← A Podcast of One's Own with Julia Gillard
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- [00:02]
Julia Gillard
ACAST powers the world's best podcasts.
- [00:06]
Sarah Holland
Here's a show that we recommend.
- [00:12]
Ann Morris
Hey there. If you've ever felt your confidence slip at work, you're not alone. The good news, Confidence isn't a fixed trait, it's a skill. And like any skill, you can build it with the right tools and practice. I'm Ann Morris, CEO and bestselling author, and together with my wife Frances Frey, a professor at Harvard Business School, we host the TED podcast Fixable. This season we're zeroing in on confidence, what it really is, how to strengthen it, and how to help others see you as the leader you already are. So if you're ready to show up with more conviction, to get promoted, to lead with clarity, to do the best work of your career, join us on Fixable. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:57]
Sarah Holland
ACAST helps.
- [00:58]
Julia Gillard
Creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.
- [01:09]
Sarah Holland
I found so much tension in the stories and the central tension in most of them is how does this person connect? And as you're sort of reading them, you have this terrible sense of premonition or sort of foreshadowing of some horror yet to unfold.
- [01:30]
Julia Gillard
Hello and welcome back to our monthly book club. A big hello to Sarah Holland Batt, my co host. How are you?
- [01:36]
Sarah Holland
I'm well, thanks Julia. How are you?
- [01:38]
Julia Gillard
I'm alright. I'm moving apartments in London. So I've been doing book culling and clothes culling. I'd have to say the book culling breaks my heart from time to time. Should I really, you know, put this book out for a charity sale or keep it? And it hasn't been made easier by the fact that I'm in an apartment on the fourth floor and the lift is out of service. So I'm getting fit, I'm getting fit trudging up and down four flights of stuff stairs.
- [02:08]
Sarah Holland
Oh, it's. I've also moved this month and it's just the absolute pits, that decision making sort of process. The books are the heartbreaker. Clothes are easy, kitchen stuff is easy, garage is the easiest of all. But your books, it's just sort of devastating to get rid of boxes of them. But we've got to because we keep accumulating so many of them. Or I do, I'm sure you do as well.
- [02:28]
Julia Gillard
No, I accumulate too and people delightfully give me books as well. And I live in a small apartment and when I got the bookcases first brought in, I thought they'll do really well. And now of course I've got piles on the floor, so culling, more culling to go. But a keeper is one that we're going to be discussing today. It's Fiona McFarlane who we absolutely love. We discussed her book the Sun Walks down and both of us were just enthralled to it. And she has now published Highway 13, which. Which is quite a different formatted book and quite different content. I'd remind that the Sun Walks down was set in the late 1800s in a fictionalised country town in South Australia, and it told the story of a boy who had wandered into the bush and particularly told the perspectives of everyone in the township about the search for the boy. So you learned a lot about colonial society and its tensions and interplays from those individual character perspectives. It was sort of Middlemarch like it was compared to the classic George Eliot novel. This is different, though. It does bring us a lot of perspectives and the Australian bush does play a role. What Fiona has done in this book is she has brought us 12 different essays on, all quite short, all with different characters, but they are all around and connected to the story of a serial killer, Paul Bega, who is picking up travelers, often people hitchhiking and murdering them in a stretch of forest. Now, for the Aussie listeners, their minds will immediately go to Ivan Milat, who was a real life serial killer and that was his modus operandi, taking people on a lonely stretch of road. And it was a very horrifying case. It took quite a long time to catch him and as a result, he did murder a number of people. And there's always been some doubt about whether or not before he died, he confessed to all of the murders he'd done. So a truly horrifying case. Sarah, how did you find this format wise, topic wise? What did it do for you? Well, I'm.
- [05:11]
Sarah Holland
I'm one of the sort of mad true crime aficionados. So for me, for me this was just, this was a real joy and also a cause for great introspection because I'm one of those people who does find themselves up late at night watching true crime, true crime documentaries, listening to true crime podcasts, listening to this, absorbing this stuff about serial killers, and you sort of feel slightly guilty participating in the economy of that. It's kind of gratuitous and a little bit weird and I think very, very popular among women. And I, I've always felt a little bit guilty about my fascination with these figures. But then I do think it kind of goes to the heart of self preservation in a way that we listen to these stories and, and have great empathy for the victims and, and want to know how it happened and who did it. In some way we hope to insulate ourselves from, from ever, you know, suffering such a fate. So I felt quite implicated by parts of this book which, you know, in some parts is quite satirical about the sort of fascination that we have with crime and slightly satirizes the podcasts and sort of media that I like to consume on occasion about this sort of material. But I love the approach here. It's sort of. It does have echoes of the Sun Walks down in that. Where we're sort of circling around a central event. In the Sun Walks down we had the sort of missing child and the question was, you know, will the child live? Will the child survive? Here we know that there have been real victims, but nonetheless there's a sort of similar approach of having this sort of chorus of figures, most of whom are only tangentially kind of connected to the serial killer. It's not like his intimate family members or all of the characters in each of the short stories. We get a sort of roving view of the way in which these horrifying events have reverberated through the lives of sort of neighbours, relatives, people who've come into contact with, with the victims and, and people who are just outside of it entirely, but interested somehow or imbricated somehow. And it gives such a wide view, I think, of. Of serial crime, where most often in the classic serial killer novels, like in, you know, say, the Silence of the Lambs, those, those of novels, really, it's a tightly sort of paced chase between a detective with all of those tropes. You know, usually someone who's on the outs with his boss and has a drinking problem and needs to redeem himself and the serial killer who's always steps ahead and. And that tends to be the way that historically, I suppose, or in the classics of the genre that we've encountered serial killers. So here MacFarlane's sort of flipping that all on its head and not really looking directly much at the killer at all, but looking around at the police, at the, at the neighbours, at the other people. How did you find that sort of structure, Julia? Did you, did you enjoy that sort of shying away from the sensationalised serial killer figure and looking elsewhere?
- [08:18]
Julia Gillard
I am not a true crime podcast person. I feel the need to declare that up front, but many, many of my close friends are. And I'm gonna do an individual shout out to Emma. I'm thinking of you, she is a true crime aficionado. Spent all of COVID lockdown going to sleep with true crime podcasts in her ear. And one of the stories in Highway 13 is a true crime podcast. And that's actually the funniest one. I think there is a bit of humour in this book, despite the subject matter. I mean, I love a good detective novel. A page turner and, you know, really the character development in a detective novel is the detective. You know, you always know when you read a detective novel that the detective's gonna solve the crime. You're not entirely sure how, but you know that it's gonna get solved. And so the thing that keeps you reading about the same detective, particularly across multiple books, is the way in author fleshes out the character of the detective, which is why they are never healthy. Happily married, playing sport on the weekend. They've always got, you know, a broken family, a substance abuse issue, a trauma that's resonating throughout their lives because they have to be an interesting character. But it's definitely true that the second biggest character in the detective series genre is always the killer. And Fiona MacFarlane deliberately set out, and she said this in interviews, to tell a story where the serial killer is not the focus. Could she do this? Could she base something on crime in this way and not center it on the story of the killer? And she's used an epigraph from Shakespeare's Richard II. Each substance of grief hath 20 shadows. And she's also used the analogy of you throw a rock into a pond and she's not interested in the rock, she's interested in the ripples. And I did like how expansive the ripples were. I mean, you get stories like a nun taking a group of schoolgirls to roam, and all of the interplay between the schoolgirls, all of the teenage friendships and resentments, and the connection between that story and the serial killing is that one of those girls grows up to be a woman who successfully fights off this serial killer. But we never brought the details of the fight or the intersection or how she came to be in the presence of the serial killer. That is not fleshed out paragraph after paragraph. But there's just this definite touch. Taking you to Rome, the story of the girls. And one of the girls will have a horrible encounter with the serial killer. So I liked those ripples, I'd have to say, and I think we've had this discussion before. I am a lover of a true propulsive plot. And that's not what this is. It's sort of a series of meditations around the event. It had enough beautiful prose and interesting characters to keep me going. And I think it's a great, you know, public transport novel. Even though some of the content is a bit horrifying before you go to bed novel. Because they're self contained stories, you can read one, they're all relatively short, put it down and you're not necessarily going to get that, oh, it's midnight. But unless I read two more chapters, I'm not gonna find out what's going on. Kind of push which for our health and sanity might well be a good thing indeed.
- [12:36]
Sarah Holland
I'm quite struck because you're right, it's not a sort of propulsive, plot driven novel. But there's still to me, I found so much tension in the stories.
- [12:48]
Julia Gillard
It's.
- [12:48]
Sarah Holland
And the central tension in most of them is how does this person connect? And as you're sort of reading them you're, you have this terrible sense of premonition or, or sort of for sort of foreshadowing of some, some horror yet to, to unfold because you're just reading it thinking is this person going to be a victim? Or how does this connect? So it's sort of quite astonishing how much tension she manages to generate from short stories which, which you know, really a short story should be. I think Vs. Pritchett was the one who said it should be just a glimpse of something passing, caught in the corner of the eye. That it's just. They're little vignettes, you know, they're more like poems or sketches than a film or something with a giant arc. And yet because we have these sort of little touchstones sprinkled through the book of how these stories start to weave together. For me there was, there was in some of them quite significant tension. And I was thinking particularly of the one that you mentioned. I think it's called Chaperone. All the stories have their own, their own titles. And this, this story of a nun taking a group of English school children to Rome on a slightly ill fated kind of school trip to, to see the sites and see the churches and the Vatican. It really has this awful sense of something terrible going to happen that just sort of ramps up and escalates and escalates and then the detonation of what that is, you know, is actually really in another story we get the name of this, this student kind of pops up and we realize, oh my gosh, you know, she, she nearly was a victim of the, of the killer. So it's, it's quite masterful, I think the tension and suspense she does manage to generate, given that she's sort of deliberately refusing to do the, you know, the classic sort of true crime detective killer chase plot.
- [14:40]
Julia Gillard
And have you encountered this kind of interweaving in other things that you've read? I mean, I just finished look at you, a book by Amanda Smyth and it really, you know, struck me that is kind of a series of self contained stories too. So it did strike me that this is obviously a genre that's out and about at the moment.
- [15:07]
Sarah Holland
I think it is. But I think that the litmus test still has to be. Do they work as standalone stories for me? You know, I think because they are and Fiona McFarlane has published these independent of one another in different literary journals in America and Australia. And in that they sort of have to operate like standalone, you know, artworks. And I think they really do. Several of them really stayed with me. Even if you hadn't read the whole book and you just read the story, they do. But. But of course, this thing of the symphonic kind of book of short stories where you have connections coming through, it's. It's not enormously common. I think more often than not people who write short stories like to treat them as standalones and, and there might be themes. So I'm thinking of, say, one of my favourite short story writers is Margaret Atwood. She's such a. I mean, she's a great novelist, but she is a sensational short story writer. And if you were to read a book of hers, her short stories sort of COVID to cover, there's lots of common themes. She's always interested in the inner lives of women, the lies we tell to ourselves, all these sorts of things. But they really do work quite independently of one another. So I'd say more often than not it's. It's more common that. That short story writers would just write them intending for them to stand alone. And I think Fiona MacFarlane struck a good balance here where very few of them are dependent on the others for their power. And you could totally just pick this book up, read one story, leave it for six months, pick up another story and find the stories themselves. They're beautifully engrossing and they have a poeticism and such an array of styles of voices, narrative voices as well. So it is, I think it works both ways. I think you can read it linearly and want to sort of piece together this picture of the serial killer. But I think equally you can also just enjoy these as, like you say, on public transport Just. I'm going to read a short story here. I'm going to read a short story there.
- [17:09]
Julia Gillard
Curiously, there are 12 short stories in a book called Highway 13. Did you have a favorite?
- [17:17]
Sarah Holland
I. I actually really, really loved the story Hostess, which is early on in the book. And it's about a couple of former hosties, you know, airline. Airline stewards, who find themselves knocking around together somewhere quite remote. And it's just. It's a very sort of slow burn of a story. It's not one where there's an immediate kind of narrative hook, but the characterization in that sense, story is just sensational. So there's this male. Male hostie. He goes to visit Jill, a woman that he's worked with on an airline for a long time, and she's. She's now sort of kicking around kind of having a bit of a hippie existence, working the evenings at a bar. And he goes to stay for her, to stay with her for. For a while. And as the story kind of unfolds, it's just really a magnificently deep, for a short story, a portrait of this woman who. Who's kind of charismatic, who's a little bit, we sense, kind of down on her luck, but. But also just this sort of magnetizing spirit that this guy kind of falls into her spell. And then slowly, slowly, as the story kind of unfolds, we realize that she has a familial connection somehow, and I won't. I won't spoil it, to the serial killer. And the sense of this. That the immediate extra depth that gives to her character and the urgency with which she's trying to persuade this relative to not. Not continue involvement with this person. I just thought that was a. It was like a novelistic level of characterization for me in about 20 or 30 pages. I thought that one was extraordinary. How about you, Julia? Did you have a favourite in the book?
- [19:09]
Julia Gillard
Yeah, I. I very much liked that one. And it really shone a light on something that Fiona does well, and she certainly did in the Sun Walks down, which is. She takes a place you're familiar with in Australia, but she doesn't name the place, she sort of fictionalises it. So you kind of know that the story of these two former airline employees is about Broome, but she never actually says Broome. And so it gives her a sort of an imaginative landscape. And you sort of know, the kind of forests that she's got in mind for where the deaths take place is the kind of forests that. That Ivan Milat did his very evil deeds in. But it's a fictionalised forest. So, you know, I like, for an Aussie reader, you know, I like finding those connections to the Australian landscape. I liked two of them very much. One, unsurprisingly, is the one about a political candidate, which is a short story done in one sentence, which is the kind of desperate inner monologue of this candidate. It's called Democracy Sausage. And the candidate on election day is trying to endear himself to people and hopefully get their votes by staffing the barbecue and cooking the sausages that people are going to have. But he's got on his. His, you know, badge, his rosette with his name, and unfortunately he's got the same name as the serial killer. And, you know, the serial killer has just been arrested. So the serial killer's name is everywhere. It's huge news. And there's this guy and originally they try and pin next to it sort of no relation, but then decide that's really just somehow emphasising the point that people will be staring at the badge and will they be believing no relation, because no one ever believes political candidates about anything. So I really enjoyed that and I thought the form of it just being one flowing sentence of the thoughts in his head whirling at a million miles an hour because it's election day and it's not going well for him. I did very much like that and I really liked the story of the neighbour. So there is one story which is based on a true crime novelist coming back to interview the elderly woman who lives across the road from the house the serial killer grew up in. And the house is being demolished to, you know, grand applause by the neighbourhood. And she. Because obviously they don't want their neighbourhood associated with these very dark deeds. But she seems to be the only one mourning the loss of the house because she remembers the family before, and she had an intense friendship relationship as a schoolgirl with the girl who lived in that house. And she also had a connection to the serial killer who was a student in the school that she taught at and was also casually employed by her and her husband to work on their garden. So I thought that was, once again, for a short story, very layered and taking you very deep very quickly.
- [23:03]
Sarah Holland
And it just opened up for me all of those complexities of what do we do with those places? What do we do with places where massacres have taken place? What do we do with places where someone really notorious has grown up? Do we demolish them or do we. Do we preserve them? Do we. Is it. Can. Can there be any kind of happy Balance between that. I mean it, it reminded me actually in the 1990s when I was living in Colorado, I took piano lessons down the road from the JonBenet Ramsey House and there was such a number of people who would go rubbernecking to look at the house. It was, it was a cause of such concern of the neighbours. And you sort of think, where does that leave? I suppose the collective memory of people who have lived in that house beforehand, who love the neighbourhood. We just don't realise, I suppose with these places that have been touched by awful crime, but then also have these layers of memory of people who've lived there beforehand, of people who've perhaps loved those houses, you know, who, who gets the right to supersede all of that and demolish it. And I thought it was also a beautiful, that story was a beautiful study of the things we kind of keep to ourselves because this woman has got the journalist in her house trying to, trying to get the dirt and you know, the journalist's already written a book on it, but she's still going back to interview her one last time to see if she can, you know, get any pearls out of her. And, and this woman who's, who was the school principal at the school at the serial killer studied at, she holds quite a lot back to herself and we, we get to hear all of her memories of the serial killer, but she's sort of reserved with the journalist. And I thought it was a great, a great study that story of, I suppose, the privacies that people are entitled to when they have connection to these kinds of crime and the awful intrusiveness of, you know, the looky loos, the people who want to come along and have a look. And yeah, I thought that was, it was really memorable, wasn't.
- [25:09]
Julia Gillard
Was memorable. And that whole thing about places and people, tourists kind of crime tourists, that is a difficult and, you know, present day issue for us all to think about. I mean, whenever there is a, you know, major celebrated crime now, it's almost instantaneous that you get true crime podcasters and others, you know, getting in the way of the actual police and the real detectives because they think they're going to be the one that cracks this case. And that's just another stress and strain in our world and says something about us, I think, and what intrigues us that evil does intrigue us. And I thought another theme apart from place across these stories was can you see evil in people? A number of these stories are sort of begging the question if you had met him at Any stage of his life, this evil serial killer. Should you have seen it? Why didn't you sense it? Why didn't you know? And there's a very well drawn story, and it does have a lot of moody tension of a young woman who's in a relationship with an older man. He's a landscape gardener. They have a life which revolves a lot around, you know, drugs and, you know, that kind of lifestyle. Not that they're not functioning people, but there's certainly addiction in their story. And there's a lot of family disapproval of this relationship in the story as well. And she comes to suspect that maybe he is the serial killer because a description on the news of both the person and the van that is being used correspond with how this man looks in the van that he drives. And it's very dark where it takes you. Can you see evil? Should you be able to sense evil in those that you're deeply connected to, in the way that she's deeply connected to this man? But the question is asked too, of the woman we've just discussed watching the house across the road being demolished. Should she and her husband have worked out that there was evil in this boy who was at the local school and came and looked after their garden. And, you know, you're left with that uncomfortable conclusion. You know, people don't come with E for evil stamped on their forehead. They can just be very, very ordinary. Or signs that you see aren't necessarily ones you connect, you know, signs about them that they are someone different from your average person. And not signs that would immediately lead you to conclude, oh, they are capable in the future of these incredible acts of violence.
- [28:10]
Sarah Holland
Oh, it's haunting, isn't it? I mean, when you were saying that, I was thinking, we've had that assassination of Charlie Kirk in the US and his family were the ones who recognized him. And what a sort of haunting moment that must have been. We like to believe that we're good judges of character. We like to believe that we would know. And yet, whenever these things happen, you know, the first thing that people say is, oh, my God, I just had no idea. And, you know, a lot of serial killers in particular have functioning families who have absolutely no idea what, what their. What their partner's father's parents are up to? And I guess the story asks that sort of question. Well, how much heed do we pay each warning sign? Each warning sign? How many signs do we need to have before it mounts and adds up to something quite uncomfortable? And at what point, you know, do we Start to suspect that our, that there's something seriously wrong with our loved ones. I mean, I'm always thinking, because I watch all of these true crime documentaries, I also know that whenever they're on the hunt for a serial killer, loads of people ring up to report their spouse, and it's not their spouse. You know, most of, most of the tips that police get are from people who just think their husband looks like a, like a, like a wanted person sketch. And where do those people sit with that, I wonder? You know, once you've reported your partner to the police because you think there might be a serial killer. Serial killer. Is that, is that a point at which you appraise the status of your marriage even if they're not?
- [29:42]
Julia Gillard
I did not know that, that people routinely dobbing their spouse for being a serial killer.
- [29:49]
Sarah Holland
When the FBI puts out that most wanted list and there's a sketch and, you know, people go, oh, that looks like Gary. We'd better ring the cops. And I mean, how do you go back to your family? I mean, you, you couldn't possibly tell, could you, if you'd reported them? But anyway. That's right.
- [30:04]
Julia Gillard
Oops. That would be after they come back from several hours of questioning at the police station. Very, very difficult conversation.
- [30:14]
Sarah Holland
Very awkward.
- [30:16]
Julia Gillard
Very awkward. Sarah, who will love this book? Who will enjoy reading it?
- [30:21]
Sarah Holland
I think people who like true crime or who are interested in true crime. Even if, even if you're someone who mostly likes the sort of more conventional detective novel, I think this is a really great, original, kind of feminist sort of re. Reconsideration of what that might look like if you zoomed out from the killer and the detective and looked elsewhere. It's got great tension. I think it would also be good for people who are time poor and just want little slices of life, you know, it's wonderful. I love books of short stories because if you don't. If you don't have the time to stay up till midnight, you can just enjoy one and let it sit in your head and then move on to the next one. It's also, I think, a book for people who like fine writing. I mean, Fiona MacFarlane, sentence for sentence. This, this is an extraordinary book.
- [31:11]
Julia Gillard
I agree with you. If you are someone who likes detective fiction, this will take you to a different place, but I think you will really like it. I agree on the time. Poor thing. If you want just, you know, one, one thing to read in an evening which isn't going to propel you to the next and the next and the next this is a great book if you want to learn a bit about Australia, place, people, our sense of ourselves. I think this book takes you in all of those directions as well, though I do feel that I have to remark at this point if you are a time poor reader. Apart from Highway 13, another great alternative is a book of poetry by Sarah Holland back because you can read, read one poem, meditate on that, and that's a beautiful interlude in your evening. And I do want to reassure you as I look at my bookshelves that nothing, nothing from yours got colored.
- [32:14]
Sarah Holland
Oh, thank God. Oh that's such a relief. Julia thank you.
- [32:22]
Julia Gillard
They're definitely on the shelf. Sarah thanks so much for joining me to discuss Highway 13. Fiona McFarlane it's been fun and fantastic as always. Best luck to both of us as we settle into new abodes. Obviously I've still got my wonderful house in Adelaide, but new apartment in London and new into Sydney life. Thank you to everyone listening and if you've read or you're going to read as a result of this podcast, Highway 13 and you've got some thoughts about it all, please do share those with us on social media or share with us and or I should be saying share with us books that you're reading that you think we should discuss. We're always very, very open to ideas about what to discuss on the podcast. Thank you, Sarah.
- [33:14]
Sarah Holland
Thanks Julia.
- [33:18]
Podcast Narrator
A Podcast of One's Own is created by the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the Australian National University, Canberra, with support from our sister Institute at King's College, London. Earnings from the podcast go back into funding for the Institute, which was founded by our host, Julia Gillard, and brings together rigorous research, practice and advocacy as a powerful force to advance gender equality and promote fair and equal access to leadership. Research and production for this podcast is by Becca Shepherd, Alice Higgins and Alina Ecot, with editing by Liz Keen from Headline Productions. If you have feedback or ideas, please email us at giwlnu. Edu Au. To stay up to date with the Institute's work, go to giwl. Anu.edu au and sign up to our updates or follow us on Social mediaulanu. You can also find A Podcast of One's Own on Instagram. The team at A Podcast of One's Own acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today. Thanks for listening and we hope you'll join us next time.
- [34:51]
Julia Gillard
Acast powers the world's best podcasts.
- [34:54]
Sarah Holland
Here's a show that we recommend.
- [35:01]
Ann Morris
Hey there. If you've ever felt your confidence slip at work, you're not alone. The good news? Confidence isn't a fixed trait. It's a skill. And like any skill, you can build it with the right tools and practice. I'm Anne Morris, CEO and best selling author and together with my wife Frances Frey, a professor at Harvard Business School, we host the TED podcast Fixable. This season we're zeroing in on confidence, what it really is, how to strengthen it, and how to help others see you as the leader you already are. So if you're ready to show up with more conviction, to get promoted, to lead with clarity, to do the best work of your career, join us on Fixable. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [35:45]
Julia Gillard
Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcast everywhere. Acast. Com.