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