Something in the balance
Amy Brown’s debut novel offers a comforting tonic for anyone living the contemporary dilemma – juggling the competing demands of creative fulfilment and domestic duties.
My Brilliant Sister explores the lives of women who have prioritised either their careers or family. What is it about this tension that continues to be relatable to women today? I think this tension exists in every heterosexual relationship to varying extents because the prevailing culture is still patriarchal. Since My Brilliant Sister has been released, I’ve had women tell me that their partner is a good one, and yet they still have to work to correct imbalances in domestic labour. I can relate to these negotiations, having a husband and child. The irony, though, is that if my husband had not been a supportive partner and co-parent, this book would’ve taken a lot longer to write or might not have been finished at all. It was the act of writing the book that helped me figure out how to achieve a better balance in my own life.
This is your debut novel after a storied resume of poetry, essays, reviews and children’s novels. What inspired you to write this book and how was the process different? I picked up My Brilliant Career, by Miles Franklin (Australia’s pioneering feminist novelist) when I was in my late twenties. The relationship between the protagonist and her younger sister immediately interested me. I started to wonder if Franklin had a real sister. So, I read a biography and discovered Linda Franklin. I wanted to hear more of her voice. So, I read letters between the sisters, and from these I started to piece together a picture of their relationship, which led me to write the heart of My Brilliant Sister
– Linda’s reply to Stella.
How do you develop your characters?
And how closely are they inspired by people and events in your real life?
With the historical section of the novel, the characters were born from research – reading letters, diaries and Franklin’s own novel. The other two sections, set in 2021, were quite different. The first part imagines what Linda Franklin might have been like if she’d been living in the 21st-century. Her life melded with my own as she became a high-school teacher, wife, mother and daughter. Hopefully scenes ring true, but they aren’t a simple documenting of what happened. This is especially the case with the third section, in which I imagine what Stella Miles Franklin might be like in 2021 if she were a singer-songwriter.
What are some texts that have helped you feel seen, heard and represented?
I recently read Tove Jansson’s The Summer
Book. It was published 52 years ago, is set on a tiny Finnish island, and its protagonists are a child and her elderly grandmother — and somehow it makes me feel acutely seen and heard. The atmospheric conditions of this novel are extraordinary, perhaps like the island’s weather. An idyllic summer setting is darkened by the winter of the grandmother’s life, but this darkness is in turn lightened by the hilarious perfection of the dialogue.
Only four percent of annual book sales are by NZ authors. As a Kiwi-Australian yourself, how would you encourage more
readers to support local? I don’t want to be complicit in this awful statistic, so I’ll say, read anything by Pip Adam, Emily Perkins, Anna Smaill, Becky Manawatu, Airini Beautrais, Louise Wallace (whose forthcoming novel, Ash, looks fantastic!) — the list could literally go on for thousands of words. Aotearoa is blessed with brilliant writers, and a community that fosters good writing, so there’s no excuse not to buy books by Kiwi authors.
Who should read My Brilliant Sister? Sisters, daughters, mothers, wives, teachers. Also, husbands and fathers. Anyone who likes historical fiction with a slant. Anyone seeking balance between the competing demands of their life.