Recently in Australia as a guest of Melbourne's Wheeler Centre, Salley, who had been invited to speak on the theme of life and death in her work, found the time to speak to me for Edge Radio's Book Show.
Jungian Psycholanalyst, former Booker Prize judge and of course loved and lauded author of Miss Garnet's Angel, and most recently Dancing Backwards, Salley spoke about how she wrote her first novel at age nine, when "at a rather ordinary primary school," a teacher recognised her boredom and set her the task of writing a book. With this exercise, she created the blueprint for her further work and, as with most of her books, death was an inportant theme.
Through her training in pyschoanalysis and her (alluded to) signifigant spiritual experiences, Salley talks about how myth colours her writing, her envy that David Malouf beat her to the story of Hector, Priam and Achilles in 'Ransom' and how, she says "Freud has got it wrong."
Salley talks about translation and the mystical experience that occurs with this process. "how two people can suddenly manifest themselves in a third reality... the invisible that stands between the author and the reader.
There's more too - listen here - she's truly captivating.
