Melina Marchetta speaks exclusively to Hypable about her newly released novel Quintana of Charyn, the difficulties of redeeming characters, and her next book.

Quintana of Charyn, the final book in Melina Marchetta’s Lumatere Chronicles, was released in America this week. Be sure to read part 1 to hear Marchetta’s thoughts on winning the Printz Award, how she deals with bad reviews, and much more.

Warning: This interview contains spoilers for The Lumatere Chronicles, and a trigger warning for discussions of rape.

Did you know The Lumatere chronicles would be a trilogy when you began writing Finnikin of the Rock?

No, I wrote Finnikin and finished Finnikin. I was happy with it. Certainly a character like Froi did stick in my head, but when I started writing Finnikin and Froi came into the story, Froi was only going to be used as a tool to show how crafty Evanjalin is. I didn’t really care about him. It’s why he does what he does, which is kind of a regret for me, but I had to live with that regret and do something about it because it is a pretty bad way of introducing a character to a story.

Then I had to cheat in Finnikin of the Rock – I had to convey a lot of crazy information in one chapter. I didn’t know how to do that through Finnikin’s point of view because Finnikin is very pragmatic, and he would have questioned everything that happened, so I cheated, and I gave Froi the chapter. I gave the chapter to an unreliable narrator. But I wrote it, and I fell in love with his voice and him as a character.

That still doesn’t mean that I was going to write a novel about him. A story had to come to me that was as powerful as I felt Finnikin and Evanjalin’s story was, and so I just waited. When I started writing Froi, it was going to be one novel, but because there’s a pregnancy in it, I realized that I was up to her fifth month of the pregnancy, and I was 500 pages into the story.

“It was a really difficult decision. I remember contacting both of my publishers, here and in the U.S., to say to them it’s going to be two books.
I was pretty upset – they weren’t.”

I didn’t realize a trilogy means something completely different to a publisher. And it was really good because the third novel gave me a chance not to quickly solve problems, and I was grateful for that time. What surprised me too was, I thought it was going to be simple, because I knew what was going to happen in the story.

I was going to finish Froi, and what happens the next day, just start it from there – and I probably had a delay of about two months where I had no idea how to begin Quintana. Then, like a lot of things, the first line of Quintana is “There’s a baby in my belly” and as soon as I heard that, I just started writing, and I realized that she was the first voice of the novel, and it was going to be almost like a multi-narrated novel.

In The Lumatere Chronicles you frequently shift perspectives. Do you find it difficult changing characters, particularly between different genders, and how is your approach to each character different?

In The Lumatere Chronicles not as much. The way it was told was not with the same voice, but the same style. I don’t know if it is obvious that I had so much fun with Lucien of the Monts. His circumstances are still quite tragic, he is a grief-stricken young man, he doesn’t know how to lead, he is constantly failing. But I really really enjoyed doing his point of view, and I knew that I could write it in a bit more of an exaggerated, ridiculous, stream of consciousness ramble, where the reader can actually see through his words and go “Oh my god Lucien, you’re walking towards a minefield there.”

Whereas Quintana was the classic example of not knowing what to do with her. How do I differentiate someone like Quintana from Phaedra, or Evanjalin or Isaboe? So I just cheated. Well, I didn’t really cheat – I always knew her voice would be first person, but I had to have a reason for that, and that is because she is talking to Froi through the whole thing. And I gave her a beat. I kind of had this beat in my head, where there’s 12 beats in “There’s a baby in my belly that whispers the valley.”

I actually find Isaboe/Evanjalin very difficult to get into her head, she is a very cagey character, so if you notice I don’t get into her head often. I was never going to in Finnikin, it wouldn’t make sense because then she would give the reader all the answers, so she had to stay out of it. She scares me as a character, so I leave her as a mystery because I’ve worked her out, but I don’t want to get into her head because I don’t want to see what’s in there.

I always find it’s interesting sometimes to see a character through someone elses eyes, rather than their own; I don’t think the real person comes through, and I’m afraid with someone like Evanjalin, who I think is my favourite in all the books, if we saw her through her eyes, the reader would be even more resentful of her. They are the decisions I have to make, whether I’m going to get into the head of a character, or whether I am going to allow someone else to sell her to the world.

How difficult did you find it to redeem Froi from the way he was introduced? It was an incredibly dark place to bring him back from, and yet by the end of Quintana I think a lot of readers will have completely fallen for him.

Well, I gave myself 3 rules. When I knew that Froi was going to be a novel, my 3 rules were that I, as the writer, would never forget what Froi did; Froi, as a character, would never forget what he did, and the reader would never forget what Froi did. It was a very tricky situation, and I know that people won’t pick up the book because of what Froi did in Finnikin, because they believe that there is no way out of that.

I never try to justify it. I read a lot of bad reviews where people who haven’t read the novel will comment about the fact that I have created the ‘rapist hero,’ the ‘good looking rapist hero who can do whatever he wants.’ First of all, I don’t think Froi is good looking, and the second thing is I just want to say “Can you read my novels before you write a commentary on my novels, or link them to what someone else has done in their work”?

It was a very hard decision and what I had to make sure is that he wasn’t one of those characters who all of a sudden saw the light and was perfect. He was flawed until the very end. I didn’t even want to say, “Okay everyone, Froi is the way he is now because of what happened to him when he was young,” but I also had to say, “It is part of why he is the way he is.” And obviously he was raped himself, he was taught that power was everything, and it was the survival of the fittest.

I just wanted to work with that. If I came across a story of a would-be rapist or a rapist, I don’t know if I would feel anything but revulsion for that person in the here and now, but I suppose it is the beauty of fantasy that you can go, “What if? What if everyone is redeemable to a certain degree?” Every page was important with never, ever, ever making excuses for him, but just showing rather than telling the audience, “just go on this journey with him and make your decision at the end.”

Froi’s journey is about identity, as is Finnikin’s and Quintana’s. I would argue that this is a theme in all of your novels, about the characters discovering their own identity in the world. Why do you think this is such a focus for you?

If I had to say the theme of every single one of my novels ever since Alibrandi, I’d say it’s identity. I suppose it’s something I’m curious about. I always say that with my work, I always, always, always take something away from the character. In Alibrandi, I took away her suburb, and I sent her on the other side of Sydney to go to school, and a result it opened up all these wonderful dilemmas. In Francesca, I take away her mum to a certain degree and her best friends from her previous school.

In Jellicoe, I take everything away from her, it’s just the cruelest thing, I dump her on the Jellicoe road when she is eleven. In Finnikin, I take away his country, I take away his father. The Piper’s Son, I take away his family – that family is absolutely decimated in the first chapter, and so on and so forth. I think that by removing that identity, it’s then important for me to see how these characters, and how we, ourselves, work out who we are in our world. I hope that never does leave the novels. I don’t think there is a set answer about “This is who I am.”

You have previously mentioned writing a third Francesca novel, this time focusing on Jimmy Hailler. Will that be your next project?

It’s not really his novel, it’s a four-hander. I was asked last year to write a short story for an anthology, and it’s basically about what happens when female friendships fall apart. I wrote a short story about a character called Matilda, who’s pretty much my age (so she’s in her 40s), and from that it’s interesting how things happen. She is one of the narrators of the novel that I want to write, and Jimmy Hailler is another one.

This is the hard thing about the Francesca lot, I have to get them older, and I’m pretty sure that they are about 24/25. The other thing that I’m sure of is that this is an adult novel. The hard thing is that when you say that you are going to write a Jimmy Hailler story, you know that there will be that disappointment of someone reading and thinking, “Well where are all those characters?” Those characters are still there in the background, but even more of a background than in The Piper’s Son.

But it’s not their story, it’s Jimmy’s story and it’s Rosie’s story and it’s Maddy’s story and it’s Mick’s story. So Jimmy’s there, he’s there as one of the main characters of this story, but it’s hard because you’re trying to working out who is this person at the age of 24/25. So I know what happens at the beginning, I know what happens at the end, I just don’t know what happens in the middle.

Do you have an approximate timeline for when it might be published?

I would like to write that this year. I’d love to think that I’d get first draft finished this year, and in saying that, maybe there’s a book out there next year. So hopefully.

More about Melina Marchetta:

You can follow Melina on Facebook, and on Twitter at @MMarchetta1. You can find more information and contact her through her website.

Quintana of Charyn was released in America on April 23.