{"id":110952,"date":"2019-09-27T17:11:34","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T06:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=110952"},"modified":"2019-10-02T16:09:39","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T05:09:39","slug":"listen-heather-rose-on-bruny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2019\/09\/27\/listen-heather-rose-on-bruny\/","title":{"rendered":"LISTEN: Heather Rose on Bruny"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Bruny<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

How do you follow up a beloved Stella Prize-winning novel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re Heather Rose, you write Bruny<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, an explosively brilliant novel that\u2019s one part family saga, one part political thriller, one part romance and one part literary tribute to Tasmania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heather won the Stella Prize in 2017 for her novel The Museum of Modern Love<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, a thoughtful rumination on the power of art in fostering human connection. In this respect, Bruny<\/em> couldn\u2019t be further from that novel but it is every bit as compelling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bruny tells the story of the Coleman family, a dynasty from Tasmania that straddles the political spectrum and has consolidated a significant amount of power, which one side of the family is using to get foreign money for a bridge that is being built in Bruny. When that bridge is blown up in a terrorist attack, Astrid Coleman agrees to return to her homeland in order to help her brother in the leadup to an election, but she soon uncovers a host of secrets that threatens to topple her world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bruny<\/a>
Ben Hunter and Heather Rose, author of Bruny<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

For Heather, the idea for the bridge entered her head while she was walking on a beach near north Bruny and Tinderbox, after a trick of the light made it appear as if there was a bridge connecting the two land masses. Heather found herself wondering how such a bridge would affect the local community. Shortly afterwards, the Coleman family wandered into her head almost fully formed, having been birthed in an abandoned short story from years before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis was the first novel I ever got to write full time, so I was able to immerse myself in it in a way that I could never do with previous novels,\u201d says Heather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She describes feeling an intense energy to get the book finished that came from the political nature that it was taking on, something that has only intensified in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt felt like a book of its time, and it\u2019s become more a book of its time since it\u2019s been written.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heather came to Booktopia for a signing session, before sitting down for a podcast with Ben Hunter and myself – listen below and grab your signed copy of Bruny<\/em><\/a><\/strong>!*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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