Read a Q&A with Alice Pung | One Hundred Days

by |June 1, 2021
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Alice Pung is an award-winning Australian writer, editor and lawyer. Her books include the bestselling memoirs Unpolished Gem (2006) and[Her Father’s Daughter (2011), and the novel Laurinda (2014). She is the editor of the anthology Growing Up Asian in Australia (2008), and created the Marly books for Penguin’s Our Australian Girl series (2015). Her latest book is the novel One Hundred Days (Black Inc. 2021).

Today, Alice Pung is on the blog to answer a few questions about One Hundred Days. Read on …


Alice Pung

Alice Pung (Photo by Courtney Brown).

Please tell us about your book, One Hundred Days!

AP: Karuna is a sixteen-year old girl who falls pregnant, not on purpose but not entirely by accident either. She has a complicated relationship with her very controlling mother, who wants to raise Karuna’s child as her own. The story explores the struggle between who ultimately gets to be called the mother of the baby.

Can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind this book?

AP: In this book, I wanted to explore two main questions: what is love, and what is abuse – emotional, physical and spiritual? And to what extent does culture and class affect our judgement on these matters that we perceive to be immutable? I wanted to do this through the prism of a parent-child relationship, because most people now understand that you cannot and should not control every facet of a romantic partner’s life, but legally and socially parents still control every facet of their children’s lives.

Why do you think the mother-daughter relationship makes such good literary fodder for writers?

AP: Every daughter has a mother but not every mother has a daughter. And when two mothers vie over the one daughter, you inevitably have a psychological battle of biblical proportions – essentially, the story of King Solomon’s judgment.

One Hundred Days is described as a ‘fractured fairytale’. Can you tell us a little about what this means?

AP: Many parents inadvertently or deliberately want their children to dream big. They are not aware they have fairytale aspirations for their offspring. Not all kids who play piano will be prodigies, and not all kids who win beauty pageants will be Miss World. I wanted to explore what happens when a child deliberately fractures her parents’ dreams for her because she cannot claim them as her own.

‘I wanted to explore what happens when a child deliberately fractures her parents’ dreams for her because she cannot claim them as her own.’

What is your favourite thing about your protagonist, Karuna?

AP: She is her own being, and even in the most claustrophobic circumstances she is able to exercise autonomy in ingenious and sneaky ways.

You’ve written non-fiction and books for younger readers in the past, and this is an adult novel. What did you like about writing adult fiction this time around?

AP: I wrote this book with a sixteen-year old in mind. Societally we have this idea that they are still children, but in many cultures and even here in Australia, in adverse circumstances these mothers are adults because they have the duties and responsibilities of adults. It baffles me, this distinction between books for adults and teenagers – there is no line in the sand.

What is the last book you read and loved?

AP: Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere.

What do you hope readers will discover in One Hundred Days?

AP: If anything, the surprising perennial freshness of Walt Whitman and Judith Wright’s poems and the enduring odd appeal of Jareth the Goblin King!

And finally, what’s up next for you?

AP: A children’s picture book!

Thanks Alice!

One Hundred Days by Alice Pung (Black Inc. Books) is out now. Limited signed copies are available only while stocks last!

One Hundred Daysby Alice Pung

One Hundred Days

Limited Signed Copies Available!

by Alice Pung

In a heady whirlwind of independence, lust and defiance, sixteen-year-old Karuna falls pregnant.

Not on purpose, but not entirely by accident, either. Incensed, Karuna’s mother, already over-protective, confines her to their fourteenth-storey housing-commission flat, to keep her safe from the outside world – and make sure she can’t get into any more trouble. Stuck inside for endless hours, Karuna battles her mother and herself for a sense of power in her own life, as a new life forms and grows within her...

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