Literary Lesbians

Attendees: Sally, Ange, Lynnie, Sonya, Shelley, Jude, Lisa and Marg (author of this month’s book). We welcomed Sonya and Lisa, newbies to the Literary Lesbians.

This month we reviewed The Catch, written by our very own Literary Lesbian member Marg Vandeleur! We were in for a treat to be able to have Marg there to tell us about the writing and publishing process and character development etc. We got to ask her all sorts of nitty gritty questions and thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

Marg started out by telling us about “the process”. She started writing the book in about 1998. It took her about 3-4 years to complete and about 2 years to get published. It landed on the shelves in about 2005. Marg was very open and relaxed when talking about her book although she said during the writing phase she felt like she went over every sentence 100 times to get it perfect (as you do when you’re writing your first novel). She eventually got it published by Penguin by sending it via Hares and Hyenas*.

Marg had involvement in choosing the cover, the colours etc. The publisher came up with the image and they photo shopped it a bit. Marg argued with them about the by-line on the cover and she eventually had her way with “Letty is fishing for a baby, but does she have to hook a man?” Originally the publisher had suggested something like… “Letty wants a baby but first she’ll have to hook a man."

Ten years ago, donor insemination was much less mainstream than it is becoming today. Marg had a political agenda to try and “normalise” lesbian relationships by writing a comic romp through gay Melbourne. She tried to write it from a naïve person’s point of view (Letty) – an outsider’s view of the gay scene or the “innocent abroad”. Marg thought there were enough layers in this topic to write a fairly decent book (and we all agreed that she achieved that).

Marg was worried about LL reviewing her book as she knows how much we all love to read out the sex scenes at book group and even do a bit of amateur acting (you know who you are) and The Catch has no lesbian sex scenes in it. We forgave her for that minor flaw.

Sal loved the book and thought it became stronger in the tone and really took off after the first 60-70 pages. Marg admitted the first 70 pages were a bit slow but after Letty makes the decision to try to have a baby the book really gets going. Sal found the humour in the book once Letty started Weekly Weighers.

The fabulous chapter titles were from a real book called the Anglers Omnibus. Marg managed to track down the author who is now 94 years old to ask permission to use the chapter titles which really connected the fishing theme nicely.

Marg really took time to map out the characters and had planned the basis of the story line before commencing to write. Shelley commented that some people write like they are driving at night with headlights on, never knowing where they are headed.

Ange asked Marg if she had ever been at the birth of a baby before because she really felt the descriptions were very real and believable and Marg explained that she had.

So what were the main themes? Shelley pondered if it was desire? Marg simply stated that she was hoping to convey that “it’s better to act than not act”. She wanted to show that Letty did actually have some control on her destiny and that all Letty really wanted was love.

Marg was asked to re-write the ending, which was initially not a happy ending. Sonya said she still found the end of the book sad in a way. The insemination hadn’t worked (the ‘normalising’ hadn’t happened) and Robert was unhappy. Sal was secretly hoping that Letty would get pregnant to Robert but stay with Hayden.

Another emerging theme was that sexuality is a very fluid thing as demonstrated by Chrissie’s character. There is a hint of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night Dream: there is a case of comedic mistaken identity (when Hayden believes Letty is a lesbian).

Other bits of inside goss from the night:
- the Leatherettes were entirely fictional
- Marg based Hayden on her first boyfriend
- Lynnie gets 60% off books through her work
- Shelley used to get 33% off vibrators through her work! (take that Lynnie!)
- Jude commented that we’d only met once in the West for book group (hint hint)
- Nicole Kidman is a hermaphrodite?
- Sally secretly loved Elle McPherson in “It’s a Girl Thing” and recommends that everyone see this movie!

The talk then moved on to the L Word, Beneath the Willow(!) and breasts, as it normally does and then we all headed home.

Thank you Marg for opening up and sharing your book with us. We are truly grateful to hear an author’s perspective and congratulations on a fine novel.

*Literary Lesbian book group members are entitled to a 10% discount at Hares and Hyenas