Briefly tell us about your book
Diving, Falling is the story of Leila Whittaker, a novelist from Melbourne living in the aftermath of the death of her husband, the prominent artist, Ken Black. After years of being the mediator, the soother, and the cleaner of messes left by Ken’s excesses, Leila is writing herself a new chapter. While she still feels the pull of her existing emotional responsibilities and the demands of her family and friends, she is also exploring new relationships, and seeking different landscapes for her life and work. Moving between her landmark modernist house on the Yarra River and the coastline of the northern beaches of Sydney, Leila’s story suggests that it is never too late to make a bid for your own selfhood.
What inspired the idea behind this book?
One of the first stirrings of this book was a visual image of Leila’s house; the sleek modernist lines against a blue sky, and gum trees, and a river environment. It’s amazing to see this mood reflected so perfectly in the cover. It is as if this imagined vision has come full circle.
I was also inspired by the notion of a woman sitting down to write the obituary of her famous husband. What the emotional implications of and background to that might be. There seemed to be whole worlds in that action.
What are you hoping the reader will take away from reading your book?
I hope that readers will take away from this book a sense that life can be complicated and that people are complex, and that we needn’t run away from that, or rush to judgement. Also, contrary to many of the messages out there, that life does not end for women at middle age. I think there is something very powerful about a woman like Leila claiming her authority and speaking her experience. A woman who has lived, and who has living still left to do.
How did you think of the title of the book?
The title of this book is a reference to a comment that Carl Jung made about James Joyce and his troubled daughter Lucia, that they were two people going to the bottom of the river, one falling and the other diving. The image of two people twisting in the water – but which one has more intent, more agency, more control? – was part of the symbolic environment of this novel for me as I was writing it.
What’s some great advice you’ve received that has helped you as a writer?
It wasn’t actually advice to me, but when I go back to something to refine or revise it, I think of a line I read once from Virginia Woolf, who said that she was returning to a piece of her writing to stabilise and enrich it. These seem to me to be very fine writing goals, and it’s become a kind of mantra for me.
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