STEPHANIE BISHOP
The Australian author’s new novel puts marriage under the microscope
What is the plot of The Anniversary in a nutshell?
A famous writer, J.B. Blackwood and her film-director husband, Patrick, take a cruise to celebrate their anniversary. During the cruise a storm hits and Patrick falls overboard. The novel unfolds against the backdrop of this investigation – both an inquiry into the nature of Patrick’s death and a probing into the truth of their marriage.
Is there a book that made you love writing?
There were many books that made me love writing: Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip, Don DeLillo’s White Noise, J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace, Margarete Duras’s The Lover.
What’s the best book you’ve read?
It’s impossible to pin it down to one and I change my mind on this often – over the past year Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy By The Sea, Barbara Trapido’s Brother of the More Famous Jack, and Vigdis Hjorth’s Is Mother Dead.
A book that had a pivotal impact on your life?
Different books at different stages: Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, Jean Rhys’s The Wide Sargasso Sea, Rachel Cusk’s Outline Trilogy, everything by Elena Ferrante.
The book you couldn’t finish?
I find myself getting oddly disturbed by Wuthering Heights – there’s something quite powerful in the haunting and I get spooked.
A book you wish you had read but haven’t got to?
I have a very bad habit of collecting books and not reading them, including Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, and Lucy Foulke’s Losing Our Minds.
The book you are most proud to have written?
This one. Every book feels impossible in the midst of writing it, this one especially. Developing the intricacies of the plot and the voice took a long time.
What book do you re-read?
The books I re-read are to my children: at the moment The Chronicles of Narnia.
What books are on your bedside table?
Joanna Biggs A Life of One’s Own, Laurent Mauvignier’s The Birthday Party and Lauren Elkin’s Art Monsters.
What are you writing now?
I’m tinkering on a new novel and working on some essays alongside this. I wait for the moment when the work takes over and it feels like the book is writing me.