Kate De Goldi: Eight questions

In the tender, beautifully told The 10pm Question, anxious 12-year-old Frankie Parsons has a drumbeat of questions steadily gaining volume in his head. Are the smoke alarm batteries flat? Does the cat, and therefore the rest of the family, have worms? Is the kidney-shaped spot on his chest a galloping cancer? And then there is the most worrying question of all, the one that Frankie can never bring himself to actually ask.

We asked the author of this award-winning book, Kate De Goldi, a handful of what we hope are rather less troubling questions ahead of her visit to Queenstown Writers Festival to talk about her latest novel, Eddy, Eddy.

What books did you read as a child?

I read many, many children’s novels. I was lucky to be a reading child during one of the great golden ages of children’s publishing in English – post-WWII through to the 1990s. My Dad took us regularly to the public library where I could browse wantonly, but was also very fortunate to own many of the books from that period of publishing – which meant I reread them frequently. That was basically my creative-writing education.

My parents had a considerable library too and I read lots of their fiction and non-fiction, including books that I didn’t completely understand. But I think that’s an essential part of childhood reading!

What are you reading at the moment?

Several books at once, which seems to be my mode these days…I like going between different forms.

Everybody; a book about freedom by Olivia Laing

Reader, come home: the Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf

The Nesbit Tradition: The Children’s Novel 1945-1970 by Marcus Crouch

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt

Who are your literary heroes and heroines in young adult fiction?

All the writers! For example: Ursula Dubosarsky; Geraldine McCaughrean; MC Anderson; Jan Mark; Jacqueline Woodson; Elizabeth Knox; Kelly Link; KM Peyton; David Almond.

But perhaps you mean the characters in the books? In which case I’d single out Patrick Pennington in Pennington’s Seventeenth Summer by KM Peyton. He’s really an anti-hero, but a most fetching one, and I thought of him often while I was writing Eddy, Eddy.

Which writers would you take on an epic road trip?

James Woods (literary critic) – for his well-stocked mind and his orneriness.

Alex Ross (music writer) – so I could ask him lots about classical music.

Leonard Marcus – for his comprehensive knowledge of children’s literature across the 20th century.

Jennifer Egan and Lorrie Moore – for smarts and irony and laughs.

What’s the book you wish you had written?

Three books: The Red Shoe; The Golden Day; The Blue Cat. All by Ursula Dubosarsky.

Who would play you in the movie of your life?

Someone short.

What do you like about Queenstown?

The narrow flight in between the mountains is rather good!

What’s your life motto?

I don’t have one. But if I did, it might be from Julian of Norwich who said many wise things, including this:

‘And all shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be exceeding well.’

– On Sunday 13 November Chris Fitzpatrick will interview Kate about her latest best-seller Eddy, Eddy, as well as her wide-ranging career as a writer, editor, teacher, reviewer and broadcaster.

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