Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:07 Welcome to the Fremantle press podcast. My name is Maria Pappas. And today I have Emma Young with me to talk about her novel. The last bookshop, the last bookshop is a page Turner that pits little business values up against big businesses, desire for profit. Before you know it, you will love Kate the main character and you will be invested in the quiet care. She gives her clients her desire to keep her shop alive and even her love <inaudible> It's introduced Emma Young. Emma is a digital reporter who also wants worked as a bookseller. She has a bachelor of arts in English literature and has won multiple awards for her journalism in 2019. Her novel, the last bookshop was shortlisted for the inaugural foggerty literary award. Welcome Emma, thank you for joining us today. You're welcome.
Speaker 2 00:01:05 Thank you so much for that lovely intro. That was so nice.
Speaker 1 00:01:08 Emma, the last bookshop is such a heartwarming story with the kind of protectiveness that readers would genuinely cheer on. Will you tell us what the last bookshop is about and what inspired? Okay. So it's
Speaker 2 00:01:21 About Kate copper, um, who is the owner of book fiend, which is the last bookshop remaining in the city center. And not only that, but it's also the last independent store remaining on. What's become a really exclusive Strait. So she's in a bit of a bind. Her profits are dropping, her costs have been rising and there are luxury global brands kind of circling this prime location that she has on the strip. And then the one more financial blow lands and she's faced with this decision to sink or swim. And so the book is about what happens next and all of the kind of unlikely band of friends that gather around to make sure that she's not going to go down without a fight.
Speaker 1 00:02:03 And what inspired it? Well, a few things
Speaker 2 00:02:06 Like a few things kind of came together over years because the book was developed over a few years. So it started with, I wanted to write a book that told all the weird and wonderful stories that I had collected over my years of working as a bookseller. So about the funny humans that you meet and all of the funny anecdotes and strange anecdotes that, that build up whenever you work in any kind of customer service, but I never had a plot. And so that just sat in the back of my mind for years. And then one day I read an article in the monthly about this librarian who ran a home visiting service for kind of elderly and infirm clients. And the article told all these beautiful stories about how she got to know those people who were just really lonely old people, sitting in their homes without much contact with anyone, but her, she learned how smart and how interesting they were, and she learned about all their relationships, um, and all their interests through choosing books for them. And so she would eventually learn more and more about what they like to read. And so she would pick from new releases for them. And I just thought that sounded like such a beautiful relationship. I thought if I had a book seller who could do that, that could be my story listeners
Speaker 1 00:03:25 Might recognize or think they recognize elements of the shop, the book fiend. I know, as I was reading, I kept thinking, oh, that's like this shop I know. Or, oh, that's like that one. Did you have any particular bookshops pictured in your mind as you were creating the book fiend?
Speaker 2 00:03:44 Oh yeah. Um, for sure. I mean, I used to work at Elizabeth for a long time. So a lot of it was like a bit of a, a combination of the old south terrace Elizabeths and a little bit the old, um, Hey, straight Elizabeths in Perth. And there's a little bit of that and a little bit of like a beauty and the based kind of library like old English library feel. Um, so there were those, but it was all kind of packed together with my ideal of like a home library as well. And so I wanted to kind of roll all those things into one
Speaker 1 00:04:18 Set up the lovely relationship between Kate and June. Kate's old nanny. We learned that, uh, June acted as a mother figure for Kate when she was a child, but that this role is now somewhat reversed. Tell us a little bit about June. How did you come to create her and what made you want to explore the shift in roles between carer and cared for? That's
Speaker 2 00:04:43 A lovely perceptive, um, way of phrasing that, um, I guess partly, you know, I just wanted a strong central, older person character who was a bit more of her favorite. So Jane was just kind of the first one who came out of the pen and what came out was a little bit of a, I guess I kind of amalgam of two women who cared for me and nanny roles when I grew up, because I also had parents who returned to work full time quite soon after I was born. And they found these two old ladies, Margaret and Edna, well, I suppose they weren't really that old at the time, but you know, they seemed odd to me when I was little, but yeah, they were sisters and June has turned out like a bit of a combination of those two. So that's partly where she comes from.
Speaker 2 00:05:29 You know, one of them was excellent at cooking and she loved to fly off to Singapore and go to the casinos and play bingo. And she was kind of outgoing and, and this brusque, but lovely personality and the other sister was very kind of warm and gentle and patient. And, and there was that side of her personality. So June has turned out a lovely combo of those two sisters, one of whom is still around and I'm hoping she'll make it to my book launch. And in terms of that reversal of a caring role, I have experienced that a little bit. My own father died of cancer almost 10 years ago now. So his kids had to grow up very quickly as we cared for him. And then of course, after he died, we were in a position of looking after my mother a little bit for a while as well. And so psychologically, I guess on my mind for the years, while I was writing the book that consciousness of being a child who turns around and cares for people older than them was very much kind of on my mind, totally the themes
Speaker 1 00:06:31 That come through quite strongly for me, uh, loneliness and community in the beginning, chapters, people worry that Katie's too shy or socially awkward or too alone. But by the end of the book, it is clear that Kate has actually built up a whole community through her work. If Kate could share her wisdom about what real loneliness is and what community means, what do you think she might say
Speaker 2 00:06:58 By the end of the book, she's built up a wisdom about loneliness. That would really be something along the lines of. You're never really lonely. If you can rely on yourself and be comfortable with the idea of loneliness in yourself. But beyond that, I guess she would say that you would never be lonely if you've got a place to go where people of like-minded newness can gather. And I guess that's where the community, the sense of community comes in as well, because she's created a space where people can go where relationships aren't about family or about friendships. There are about a shared love of both the location and a pastime. And yeah, that's what the book's all about really is finding a bond through the written word. It feels
Speaker 1 00:07:44 Like you do that quite a bit through her business. And I noticed, as I was reading, you make some opening observations about the challenges facing small business, um, in your novel Kate's first reaction to impossible rent hikes is to lay off staff, but without staff, she ends up working long hours. She has no holidays. She still makes minimal profit carefully. You show readers how flawed the strategy is. And by the end of the novel, you gently illustrate that profit and growth best occurs through adding value, not three cutting costs for me, this was all really solid advice. Where does your knowledge about business come from?
Speaker 2 00:08:24 I'm glad that you say it's, it's carefully done because it's actually quite a detailed business to kind of stack up all of those figures and that plot line. So I had to work quite hard on making sure that it all kind of checked out if you like, but I'm in a pretty fortunate position that I'm a journalist in Perth. Who's been around long enough that I'm let go where my interests take me. I don't know whether, you know, whether the chicken came before the egg, but over the years that I've been writing this book, I've gotten more and more interested in small businesses in Perth and the changing fortunes of the city and which strips go down and which ones come up and the changing fortunes of the businesses along there and what kind of financial dynamics are playing out there. So the more interested I've gotten, the more I've been able to exploit being in this privileged position of being a journalist.
Speaker 2 00:09:16 So if I'm interested in something like, I wonder why the good store is still trading after 30 years. And I wonder why they moved on the strip, or I wonder why that pen shop on the corner of Barrack street in Perth is still going after all this time. And this is so cool. I might just go and interview that lady. And so I've interviewed a lot of retailers, not just bookshop owners on the other hand, because I worked in book shops and I saw those pressures on them. And I've observed since leaving bookshops, how many of them have had to move and adapt to the times what, with social media and online shopping and that sort of thing, I've watched them adapt and I've taken an interest in it. Aside
Speaker 1 00:09:52 From business though, the book is also about relationships. One of the storylines that I enjoyed most was the love triangle that seems to develop between Seb, Kate, and James, in a lot of ways. This love triangle reminded me of the classic Bridget Jones narrative. And I was never sure who the good guy was going to be or who the scoundrel would end up becoming. Did you enjoy writing this part of the narrative and did you know from the outset, what romantic choices Kate would make?
Speaker 2 00:10:22 It's so funny that you say Bridget Jones, because I love Bridget Jones. I'm a huge fan. And from the outset, this was one of the books that I had in mind as my inspiration. When I wrote this, it's a kind of factor in the novel. That's dropped out a little bit as other issues have come to the fore. But initially I had a very big kind of focus on self-help books and self-help book addiction as part of this book, you know how Bridget is always reading the latest pathetic has self-help book. So it's really funny that you mentioned that. Um, but it's funny that you say as well about the love triangle, because that was never an intended part of the story, except just became interesting as a love interest by himself. He was not intended to be anyone, but a kind of bit part, but he just got more and more interesting as the book went along.
Speaker 1 00:11:08 Did you enjoy writing this part of the narrative and did you know from the outset what romantic choices Kate would make?
Speaker 2 00:11:15 Yeah, I definitely don't think I knew what choice she would make. That's very much like being teased out right up to the end. And even that triangle has been kind of fostered very light in the day in the writing of the book. So yeah, it's been a very fun part, seeing that it kept me right at
Speaker 1 00:11:36 It, right to the very end to the very last page.
Speaker 2 00:11:39 I actually never intended to write a romance at all or have the romance be a big part of the book. But I guess I think part of me sort of in the beginning just went, oh, well, she'd better have a love interest. And so I just sort of put in and then it sort of took off, but I guess that's what happens in real life. Isn't it? You think I'm going to be sensible and Kate, this person in one part of my life and then before, you know what you're in love and it's the most important thing in your life. So that's love, I have
Speaker 1 00:12:07 To admit, I cried towards the end when yeah, it was good. It was, it was good. Um, struggling to make sense of her grief. Kate comes across a copy of CS. Lewis's a grief observed, which is a collection of Louis's reflections following his wife's death in your novel. Kate says that through this book, she hears what she herself could not describe. Do you think books play a significant role in articulating the things that are hard to talk about?
Speaker 2 00:12:42 Absolutely. Yeah. Um, my husband probably hates it because everything in our relationship like has to be preceded by I've read this, or you need to read this book, but that I think our relationship is a lot stronger for that. Your book
Speaker 1 00:12:56 Is, is fun to read and it's very, very gripping desperate to know how things would turn out for Kate are vetted all in one hit over a weekend. Was the book just as fun to write as it was to read?
Speaker 2 00:13:11 I wish I could tell you that it was, it was that fun and crazy. It's so hilarious that something that took five years can be devoured in a weekend, but I'm very glad that that's the case because that's what I wanted above all was to make it fun to read because the book is about enjoying reading. And so if it was not fun to read, then that would be a sad irony. I must say there were some very, very difficult times writing this book because I lacked a lot of confidence. It was the first time I'd ever attempted any work of fiction. I didn't start on short stories. I didn't have any shorter pieces published. I didn't, you know, get anything like a novella done or anything like that. This is my first attempt. And so it was woefully poorly structured in the beginning. I think I lacked confidence about the setting of the story.
Speaker 2 00:14:02 Um, I lacked confidence in what I was trying to say and how I was trying to say, and I learnt on the go, I learnt a lot of the things that eventually made the story work quite late in the day after I'd already done multiple drafts and sent it to multiple agents. I started in, I think, 2016 and it was only by about 2018 that I got the story to a point where I could get useful feedback from agents that really helped me pinpoint some deep structural problems with it. They forced me to kind of interrogate why the story had problems and, and what I was trying to say with things like what Sam's character was about. Um, I had to do quite a bit of soul searching and quite a bit of realizing that a lot more hard work had to be done before the story was to be anywhere near publishable.
Speaker 2 00:14:53 So I don't know if I would call those things fun, but at the end of the day, like I had some amazing moments, especially working with our male, my editor towards the end of the publishing process. By then I had the confidence to know that the story was decent and that it was going to get published. And at those later stages, I had some moments of just real pure joy, where I did get to just work on tinkering with a sentence. And I did get to just work on really fine tuning those bits that I wanted to say about CS Lewis and the meaning of writing and stuff. And when it got to those real fine tuning bits, that was when the real joy emerged for me, um, where I was almost there. And it was finally really saying what I wanted it to. And I knew it was saying that effectively,
Speaker 1 00:15:43 If that's your first book, what can readers expect from you next?
Speaker 2 00:15:47 So I have already written the manuscript for my next novel. It's called Thunderbolt lodge also about a young woman and a little bit of a coming of age tale as well, but above all a thriller set on kangaroo island. And I've drafted my third novel as well, which I'm not super able to talk about yet because it's still at a very baby stage, but I've managed to finish the first draft just before I had my baby six months ago. So I've got it in the bag, something in the bag. And, um, I'm hoping to come back to that later this year. Wonderful.
Speaker 1 00:16:25 We're going to finish today with a passage from the last book shop and what, what will you be reading for us? And can we have a page number so we can read along at home?
Speaker 2 00:16:34 Oh, sure. Um, bottom of page, 146, her jobs before book fiend were what had filled her with determination to make it on her own, to implement all the ideas she had despised her bosses for not thinking of to have control, make something she could be proud of. And without having to abide by anyone else's meaningless rules, their dress codes, they're arbitrary decisions though. At least those other retailers went struggling like you are and nasty little voice in her brain popped up. She ignored it. Everything had been different 10 years ago. Nobody could have foreseen the ranks of to, into Lopez. Now strangling the heart of the city, making everything look shiny and newer, and essentially the same homogenization and pasteurization on a city scale, burning off impurities. Anything that looked slightly different or gave off the unmistakable whiff of the past. Anything unique book, fiend was unique and everyone else combined new and old and collectible stock alike not only recorded on a searchable database, but browsable in a real bricks and mortar.
Speaker 2 00:17:42 Shopfront, she'd done beautifully in this nature before these massive companies decided to move in with their bottomless pockets and their sheer bulk that cut through any obstruction, swallowing up everything in their path like super patrollers crashing through a hard top ocean. In this case, the black bitumen of hay street, even now sitting in her pool of late afternoon sunshine, she could see through the window, a pair of young girls gazing slack jawed through the neighboring window at Gucci lusting, after some completely unaffordable and unnecessary trinket, while just next door, lay magic mystery and unlimited knowledge packaged in that most cheap, friendly and humble are formats that paperback novel, but you don't want that. Do you? She told them aloud. You just want a new pair of heels for spring and you're probably gonna put it on mommy's credit card. Even if you wanted a book, you'd probably order it off Amazon for your Kindle. And then you'd bitch about the price, the phone rang. And she picked it up.
Speaker 3 00:18:39 Hello? Book fanned, Kate speaking. Oh, hello. Set of bright female voice. It's Julia here from the library at St. Christopher's. We need a copy of Anne Frank's diary. Okay. Give me a, but not the one with the rude bits. Could you have a quick read through the additions you have in send us the clean version? Okay.
Speaker 2 00:19:02 Politely suggested the woman do a bit of Google searching for what she wanted. She would be happy to order in a specific edition one Saint Christopher's knew exactly what this was. She hung up. Well, businesses come and go, but it's good to know. People will always be idiots. She said,
Speaker 1 00:19:19 Thank you for reading it. Thank you for taking the time to join us listeners. You can find the last bookshop in all good bookstores and online at Fremantle, press.com.edu. If you enjoyed our chat today, subscribe to our podcast on apple podcasts, Google play, SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Maria Pappas, and I have been your host today in 2020. I won the city of Fremantle Hungerford award and my own novel will be out in November. Join me next time as we continue our journey into everything books,
