 | With Sons of the Rumour, his first novel in seven years, about to be published, Miles Franklin Award winner David Foster talked to Paul Sheehan of "The Age". |
Foster does not do small themes, not half measures. He is a scholar. He reads his favourite author, Juvenal, in the original Latin (self-taught). He won the University Medal for Chemistry at Sydney University. He has a PhD in biological inorganic chemistry from the Australian National University. He undertook postdoctoral study at the Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a gifted naturalist. (''Botany is one of the less egotistical fields.'') He's also been a drummer, a prawn fisherman and a postie. He was until recently a beekeeper (''They died this winter''). He turned to literature belatedly. Sons of the Rumour is his 13th novel and 15th book.
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With such a long a gap between books, he is unsure about the reception the new novel will receive, but busies himself thinking about the next book, growing food, and working on a postal run in Bundanoon to keep the cash flow going. ''I get on the old Honda 90, out in the wind and rain. It keeps you honest.''
James Ley has given this novel a rave review (not James's style as a rule) in the current issue of Australian Book Review: 'In its command of its material and its sheer vitality, Sons of the Rumour represents an extraordinary addition to Foster's already remarkable oeuvre ... Attempt to characterise Foster's writing and eventually one will run out of adjectives. There is simply no one remotely like him in contemporary Australian fiction. He is so far ahead of everyone else that it's not funny.'