When love is a battlefield
WHEN you listen to Pip Drysdale speak, it’s difficult to pinpoint her interesting accent. There’s a touch of British, a little South African and a healthy dose of Australian — and there’s good reason why.
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WHEN you listen to Pip Drysdale speak, it’s difficult to pinpoint her interesting accent.
There’s a touch of British, a little South African and a healthy dose of Australian.
The complicated mix is the result of a childhood spent growing up in three countries, before living in two more as a young adult finding her way in the world.
Drysdale, whose debut novel The Sunday Girl hits shelves on Saturday, was forced to pack up her life and move at pivotal moments in her life. Her family moved to Melbourne from South Africa when she was seven then returned to her father’s native Zimbabwe at 14 only to come back to Australia and settle in Perth four years later when president Robert Mugabe’s actions became a threat to her family.
Having to start fresh with each move meant the young Drysdale was often her own best friend.
“You have to have somewhere you can go that’s static and somewhere that’s almost stable,” she tells Insider. “So I developed one hell of an imagination because that was one place I could always go because I was often lonely.”
Despite the upheaval of those early years, Drysdale believes they were instrumental in shaping the creative spirit that has seen her act, sing and write across the world.
“It’s wonderful to get loads of life experiences
and be pushed and challenged, but it’s also awesome to have a sense of stability,” she says.
Just as influential were the years she spent in the US and England.
She was married and divorced in New York by 22 (“He was awesome but I was too young”) and some of the shady men she met in London helped her shape gripping psychological thriller The Sunday Girl.
The book centres on Taylor Bishop, a woman plotting revenge after being dumped by her abusive boyfriend Angus. Her strategy is shaped by the ancient Chinese military thesis The Art Of War — but things quickly spiral out of control.
While Angus isn’t based on any particular man Drysdale has encountered, her experiences did open her eyes to some of the darker characteristics of human behaviour.
“None of (the characters) are taken directly from life, because I think that’s wrong to be honest,” she says. “But I learnt a lot about how people can manipulate other people and the reasons why you might stay in something unhealthy when you really shouldn’t.”
To ensure the story was relatable, Drysdale wanted Taylor to be as normal as possible, someone who would face the same challenges and obstacles as those reading the book.
“I didn’t want it to be that she had some access to police databases or she had huge amounts of cash,” she says. “I wanted it to be that all she had at her disposal was a really normal life and a normal personality.”
Written in Taylor’s voice, the book is a rollercoaster of her emotions and actions — some that will have readers questioning their thoughts about her throughout the book. But the character’s likability didn’t come into the equation when Drysdale was putting pen to paper.
“I wasn’t trying to make them like her or not because I think in real life you don’t sit there trying to manipulate people into liking or not liking you,” she says.
The Art Of War, which is instrumental to this story, was one of two choices Drysdale had when deciding what her central character would use for inspiration.
The other in early contention was Machiavelli’s The Prince, a book she heard about far too often while living abroad.
“The number of men in London who quote Machiavelli and do it happily is really horrifying,” she laughs.
THE SUNDAY GIRL BY PIP DRYSDALE, SIMON & SCHUSTER, OUT SEPTEMBER 1