Repressed trauma trickles down through generations of Australian veterans, POWs and recluses in Evie Wyld's After the Fire, a Still Small Voice. Think Annie Proulx by way of North Queensland.
The novel is primarily about men. What drew you to write from a male perspective?
From quite a young age, when I started writing, I've always leant toward a more masculine voice. It was quite a nice thing to do to sit at my desk and to have to physically imagine myself as a man and sort of stomp around the flat a bit. It's a nice mask to put on. It's just different, writing as a woman—you don't think about the physicality as much when you're writing as the opposite sex. You can also really mess up. Quite often you'll come across some not-so-good writing done by men about being a woman, and about three lines in you're reading about your breasts and your bra, and that throws you a bit.
So much of this book springs from the veteran experience. Has it been particularly harsh in Australia?
I can give an example. My uncle was conscripted to fight in Vietnam. When he came back, his parents went and collected him, and they were obviously thrilled that he had come back—that it was all over and he was safe. My uncle was in his uniform, and when they went to the nearest pub to have a celebratory drink, they got immediately kicked out. Politics aside, it's really sad that people can be treated that way.
But war isn't omnipresent through the generations. Would you say Frank is as traumatized as Leon, who fought in Vietnam?
Not to be trite, but everyone is traumatized. Even if you haven't gone to war, even if your grandfather or your great-grandfather was in a war, stuff trickles down in your family and everyone's affected: it's a finer and finer sieve.
The book has a powerful sense of place. How rough and tumble is Australia really?
I think Australia, especially by English people, quite often gets described as fairly alien and scary. And I think that's got a lot to do with the fact that there are some really weird animals out there and fish that want to eat you. I like the idea of having single people in that kind of landscape where they have to adapt and sort of get hold of their landscape and forget that they're this big, slow, pink bit of meat walking around. They have to live with spiders and they have to swim with sharks, and that makes you a kind of more animalistic person.
