But she’s adamant: “This book can’t just be for me. She apologises for “being selfish” and talking about herself so much – in an interview about her own book. It was only my family and my book, and I disappeared.” In that state, I didn’t look after my body or my health. Once the idea was there, it was this huge burst over one year, getting it all on the page. “If you look at my bank balance, you’ll know I haven’t made it.” But she’s happy? “Yeah. And if I don’t make it by the time I’m 40, I’ll go be something else.” She doesn’t feel as though she’s made it already? “Nooo,” she says. Spending a decade out of the public eye has allowed her to “grow up”, she says. I should be used to it now, to know it is not an attack on me, but it is really hard, especially when you rip your heart out and put it on the page.”
It means more people loving it or hating it. “I’ve never written anything so commercial, so I am nervous. “I rang my editor and threatened to jump off the roof,” she says.
But what Winch remembers is reading the first review in the Australian, which implied she had only written it with “white editorial help”. Now 35, she is incredibly nervous about reception to The Yield, her first novel since her 2006 debut, which was beloved by critics, put on school syllabuses and won awards. We meet in Paris, a long way from Wollongong, where Winch was raised she lives on a rural property near Nantes with her husband, Arnaud, and teenage daughter, Lila.
You might begin to resist the idea that, because you are in the public eye, you have to share all of yourself with an audience who want to know about the artist but not the art. Some are incredibly personal but some are so seemingly innocuous that I begin to wonder if I will have anything left by the end.īut ask yourself: how would you have coped with being humiliated before your entire nation, when you were actually 25? How would you deal with a lengthy court battle that would reach Australia’s federal court, that would end with your accuser found guilty of contravening the Racial Discrimination Act but who stood defiant on the court steps, refusing to apologise? You might begin to wonder where all your vulnerabilities start and end. During our interview, she asks me, again and again, to not include particular details of her life. But it is integral to understanding her, her latest book The Yield, and the gaps in her story, which you can fill by reading her fiction but you won’t find answers for here. You may think there is something unjust in starting with this episode, or with Bolt, to tell you about Tara June Winch.
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