlotte Grimshaw,
:00:51. > :00:55.this is a book whose central character is a successful doctor.
:00:55. > :00:59.He's a friend of the Prime Minister. He and his wife are on holiday with
:00:59. > :01:03.the Prime Minister in this palatial beach-side residence, and he has a
:01:03. > :01:07.secret. He does have a secret. You're not prepared to say what
:01:07. > :01:16.that is? I won't because I don't want to spoil the plot, but it is a
:01:16. > :01:22.serious secret, and crucially, he is a person who, although he's on
:01:22. > :01:25.holiday with - in his relationships with a lot of politicians, he has -
:01:25. > :01:29.his own sort of take on the relationship that he has is really
:01:29. > :01:33.one where he thinks that he is above politics and he is simply
:01:33. > :01:37.what you might call a technocrat, and so although all of this
:01:37. > :01:42.politics is going on around him, he really thinks he's somehow separate
:01:42. > :01:44.from it. His brother also comes to say, and his brother is a fairly
:01:44. > :01:47.left-wing individual, whereas the Prime Minister is fairly
:01:47. > :01:51.conservative. At one stage you have the brother saying it's not
:01:51. > :01:55.intellectually good enough to be apolitical. I rather think you'reen
:01:55. > :02:00.the brother's side. Part of the question on the block is can Simon,
:02:00. > :02:03.the central character, remain above politics? Is that possible? Can you
:02:03. > :02:08.be simply a technocrat while all those around you are engaging in
:02:08. > :02:15.politics? Is that possible? imagined here a National Party
:02:15. > :02:21.Prime Minister. He's called David Horight. He's very rich, and he
:02:21. > :02:26.mangles his words. Now, New Zealand has a Prime Minister who is very
:02:27. > :02:33.rich, who mangles his words. Yes. You deny that he is modelled on him.
:02:33. > :02:37.It seems hard to accept. I do deny it because I think this is the
:02:37. > :02:43.mysterious thing about fiction because he does have certain
:02:43. > :02:47.attributes of a National Party Prime Minister who has become
:02:47. > :02:52.popular because he has a set of characteristics which appeal to
:02:52. > :02:59.people, you know, the image of the simple guy, the man of the people,
:02:59. > :03:04.not too, you know, flash, mangles his words, all that. But to my mind,
:03:04. > :03:11.he is absolutely nothing to do with John Key because the character I
:03:11. > :03:15.have produced in fictional terms is actually modelled on completely
:03:15. > :03:20.different people and sort of exists to me as a completely separate
:03:20. > :03:25.character, so it's really nothing to do with John Key. Now, a lot of
:03:25. > :03:28.these characters were also in your previous novel, and some of them
:03:28. > :03:32.also were in some of two collections of short stories that
:03:32. > :03:37.you published before that. Now, I have to say, I didn't realise that
:03:37. > :03:42.until I very nearly finished the book, and it works well as a stand-
:03:42. > :03:46.alone read. It does.Given that's the case, how far are you
:03:46. > :03:50.deliberately writing a sort of long, serial novel which is going to add
:03:50. > :03:55.up to a kind of picture of contemporary New Zealand? Well,
:03:55. > :04:00.this is my aim. This is what I wanted to do when I set out to
:04:00. > :04:06.write, first of all, one book of connected short stories. I did have
:04:06. > :04:11.the rather grand idea of Balzark and a human comedy, and I thought I
:04:11. > :04:17.would love to - that is what I would love to do is to write about
:04:17. > :04:21.contemporary New Zealand in a way that you could almost say is a
:04:21. > :04:28.continuous novel. Now, we're sitting here in England as far away
:04:28. > :04:33.as possible as it is to get from New Zealand. What picture would you
:04:33. > :04:37.like us in Britain, a foreign country, to take away of your books
:04:37. > :04:42.of contemporary New Zealand? What are you trying to say about it?
:04:42. > :04:44.would like international readers to enjoy the New Zealand scenery, the
:04:44. > :04:49.New Zealand - certain particularities about New Zealand,
:04:49. > :04:52.some of the beauty, but at the same time, I would like the elements of
:04:52. > :04:55.the story to be fairly universal. One of the striking things about
:04:55. > :05:01.this book is that you have - your fictional Prime Minister has a
:05:01. > :05:06.young wife and a five-year-old son, and the wife tells the son a story
:05:06. > :05:11.- a made-up story about Soon, who is a fierce dwarf who lives under
:05:11. > :05:18.the house and has lots of friends with names like The Green Lady,
:05:18. > :05:22.Star Fish and Tiny Ancient Cousin - I like that one particulardy - two
:05:22. > :05:27.questions about that - one is, what purpose - what function does that
:05:27. > :05:34.story tell? It interyou wants the narrative ever so often - why is
:05:34. > :05:39.it... Because I think my idea as a novel, and the books before it, are
:05:40. > :05:44.partly about storytelling, and so the - having the child's fantasy
:05:45. > :05:49.story as - it makes a sort of satire on the novel, and gives a
:05:49. > :05:52.sort of hint of the action that's going on, although through, you
:05:52. > :05:57.know, the particularities of the character who is telling the story.
:05:57. > :06:02.The other thing that struck me, though, is the mother appears to be
:06:02. > :06:05.able to tell this story, which is really a sophisticated narrative -
:06:05. > :06:11.certainly the language is very sophisticated to five-year-old, who
:06:11. > :06:15.is very bright and understands it. You think, this is very implausible,
:06:15. > :06:19.but you, I'm told, told that very story over many years to one of
:06:19. > :06:23.your children. Yes, to one of my children. These characters are
:06:23. > :06:27.completely different from me, but I did tell my son a continuous story
:06:27. > :06:33.for seven years, yes. I did. did you do that? It was very
:06:33. > :06:39.exhausting. The reason why I kept doing it was because he would not
:06:39. > :06:44.let me stop, so he simply, you know, just demanded it. Yes.And he
:06:44. > :06:51.demanded it each day. We had to have another instalment, so it was
:06:51. > :06:56.a sort of tyranny that went on for seven years. This child keeps on
:06:56. > :07:02.interrupting his mother. "Make Soon talk" he keeps saying. I have this
:07:02. > :07:06.sort of thing of saying, "Can't I be mummy for a moment?" No. One New
:07:06. > :07:10.Zealand commentator remarked of this book that it was refreshing to
:07:10. > :07:12.see a novelist tackling issues of contemporary New Zealand because
:07:12. > :07:16.the people you would expect to be doing that - journalists, for
:07:16. > :07:21.instance - weren't. Is that really the case in New Zealand? And if so,
:07:21. > :07:26.how has it happened? Well, I think we do have a problem with public
:07:26. > :07:32.discourse in New Zealand, and I think it's largely because we don't
:07:32. > :07:37.have proper public broadcasting, so we have commercialised television,