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GEELONG-based author Fiona Lowe will return to Wangaratta this month for her first visit since 2018, to promote her new novel, ‘The Accident’.
“I love the North East and I love coming back; Wangaratta is a lovely town, and we had a good crowd last time. I’m looking forward to it,” she said.
Fiona will be at the Wangaratta Library on Thursday, March 21 to speak about her writing journey and process, and about her latest release – her eighth book in eight years.
‘The Accident’ follows the fallout after a car veers off the road near the small Western Australian wheatbelt town of Garringarup, leaving the district reeling. As disturbing details surrounding the accident emerge and questions pile up, ugly secrets rise to the surface.
“I wanted to look at a completely unexpected moment that pivots everything and changes your life,” Fiona said. “The book centres on two couples who are best friends; the men have known each other since kindergarten, while the women are friends and have their lives mapped out. The night of the accident impacts on their immediate family, their friendships and the town. It shows how everything can change in a heartbeat. I also wanted to look at what happens when we know and trust someone, and then things start to come out which bruise that trust, and we wonder what else they haven’t told us. The other underpinning theme is whether women in the 2020s really have a choice about motherhood; I wanted to look at the societal pressures – of how people view the choice to remain childless, and if you do want a child, how far you go to do that. There are a whole lot of ethical and moral dilemmas around the use of IVF, and I’ve had a look at them in this book.”
Fiona said the story focused on women experiencing deep grief, who were not really in a position to make huge decisions, but were nonetheless required to make them within 24 hours. While dealing with such tough issues through her fiction, Fiona once again drew on her background as a midwife, counsellor and family support worker.
“All my books are character-driven novels about current social issues; I like to take those social issues and explore them. I write flawed characters because human beings are flawed. What they are going through, you may have gone through, or someone in your family, or someone down the road. I get a lot of people saying that I write about real people, and I do get reader mail from people saying, ‘Thank you for writing about this, I learnt from it.’
While she says ‘The Accident’ has seen her ‘give with one hand and take with the other’ in regard to the book’s characters, Fiona said readers appeared satisfied if she left her characters in a place
where they were looking forward and ready to take the next step in life.
“There is normally one happy ending, but in real life, the bad guy doesn’t always get his comeuppance,” she said. “It’s a matter of giving hope that they’ve worked through their issues and are ready to move on.”
Fiona will be at the Wangaratta Library on Thursday, March 21 from 6.30pm to speak about ‘The Accident’ and her writing career. Bookings are essential and can be made online through Humanitix https://events.humanitix.com/host/wangaratta-library or by contacting library staff on 5721 2366 or email library@wangaratta.vic.gov.au.