INTERVIEW WITH MARYROSE CUSKELLY – AUTHOR OF THE CAMPERS
Recently, QRC was fortunate to be able to interview Maryrose Cuskelly about her new book The Campers.
Queensland Reviewers Collective:
Your previous book The Cane, centred on the disappearance of Janet McClymont, was inspired by the true-life disappearance in 1972 of Marilyn Wallman in Mackay. The Cane explored the reverberations through the community of Janet’s disappearance and the divisions it caused.
To me, there is a commonality with The Campers as it also explores divisions in the community but here they are created by individual responses to the rough sleepers moving into close proximity to the ‘drovers’.
Is the individual response to external events something you like to tease out in your novels?
Maryrose Cuskelly:
I hadn’t thought about it before, but you’re right, both books deal with a community reacting to an event that disturbs their sense of safety and order. And now that you’ve pointed it out, it occurs to me that my true-crime book Wedderburn: A true tale of blood and dust, does a similar thing. That book examines a community’s response to a triple murder that occurs in their midst. There’s a theory that writers simply write the same book over and over again, perhaps one day I’ll get this particular pre-occupation out of my system!
QRC:
A central theme of The Campers is the crisis of the homeless [or rough sleepers] – not a new issue but certainly one which has accelerated in recent years. But, as you show in the book, the reasons for a person being a rough sleeper is as varied as the rough sleepers themselves – something the book explores very well.
When researching for your book, were you able to meet and talk with any rough sleepers?
MC:
While writing The Campers, I didn’t seek out homeless/houseless people to speak to for research, however, a number of years ago I wrote an article for The Big Issue about the Homeless Person’s Legal Clinic. Staffed by lawyers from some of the biggest law firms in Melbourne, the clinic provided free legal advice and advocacy for people who were homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. I interviewed several people who sought legal help and one man’s story in particular stayed with me. He described how a workplace accident resulted in him receiving an acquired brain injury, because of which he lost his job. Unemployment led to financial problems that contributed to the breakdown of his marriage, divorce followed and, unable to pay a mortgage, he lost his home. Through no fault of his own, he’d effectively found himself on a downward travelling escalator that took him from being a person with a home, a job and a marriage to living on the street. His experience was testament to the fact that becoming homeless is something that can happen to almost anyone. That knowledge was always in the back of my mind as I was writing The Campers.
QRC:
As the narrative unfolds, different aspects of the key characters – and I am thinking particularly of Leah, Sholto, Miguel and Vivian – are revealed showing a depth to them which may not have been apparent when the reader first meets them.
When creating such disparate and interesting characters, do you feel a greater connection to some than to others?
MC:
Definitely. Often, I find that it’s the secondary characters that I become fonder of, perhaps because they often provide a counterpoint or a differing perspective to the protagonists. I heard an interview with Andrew O’Hagan who was talking about his novel, Caledonian Road, where he said that he felt a novel’s moral centre often lies in its secondary characters. I think that’s true for The Campers.
Without giving too much away, Miguel, in his early twenties, and who appears a little selfish and callow at first, is revealed to have a more morally upright position when it comes to the campers than many of the more ‘mature’ characters in the novel.
I feel tender towards Vivian, who is one of the campers. Young and vulnerable, she resents the injustice of her position, which I sympathise with. I hope readers will as well.
With Sholto, the self-appointed leader of the campers, the reader discovers more about him as the novel progresses, but he retains an element of mystery at the end, and that’s fine. Very few people are open books, even to themselves. I would wager that most of us occasionally have impulses or emotions that make us think, Where did that come from?
I’m not sure Leah would be a friend of mine IRL. She’s in a constant churn of emotion that she mostly keeps locked down, which is an exhausting way to live. She also self-sabotages, planting landmines that have the capacity to blow up her life. I wouldn’t say a I share a lot of characteristics with Leah, but I do recognise them.
QRC:
You have previously written on true crime and public issues for which you have won awards. For me, this grounds your fiction in reality – first The Cane which explores the community’s response to the disappearance of a young girl; and then The Campers which explores a community’s response to the influx of rough sleepers.
What can your readers expect in your next book?
MC:
I’m working on a sequel to The Cane, which scares me a little to admit in a public forum. It’s set around ten years after the events in The Cane and that’s all I’m prepared to say about it.
QRC:
When you are not researching for or writing your next novel, what books do you enjoy reading? And what are you reading now?
MC:
I read quite widely across fiction and non-fiction, but always have an eye out for current Australian work. Books I’ve recently read and loved include Helen Garner’s The Season, Melanie Cheng’s The Burrow, Booker Prize winner Orbital by Samantha Harvey and Creation Lake by Rachel Cushner. Right now, The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry is on my bedside table. It’s a western and a love story and, as with all Barry’s writing, it’s pithy, spare and poetic.
Our thanks to Maryrose Cuskelly for her thoughtful and considered answers.
Click here to read QRC’s review of The Campers.
Author photograph by Heather Lighton.