Read a Q&A with Jack Ellis | Home and Other Hiding Places

Jack Ellis is a writer and musician based in Sydney. His first novel, The Best Feeling of All, was published by Arcadia in 2014. He has also written for publications including ABC Online, Crikey, Women’s Health Magazine and Men’s Health Magazine. Jack studied classical composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and the Royal Conservatorium in the Hague. He later studied dispute resolution and law at the University of Technology, Sydney. For the past 13 years, he has worked as a Family Mediator. This work has given him an insight into the complexities of family relationships which has helped to shape his recent writing. His latest novel, Home and Other Hiding Places, is published by Ultimo Press.

Today, Jack Ellis is on the blog to answer a few of our questions about his new novel. Read on!

Jack Ellis

Please tell us about your book, Home and Other Hiding Places!

JE: It’s a story about the adventure, excitement and danger of childhood. The central character, Fin, is eight years old and he lives with his mum, Lindy, on an isolated property in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. The story begins when he and Lindy arrive in Sydney to spend Christmas at Gran’s house. Fin thinks that they are only visiting, but he soon discovers that Gran’s old house on the edge of the bush is his new home. Lindy’s fragile mental health crumbles under the weight of old secrets and Gran’s disapproval and, as she unravels, Lindy tells Fin that their lives are in danger. So Fin puts in motion the only plan he can think of to save his mum and himself, before he sets out to find his way home.

Where did you find the inspiration for this novel?

JE: I kept hearing adults repeating the convenient myth that kids are ‘resilient’ and that they just ‘bounce back’ from parental dysfunction and family conflict. But these phrases were often used by parents who were describing how they were not coping as adults because of the emotional scars they carried from their childhoods. This contradiction kept coming up again and again in my work as a family mediator. Through this work, I’ve had the privilege of insights into many different family systems and ‘family cultures’. And these cultures are most evident in the way that families respond to challenges and conflict – shame, silence, concealment, blame, violence. So a key theme I was inspired to explore was this notion of adults transmitting their own childhood scars to their children (and grandchildren) without intending to, or without even realising it. And how this process provides the scaffolding for the family’s culture, which persists for generations. It’s a complex topic and, as a reader, I know I’m happiest reading stories that move quickly with lots of action. So, I wanted to highlight this topic in a fast-paced way that remained true to the excitement, fun and adventure of childhood.

I decided it was important to tell the story from a child’s perspective because I think kids often have a clearer understanding of the inner workings and dysfunction of their families than the adults do, partly because their perceptions are unclouded by baked-in norms of love and intimacy. Still, even if kids see things more clearly, they are also the most vulnerable people in families and they don’t really have a voice to tell these stories for themselves. So, I wanted to try to tell a story that dealt with a child’s perception of family dysfunction, but in an exciting and fun way. Essentially, I wanted to write a kids adventure story that also dealt honestly with the complex dynamics and challenges facing modern Australian families.

Your protagonist follows an eight-year-old boy named Fin as he navigates the weirdness of adulthood. Would you describe this as a coming-of-age novel? Why or why not?

JE: On one level it’s a coming-of-age novel because it’s about the pivotal life experiences in the lives of kids that shape the adults they become. So, yes, in that sense it’s a story about coming of age. However, the book itself only takes place over a story time of 27 days. So, Fin doesn’t have much time for growing up. Really, it’s about that tipping point that children often go through, some much younger than others, when they realise that their parents may not really have it all together. It’s about a boy needing to ‘man up’ earlier than he should have to because the adults around him aren’t coping.

You’ve worked previously as a family mediator in the legal system. Has this experience had much of an influence on the writing of Home and Other Hiding Places?

JE: As a reader, the thing that really hooks me in is visceral authenticity and detail that is true to life, when a writer can hold up a window for us to look through at places and people that we know. I think each writer’s ‘window’ is crafted by their experiences, the people they’ve met, the places they’ve been. I’ve had the privilege of working with so many families through mediation over the years, often during the toughest periods of their lives. And each family is different. There is nothing specific – no family or person – that informed the characters in the book. However, spending hours at a time listening to people talk about their lives, day after day for more than a decade has, I hope, helped me give my characters and this story an authenticity that I may not have been able to if I’d had a different job.

Why was it important to you to write this story?

JE: As I mentioned, I wanted to challenge the convenient myth that kids are resilient and they just ‘bounce back’ from family conflict. The focus of a family mediation session is always on ‘the best interests of the child’. So I’ve spent my career trying to help parents to identify, in each unique situation, what is best for their kids. But I’ve also learnt, when adults aren’t coping – whether that’s under the pressures of this pandemic or mental health issues, financial pressure or the complexity of relationships – the best interests of children often get lost lower down a list of more urgent priorities. And often, even when parents realise it, they don’t have the emotional energy to be the parent they want to be because their emotional ‘petrol tank’ is being drained by stress and conflict. Our experiences as children shape the adults we become and, by extension, the society we create. I think this is an important topic, but kids can’t really tell these stories for themselves.

Can you tell us a little bit about your journey towards becoming a writer?

JE: I always read as a child. But initially, I put my creative energy into music. I wrote songs as a teenager and played in bands. And then I studied classical composition at the Conservatorium in Sydney and then in The Hague (the Netherlands). Once I returned to Sydney, I continued writing music but, honestly, I became frustrated with the challenges of collaboration – inadequate rehearsal times for classical pieces, chaos in band members’ lives getting in the way of writing music and gigs. So, I set out to travel and I ended up living and working as an English teacher in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. While I was living there, I continued writing songs and playing solo gigs in some of the crazy outlaw bars and music clubs there. And the contrast between life in Cambodia and my life in Sydney was so dramatic and so dangerous that I began writing what was happening down as stories. When I returned from Cambodia, I took up my pen and notebook and put my energy into shaping these ideas into my first novel – Mango Rain. After many attempts, I couldn’t find a publisher. And now, two books later, I think of Mango Rain more as a practice novel. But it taught me the discipline of holding my pen to the paper for long enough to turn themes, characters and a setting into a novel. I also think my composition studies helped because music composition is all about structure and the development and transformation of relatively simple musical ideas into something bigger that can sustain the interest of an audience.

Who do you most admire in the writing world?

JE: It’s really not easy to pick one:

Helen Garner for her vivid familiarity, and the way people, rooms and places live on the pages of her novels.

Tim Winton for how he can sketch a lifetime of hope and pain in a few words, without taking you out of the flow of the scene.

Kurt Vonnegut for doing it the way he does, and for creating Elliot Rosewater.

Sonya Hartnett for how she can take a single narrative idea and weave a perfect structural web out of it.

Ivan Turgenev for the way he builds the elements of a story piece by piece.

Graeme Greene for clarity and style.

What is the last book you read and loved?

JE: Too Much Lip by Melissa Lukashenko. In particular, I loved the way she creates an effortless interplay between what the characters are thinking and what they’re actually saying. I think when we know people well, we often do know exactly what they’re thinking but not saying. And conversations are as much about what is not said as what is. She captures these unspoken thought lines brilliantly and the drama of the story grabbed me from the first page.

What do you hope readers will discover in Home and Other Hiding Places?

JE: I hope, most of all, they will fall in love with Fin. I also hope that they’re reminded of the purity of their own vision as kids, before the structured and pragmatic mental filtration of adulthood kicked in. I think it’s this process of filtering out the world so we can focus on rules and routines and homework, and eventually paid work, which gets us to the point where we can walk past a butterfly or a special tree or flower without noticing, let alone stopping to appreciate it. The world is an amazing place that adults are often too busy being important and ‘grown up’ to notice. I also hope that readers think about the possibly (or likelihood) that kids understand the simple realities of family dynamics and relationships better than adults do, largely because they still haven’t filtered out the basic truths of existence. And I hope they discover a beautiful adventure.

And finally, what’s up next for you?

JE: I’m working on a big novel about deep secrets. Something I’ve learnt, particularly through my work, is that for some people (often women) the most intense, the most loving, the most honest, the most loyal relationships they ever have, no-one ever finds out about.

Thanks Jack!

—Home and Other Hiding Places by Jack Ellis (Ultimo Press) is out now. Limited signed copies are available while stocks last!

Home and Other Hiding Places

Limited Signed Copies Available!

by Jack Ellis

When eight-year-old Fin and his mum Lindy travel to spend Christmas with his Gran in Sydney, Fin assumes they’ll return to their isolated country property – the only home he’s ever known. But he soon discovers that this large and crumbling riverside house, surrounded by bush and unwelcoming neighbours, is his home now.

As Lindy’s fragile emotions fracture under the weight of Gran’s disapproval and the pressure of old memories, Fin holds onto a tenderness of spirit and the simple clarity he has learnt from his isolation on the farm – an insight that hasn’t yet been clouded by the secret codes of adulthood...

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