Grenville's literary bridges

Grenville: well known in her native Australia

By BBC News Online's Olive Clancy

Australian novelist Kate Grenville was inspired by concrete, quilts but most especially bridges in writing her Orange-prize winning novel The Idea of Perfection.

Of concrete and bridges, more later, but the bridges connection is to a Leonardo da Vinci quote.

"He said once that a bridge is two weaknesses which together make a strength and that was in my mind as I wrote," Grenville says.

"I thought it held true for lovely solid relationships between two people - that their weaknesses can hold each other up."

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There is a literal bridge in The Idea of Perfection, its a rickety old structure that people in the small town of Karakarook just cannot agree on.

Some say it should be demolished and employ an ungainly engineer called Douglas Cheeseman to do just that.

Others think it could be a tourist draw - the very people that have brought in the equally ungainly Harley Savage to advise them on how to set up an heritage museum.

These too are the imperfect people who slowly discover they are perfect for each other.

Sinister

"They are not the convention of what people are supposed to be - you know, young glamorous witty people are supposed to fall in love and these are middle aged and carry a lot of unhappy baggage," says Grenville.

That unhappy baggage is fairly sinister.

For instance Harley's third husband committed suicide by sawing his own head off.

I'd love to meet these characters - I often wish I could look up Karakarook in the atlas and go there

Kate Grenville

Such discoveries are a hint at Grenville's earlier work, which was a lot darker.

"I feel I've spent a long time exploring the difficulties which men and women have in relating to each other, and it is wonderful that I've come out on the other side and found a way to draw a bridge between them," says Grenville.

Descriptions of the story make it sound a bit dull: small-town Australia, middle-aged no-hopers find love, local heritage group fights pitched battle with purveyors of progress.

And if you love Martin Amis or the films of Quentin Tarrantino and feel twitchy at the thought of small town life then you just might not warm to this.

But though this is heart-warming writing, it is not sentimental and has subtle messages if you want to see them.

'Object of beauty'

Take the quilting angle for example.

Harley makes quilts - something which does not seem to quite fit with her brusque manner and sturdy presence.

But even the quilts have a subtext.

"The quilts are made from scraps, from rubbish really," says Grenville.

It's the tragedy of museums that they're chock a block full of beautiful silver teapots that were never used but very few have the clothes that ordinary people used to wear

Kate Grenville

"I'm fascinated by the way when you put two fabrics together the result is more than the sum of its parts - by putting together things in a certain way and with care you can rescue the most scrappy looking things and make them into an object of beauty."

And scrappy Harley is rescued - to the point that when she is described as "unattractive" in reviews I find myself disagreeing.

Douglas, her eventual beau, is a practical man, a man who sees almost mystical qualities in concrete.

That despised material, so reviled by others, is beautiful to him - a fluid medium that is key to his ingenious plan to save the bridge.

In saving the bridge Douglas allies two conflicting strands in the town - those who want to get rid of the old and so-called ugly and those who want to preserve such everyday relics of the past.

New audience

For Grenville this is a very real analysis of today's Australia.

"Its the tragedy of museums that they're chock a block full of beautiful silver teapots that were never used," she says.

"But very few have the clothes that ordinary people used to wear because they were worn out or thrown out or simply used to stuff the holes in the wall so the rats wouldn't come in."

She says that Australia is starting to realise that its history is the ordinary and the response to her book has been very warm as a consequence.

Grenville with her Orange Prize trophy

The Idea of Perfection has also captured a new audience for Grenville, audiences that were alienated by what she admits were her "more literary and highbrow" earlier work.

Her new audience wants an accessible story but one that also has depth and resonance and Grenville is delighted with this, though she did not set out to find new readers.

"I really didn't know what direction it would take until I got into, it was like a long conversation with the characters - it was like a friendship, I took a long time to get to know the people in this book," she says.

Eccentrics

And indeed the characters feel like friends by the end of the book, although it is a romance, The Idea of Perfection is very much about the eccentric ensemble cast.

There is Felicity, the woman obsessed with being perfect who does not realise that worrying about wrinkles gives you more wrinkles.

There's laidback Freddie Chang, the butcher beloved of Felicity.

And what about the deeply odd Chook and Coralie who squabble in public but are actually the most committed of couples.

They are all utterly believable and utterly interesting in an ordinary, small-town, sort of way.

"I don't often say this about my books, but I'd love to meet these characters," says Grenville.

"I often wish I could look up Karakarook in the atlas and go there."