Interview - Miriam Calleja Shaw

You have recently published a book called COVID-19and the Virus that Shook the World . It provides a sobering look at virus infections and pandemics, with particular emphasis on the COVID-19 strain. Presently, the cases have diminished in Europe but the spread has moved elsewhere. However, how safe is ‘safe’ at the moment? With the way things are evolving with the ’new’ coronavirus, it’s very difficult to answer this question. The WHO just last weekend warned that the worst may be yet to come. We are certainly witnessing an atrocious amount of deaths and illness in the US. We don’t yet know with certainty which factors are affecting the progression of the pandemic. Indeed we don’t even know about all the symptoms that appear with COVID-19 infection. The relative ‘safety’ is different for everyone, depending on the state of their immunity and certain other factors. For a person with average health who isn’t too old, the danger of getting severely ill may be low – but we need to

Interview - Lou Drofenik

The motif of migration features in a number of your novels, like Birds of Passage, The Confectioner’s Daughter and Echoes. It’s also something you’ve personally experienced when, as a young woman, you left Malta to go to Australia. What impact did this phenomenon have on you at the time, and later on as a writer and an academic?

Migration changed my life completely, turned it upside down, opened my eyes to many possibilities, freed me. I fell in love with Australia when I arrived as a 21-year-old. I loved the wide landscape, the gardens, the tree-lined avenues. It was an exciting time; thousands of young people were arriving from all over Europe. I watched how different races interacted with each other, worked together, accepted each other because they were all in the same boat; starting from scratch, leaving old ways behind. In the hostel where I lived, I met young women who were boarding there from country Victoria. I was awed by their assertiveness, by the way they expressed themselves, how they fought for their rights, how outspoken and uninhibited they were. I wanted to be like them: confident and self-assured. Though I didn’t know it then, that first year of settlement had a great impact on my thinking and on my writing which came much later.

Women in your novels shine in their ordinariness, which makes them extraordinary. Do you think this a fair assessment? Why?

The women I write about are the women I knew. I didn’t know any scholars. Most of the women — aunts, neighbours, shopkeepers — could barely write their own names, yet each one of them had a story. The Birkirkara women I remember lived within the purview of their homes, going out to do the daily shop, hearing Mass, spending most of their days cooking and washing — very ordinary lives you would say. And yet their simple existence contained a fascinating cornucopia of emotions, conflicts, taboos and superstitions. I have amassed a wealth of knowledge growing up in the midst of these incredible personalities.

Research is integral to your fiction writing. How willing are you to bend the truth for the sake of the story?

History is factual. I do my very best to stay within its boundaries. If I move away from historical facts, I declare it in the book. For example, in Birds of Passage, I wrote about the Health Certificate for Prostitutes which, as far as I know, did not exist; which is why I stated as much in the author’s notes.
The Reluctant Healer is set in Gozo. How is Gozo different to Malta?

The Reluctant Healer' ta' Lou Drofenik... - National Book Council ...Maybe I am wrong, but whenever I stayed in Gozo I found that the people there were very spiritual. The women I met had a deep love for their religion and an extraordinary faith, which jolted me out of my cynicism. Whenever I stay in Gozo I have a feeling of goodness, of benevolence, as if I am being looked after, cossetted and loved.

Do you have an ideal reader in mind when you’re writing a story? Does this condition your writing or style?

No. I write what I have to write, it comes and there it is. I have to get the voices right to start writing otherwise there is no story. I don’t have to see the characters but I must hear them. Once I hear them then the story writes itself. Usually I know the ending first, and it is very exciting to work out how the story will pan out to come to that ending.

To me there is no ideal reader. Every reader is a unique person who invests time and money to read my work, who becomes involved in what I wrote, and that is an honour a reader bestows on the writer. I have great respect for each reader, and I am certain that a book is enriched each time it is read, by what a reader brings to it from his or her experiences. Readers telling me that they fell in love with my characters is the best gift they can give me.

Do you have any hobbies you’d like to share with us?

We are self-sufficient here. We grow most of our vegetables and fruit, lots of flowers and herbs to attract the bees, and we have sheep to keep the grass down. I love gardening. My garden is where I exercise, meditate, and where my characters speak to me.

The Confectioner's Daughter (Lou Drofenik, 2016) – The Maltese ReaderWhat book, film or song would you recommend to us?

I am reading Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall but I love Australian literature: writers like Tim Winton, Helen Garner, Tom Keneally, Richard Flanagan, Peter Carey, David Malouf and of course Ruth Park are all on my shelf. I also love South African writer J M Coetzee. 

I love Country music: Johnny Cash, Loretta Young, Patsy Klein.  Dolly Parton’s Nine toFive is one of my favourites. I immediately fell in love with that song, as soon as I heard it many years ago, while I was juggling work and raising a family.

To finish off: What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to you?

My grown-up children ringing me and saying 'I love you Mum' at the end of the conversation.


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If you want to read Lou Drofenik's books you can buy them from the links below:

Cast the Long Shadow (Self-Published)
Of Cloves and Bitter Almonds (Self-Published)
Echoes: A Novel (Horizons)
In Search of Carmen Caruana (Self-Published)

If you want a FREE DIGITAL COPY of Lou's, BIRDS OF PASSAGE, click HERE for more details.



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