Jacinta Halloran, of Readings bookshop, interviews Sonia Orchard, whose new novel The Virtuoso has just been released. The novel draws on the life of Australian pianist Noel Mewton-Wood, who committed suicide in London, in 1953, at the age of 31.
When writing fiction about a real person, the border between fact and fantasy can sometimes become problematic for the novelist. The creation of a fictional narrator relieved Orchard of some of her concerns in this regard. "I initially struggled with the notion of how much I should stick to the facts [of Mewton-Wood's life] but, once I had decided to write from the point of view of a fictional and very unreliable narrator, I felt the problem was solved. I also follow the postmodern idea that there is no one absolute truth and that every viewpoint has its own agenda." However, she coloured The Virtuoso with anecdotes from Mewton-Wood's friends, and stayed true to factual details concerning his concert dates and programming details. "These things gave me something to work with."The narrator of The Virtuoso is a remarkable creation. Through him, the intriguing life of Mewton-Wood is chronicled with meticulous detail, and yet there is much about Mewton-Wood -- his deeper thoughts and feelings about his art and his talent -- that the narrator does not know or understand. By creating this obsessed and somewhat deluded narrator, Orchard has intentionally left us with a sense of mystery surrounding Mewton-Wood's true self. "I fell in love with Mewton-Wood during my researching of his life, so I wanted to write about him from the perspective of an obsessed fan or lover. There remains something elusive about him. People I interviewed had contradictory ideas about his personality and no-one really understood why he committed suicide."
