Meet our book of the month for May, Holly Wainwright. She is a writer, editor and podcaster who lives on the south coast of New South Wales with her partner and their young family. She’s an Executive Editor at women’s media company Mamamia. He Would Never is her fifth novel.
- To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
I lived the first two decades of my life on the other side of the world – born in Wales but almost immediately moved to Manchester in the north-west of England, where I grew up. Manchester is a rich text in every way – an unpretentious city with an enormous amount of soul and deep vein of humour. My family all still live there. I moved to London at 19 to study journalism and got my first jobs there and then, aged 23, I decided to come backpacking to Australia, alone. And, look, I never really went back.
2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
At 12, a writer. I have always loved books, and to be honest, I wasn’t good at a great deal else. At 18, I thought I wanted to be a serious reporter – even a war correspondent. I had neither the chops nor the nerve. At 30, a writer, again. I never really lost sight of the idea that creating a world – having your name on a book you had written – would just be the biggest thrill and achievement. It took me into my 40s, though, to actually do it.
3. What were three works of art – book or painting or piece of music, etc – you can now say had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?
That’s a very hard question. I love stories about “ordinary” people. It might be the Manc in me, but I am much more interested in the big and small dramas of everyday lives than I am in the grand adventures of the literary classes. One of the first books that had an enormous impact on me – and I know this is a really weird answer for a little anglo girl from northern England – was I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, about her childhood in the American south. That she was this tiny girl enduring unbelievable hardship with all this grace and power and storytelling inside her, I just adored that, although of course I am not suggesting I could relate. My mum took me to hear her read at Manchester Town Hall and I will never forget the power Maya Angelou held in that room. I would have been about 12. Younger than that, I loved Harriet The Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, and deeply related to this kid who was obsessed with spying on her neighbours’ ordinarily extraordinary lives. I read It 10 times, at least. Then it was Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights – Imagine the Bronte sisters writing those books from the extreme isolation of being young females in the middle of an unforgiving northern English moor at an unforgiving time. Musically, I am from Manchester as I said, so the Doves and Elbow are close to my heart. But I love what my kids call “story songs” so I love songwriters from Ben Lee to Sarah Blasko to Kasey Chambers. I think I’ve broken all the rules there, sorry! Didn’t even get to movies and art.
4. Please tell us about your novel (which is also our BOTM!), He Would Never.
So it begins with a body in the bush, but He Would Never is not a crime story. It’s about a group of families who go camping together once a year every year to a very particular, beautiful place. The women met at mothers’ group, and all they had in common was that their babies were born in the same postcode in the same month. But now those babies are 14 and over the years, their friendships have endured a lot, not least because of Lachy Short, who’s married to the group’s ringleader, and who refuses to play by anyone else’s rules. It’s a story about the power and limitations of female friendship, about being a relationship with a narcissist and also about what happens when little kids become big ones. It’s been a big, ambitious project for me to write something that spans a long time with lots of characters and big themes and I’m very proud of it.
5. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?
That women’s lives are endlessly interesting, surprising and full of stories.
6. Whom do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?
Anne Tyler. I think I’ve read everything she’s ever written. Her books are quiet, and rarely about big showy voices, and yet somehow she captures so much by saying very little.
7. What advice do you give aspiring writers?
There’s only one piece of advice worth giving and it’s certainly not original: Just write. For most of us, it’s our absolute favourite thing to do and yet for some reason, we’ll do a great deal to avoid doing it. Just write and keep writing and shut out the endless feedback loop we’re all part of these days. Your voice is your own.
He Would Never
Welcome to Green River.
Five families on an annual camping trip, a mothers' group of fourteen years, children starting to look like adults, a father with his own mysterious agenda . . .
He Would Never is a searing page-turner about the bonds we forge in the furnace of early motherhood, the trust we place in other adults, and the chaos that erupts when one man refuses to play by the rules.
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