As ever, WORD Christchurch seems to bring the beautiful Christchurch spring weather we’ve come to know and love. My first session of the festival was on a balmy (!) Friday afternoon with the experienced Morrin Rout in conversation with Kiwi author Rachel Paris. We were all in attendance to celebrate Paris’s immensely popular debut novel. See How They Fall recently burst onto the literary scene gaining a lot of attention, and has been likened to epic TV shows Succession and The White Lotus, as well as Aussie author Lianne Moriarty. This book has had a lot of hype. Part psychological thriller, part social commentary, part addictive thrall of a dynasty falling, this novel really packs a punch. But who is Rachel Paris, and how did this dynamite of a book come about?
Paris gained her Masters in Law at Harvard, and her Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Auckland, where she also won the Phoenix Prize for best manuscript. Not to mention her masterful mystery that continues to reach over 100 holds. Impressive, to say the least. And if I were to pick only one thing that I learnt from her talk? That writing the story that you really want to tell, makes the writing part a whole lot easier.
Onto the writing part then, Rout asked how the transition from lawyer to writer was for her. Like many of us, she said, Paris read a lot and wrote a lot as a kid. But as she grew older the idea of writing for a living naturally disappeared. She ended up at law school, like most who love the humanities but hate maths (cue: chuckle from the crowd). She had children, gained a mortgage; life happened. But then a couple of things occurred, one of them being lock down, which changed things. She started writing stories for her children, and read them to them. She also had a powerful revelation:
“If you want to do something, it’s not going to crash into your lap.”
She ended up applying for a writing course at the University of Auckland with Paula Morris. You could say the rest is history. But I have a feeling that Paris is just beginning.
The course itself was equally brutal and rewarding; the best thing that could’ve happened. Morris came from the school of thought where authors are not allowed to defend their work whilst it’s critiqued by fellow students. And while Paris admitted she was incredibly naïve going into the workshop (and how challenging it would be), she also recognised and appreciated people’s time and effort when it comes to reading a piece of work and sharing their feedback. She also learnt quickly that if she continued to work at it, she would see her writing improve.
“You can learn writing.”
As part of her application she had to submit a piece of writing, which ended up being a rough draft of the first chapter of her novel. When asked how she came up with the idea for her book, she referenced the familiar advice given to new writers: write what you know. Ruling out her experience as a lawyer, Paris focused on her children. More specifically, she knows what it is like to live with the fear of something horrible happening to them. And what if the danger was from within the family unit? Here lies the first seed of her novel.
“[It is] the story of two women up against the odds and trying to overcome them.”
Rout mentioned that she liked how Paris described her writing style as most like a dirty martini (in response to a Tom Sainsbury question regarding alcoholic beverages at a WORD event the night before). Her writing is to the point, unadulterated, even shocking. Even her family and friends were surprised at the dark sides of the book. She also learnt that voice is extremely important, and needs to be consistent; when describing something in the book it has to be from the character’s point of view. How her two main characters, Sky and Mei, would describe the room we were in would be very different.
After a couple of readings, Rout opened up to the audience for questions, before a book signing at the end. And while there were several intriguing questions, the one that seemed the most important was regarding Book Number 2, and if indeed there would even be one. Paris reassured the eager audience that she in fact was working on said novel earlier today, in this very library. As the session concluded, Rout exclaimed to a widely agreeing audience:
“Bring back Mei!”
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