Alice Munro’s broken halo

Canadian author Alice Munro. Picture: AFP

I can hardly get my head around the Alice Munro story. As many readers know, she was a Canadian Nobel laureate who died in May, aged 92. Her short story The Children Stay is still one of the best things I’ve ever read, about a woman choosing between domesticity and the excitement of being with a new lover.

Now her youngest daughter, Andrea Skinner, has come forward with an astonishing tale of how she was repeatedly abused by Munro’s husband, Gerald Fremlin, and Munro not only knew, she stayed with him until he died. If that were not bad enough, it seems Munro’s editor also knew. Her publisher knew. Her biographer knew, and so did many others.

To be clear, the facts are not in doubt: when Skinner turned 25, she told her mother that Fremlin had been abusing her from the age of nine. He was in his 50s. He wrote letters in which he admitted it and Skinner eventually took those letters to the police, who charged him. He pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence.

Skinner says her mother told her she was too much in love with Fremlin to leave him and refused to “deny her own needs” and “sacrifice for her children”. She adds: “I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me, and with the fact that my mother, confronted with the truth of what had happened, chose to stay with, and protect, my abuser.”

The feeling is one of horror and dismay. How could so empathetic a writer have a heart of stone?

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In happier news, I was delighted to see a post on LinkedIn celebrating the fact that not one but two kids from the class of 1988 at Graceville State School in southwestern Brisbane had written books that made our Notable Books column.

Barrister David Topp, whose book Brisbane Breached: The Story of a Drought Defaulted Floodplain, appeared on March 9, wrote: “Congratulations to Carly-Jay Metcalfe on having her memoir take the Number One spot in the coveted list of Notable Books … that’s twice in a month that two members of the same class ... Seriously what are the odds of that?”

I contacted Topp to tell him how happy I was to hear this news, and he replied with a surprising update: he’s just lost his house in a fire.

“Though never a direct victim of flooding myself, on 7 July my house succumbed to a reverse form of natural disaster,” he wrote, adding that his house was one of three in the inner-northern Brisbane suburb of Grange that burnt down when a fire started two doors up. His family and three cats survived.

“People and cats can’t be replaced like possessions can,” he said, “so we’re viewing this outcome through a prism of positivity, not negativity.

“In a way it’s ironic that I have authored not one but two books about Brisbane flood events, and now I share the pain … not flood but its disaster opposite: fire.”

Topp recovered some of his author copies of Brisbane Breached, but most were drenched by the firefighting waters, “so I too became a flood victim in the end – an indirect one”.

Glad to see you still looking on the fun side, David!

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The Southern Highlands Writers' Festival will be held in July.

Is there anywhere lovelier than the NSW Southern Highlands in July? It’s so gorgeous up there, what with all the cold nights and the open fires, and now they have a literary festival – the Southern Highlands Writers’ Festival – and they’ve invited me!

I’ll be there on Friday, July 26, at the glorious old Empire Cinemas on the superbly named Bong Bong Street in Bowral. But guess who else they’ve got?

Posie Graeme-Evans! She is one of Australia’s most respected television and film producers, best known as the creator and showrunner of McLeod’s Daughters and the co-creator and co-producer of Hi-5. She was director of drama for the Nine Network from 2002 to 2005 and author of several books including The Dressmaker, and she will be leading the inaugural Writers’ Boot Camp focusing on character development, story arc and writer’s block.

But wait, that’s not all.

They’ve also got Catherine McKinnon, whose novel Storyland was shortlisted for five literary awards including, in 2018, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Barbara Jefferis Award and the Voss Literary Prize. The Merrigong Theatre Company has commissioned an adaptation of the novel; McKinnon’s latest book, To Sing of War, was extracted in our magazine in April.

If that were not enough, guests also can buy tickets to see an exclusive live preview of a new musical, Stella: The Miles Franklin Story.

And wait, there’s more!

Channel 9 broadcaster Liz Hayes.

They’ve got Liz Hayes in conversation about her new memoir, I’m Liz Hayes. Most readers will know Hayes; she has been on TV in Australia for four decades, as a reporter and presenter for Nine Entertainment, appearing on Under Investigation with Liz Hayes and 60 Minutes.

And they’ve got one of my favourite book critics, Mark Dapin, whose novels include King of the Cross, Spirit House and R&R. King of the Cross won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, Spirit House was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and Dapin’s history book The Nashos’ War won the NIB People’s Choice Award and an Alex Buzo Shortlist Award. What a feast! Please come and say hello. It’s usually volunteers who pull the small but mighty literary festivals together, and they deserve your support. The festival runs from July 26 to 28. More: www.shwf.com.au.

Mark Dapin.

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Some readers may remember a photograph of Bill Heather in these pages just a few weeks ago. It was taken at this year’s Kyogle Readers and Writers Festival in northern NSW. He has never missed one. The picture showed him with some friends, and I’ve only just found out their names! They were Chris Mansell and Richard Kelly Tipping, each of whom had been invited to speak at the festival. Each has a book published by Puncher & Wattmann as part of the Visual Poetics series. Tipping says of Mansell’s book: “It’s a modern classic, in my opinion, with its rigorous squares of text holding lyrical poems. You can see page examples on Chris’s website.” His own is called Hear the Art: visual poetry as sculpture, and it is a survey of public word artworks across decades. I’m so sorry you went unidentified, and I’m pleased to put names to faces.

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Journalist Caroline Overington and Head of Fiction Publishing, Catherine Milne ahead of announcing The Australian Fiction Prize. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian

Dozens of people have asked me when and how they can enter the inaugural The Australian Fiction Prize, and I’m pleased to let you know that we will be launching the new prize in an official way next week, so don’t miss the paper. It will include instructions and a deadline.

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In these pages: I don’t know about you, but I often wonder about life on earth. It takes forever to learn what you need to know, and just when you get good at it, the end looms. Seems rather unfair, doesn’t it? In any case, don’t miss Antonella Gambotto-Burke’s review of Why We Die by Venki Ramakrishnan, on page 13. We also have Tom Gilling on a terrific new family biography; we have Charles Wooley on the new John Grisham; I’ve done the Notable Books, which includes a lovely survey of the brilliant nurses who helped care for HIV-AIDS patients at the height of the pandemic, when nobody really knew how dangerous it was; and we have a new poem. Enjoy.