a radio interview produced by Michael Shirrefs
Writer, artist and musician Gregory Day is both a product of his environment and a conduit for its stories. Living in a small coastal community on Australia’s southern coastline, Gregory uses all his artistic tools to describe the people and the place. But it’s in his novels that he so clearly articulates the deep, hidden core of rural life that’s usually invisible to the casual observer. His previous novel, The Patron Saint of Eels, was a wonderful mix of familiar Australian earthiness and the mystical universe, where a Southern Italian saint appears in the small town of Mangowak, ministering to both the needs of the locals AND the plight of migrating eels.
In Gregory’s latest novel, Ron McCoy’s Sea of Diamonds, the town of Mangowak has become a canvas on which he paints a large tale of small-town characters and all the undercurrents of their passions and fears. It’s a world where the threads of the past stitch together the lives of the present. And in this story, it’s through the characters of Ron McCoy and his mother Min that the community finds its social glue.
In this book, we meet Ron McCoy as an old man. He’s shy, but he comes into his own in the world of rivers and oceans and fish and all manner of wild animals — and he has a vivid imagination. From a child, Ron McCoy has created stories to explain the many natural phenomena of the world around him (including the Sea of Diamonds from the book’s title).
Listen to the interview here …
First broadcast on The Book Show, ABC RN, on 21-05-2008
Publications
Title—Ron McCoy’s Sea of Diamonds
Author—Gregory Day
Publisher—Picador, 2007
Description—ISBN 9780-3304-2332-8
Credits
Interviewer—MIchael Shirrefs
© 2005 Michael Shirrefs & ABC RN