Q&A with Helen FitzGerald

Ash Mountain is the latest domestic thriller from HELEN FITZGERALD, set amongst a destructive bushfire in a rural town. gr sat down ith the author to find out about her fiery read.
 

What inspired you to interrogate personal and small-town dramas amid a catastrophic bushfire?

I wanted to write about lives that are interrupted when catastrophe strikes, giving the characters on the ground centre stage; not the scientists or government officials, just the locals.  I was considering writing about an earthquake in Italy when The Cry TV miniseries came out.  I hadn’t been to Australia for a few years and the big skies in the show made me so homesick. I’d been discouraged by previous UK publishers from writing Australian settings, but my new publisher loves international stories, and the floodgates opened after Jane Harper’s The Dry, so I decided to write about a fictional fire in rural Victoria. 

What inspired you to interrogate personal and small-town dramas amid a catastrophic bushfire?

I wanted to write about lives that are interrupted when catastrophe strikes, giving the characters on the ground centre stage; not the scientists or government officials, just the locals.  I was considering writing about an earthquake in Italy when The Cry TV miniseries came out.  I hadn’t been to Australia for a few years and the big skies in the show made me so homesick. I’d been discouraged by previous UK publishers from writing Australian settings, but my new publisher loves international stories, and the floodgates opened after Jane Harper’s The Dry, so I decided to write about a fictional fire in rural Victoria.  

My first goal was to make this book upsetting; at least for me.  I wanted to make sure I really cared about the characters. I told myself: If I don’t howl when I write a certain scene, I’ve failed. But it was also a joy to think back to rural Victoria in the 80s: the rock music, the Red Lion, the blue light discos, the boarders, the pool, the nuns, the spiders. No place is more vivid to me than my hometown. You can take the girl out of Kilmore…

What can you tell us about the protagonist, Fran?

At 45, Fran has never had a chance to be just Fran. At fifteen, she became a single mother, then a wife, and just as she’s about to get some freedom, her father has a stroke.  She doesn’t want to move back to her hometown, she hates it; and she doesn’t want to be a carer either. But Fran is practical and determined, and her family means everything to her.

I researched how people behave in disaster situations, and it was nice to discover that most of us – like Fran - are heroes when catastrophe strikes. We want others to survive, not just ourselves. Sadly, most of us revert to being selfish arseholes approximately 48 hours later.

Much of your work is defined as ‘domestic noir’ – what draws you to this kind of setting?

It was readers who put me in the domestic noir category and I don’t mind. I don’t really care what shelf I’m on, it never changes what I’ve written. But I don’t want to put my female characters back in the fictional kitchen and I don’t want to keep writing the same story over and over again.  

Saying that, I do believe every crime starts at home. It’s the social worker in me I guess.  I worked as a Criminal Justice Social Worker (Probation/Parole) in Glasgow for many years, including two years in  Barlinnie Prison (“The Big Hoose”). When I see an “evil” guy on the news I think: What happened to you? Start at the beginning. I want to know everything, I need to try and understand. This is exactly what I used to do for court and parole reports. I really miss it.

Ash Mountain, like your other works, maintains an acerbic and (darkly) humorous presentation despite the often grim themes. Why is humour important to your writing?

I have to spend a year with these characters. If some of them don’t make me laugh, I’ll never survive. Also, I believe a story without humour doesn’t reflect the real world; not the one I’m in. If you’re not funny in Glasgow, they kick you out. In fact, if a publisher asked me to take the humour out of a book, I’d find it as hard as taking out the sadness or the anger. Thank you Orenda and Affirm for not asking me to do this!

I remember pitching television ideas to the BBC twenty years ago (Girls with Balls/Ladies who Lunch) and the men in the Comedy Department and the men in the Drama Department kept bouncing my submissions back and forth, unsure what the hell I was writing. Was it comedy? Was it drama? They both eventually decided to pass (I think the Oestrogen Alarm went off in the building).

These boundaries are loosening now, TV drama having led the way (in the end) with shows like Killing Eve, I May Destroy You and Catastrophe. As for the darkness, the humour is dark in Glasgow, just as it is in Australia. I’m never sure whether to laugh or run.

Ash Mountain by Helen Fitzgerald is published by Affirm Press