Paula Xiberras
The state of ‘being with joy’ sounds so much more lyrical than saying you are happy. The Swahili phrase is central to Katherine Scholes new novel ‘The Perfect Wife’ which is the story of the wife of an Englishman adapting to life in Tanzania and her bid to be just that.’The Perfect Wife’ It’s not easy for Kitty, Katharine’s main protagonist, who married in haste because her then boyfriend was going to war and is now realising that perhaps they were not so perfectly matched after all. Her husband’s lukewarm response to her arrival and the memory of his parents disapproval of her life model work have left things in a not so joyful situation, at least for a while.
I recently spoke to Tasmanian author Katherine Scholes. Katherine has achieved fame in Europe, France and Germany for her sprawling tales of life in Africa, but is lesser known here in her home of Tasmania.
On the day we speak Katherine tells me what she really loves about Tasmania is the fact she can look out at the rocks near her house from her vantage point in Taroona on the bank of the Derwent and view the then visiting tall ships and those vessels of the underwater, who were also present on this day, a whale!
Katherine loves that this wonderful natural environment is separate from, and yet so close, to the city.
Katherine’s parents are immigrants from England who moved as missionaries to Africa and later Tasmania. The latter move decided by her dad when he disembarked from a plane in Tasmania and smelt the incredible fresh air.
Being a child of a third culture as she is, Katherine believes lends itself to a creative life. A child has to learn to adapt to fit into the new worlds and become so observant of social settings in a bid to create a place for themselves in that new world.
Katherine’s new book pays homage to her African birthplace and to her parents, her father a missionary doctor and her mother a missionary artist.
Like Katherine’s own parents, her protagonist Kitty becomes involved in a mission, in this case a local catholic mission, working as a nurse and like Katherine’s own mother manages also to spend time on her art. Katherine says that people thought it a bit unusual that her mum as a missionary had time to paint, but her mum was a woman ahead of her time.
Through valuable conversations with her mother, Katherine developed her character of Kitty, who like her own mum studied at The Slade in London. It is fictional Kitty’s grandmother’s desire for her to study at The Slade . Katherine’s own mother took art lessons from a Russian Prince Yuri, who arrived in London as a refugee, accompanied by all his heirlooms, Like Kitty in the novel, Katherine’s mum also had lessons from Lucien Freud and Katherine’s character of Yuri is a blend of both the Russian prince and Lucien Freud though perhaps veering more to be a portrait of Freud. Katherine says that literature allows you to stretch and exaggerate things more than they are in reality.
Although Katherine denies having inherited her mothers artistic talent, even though she did study print making. Katherine does however believe she inherited her writing ability from her dad’s Welsh side of the family which included a link to the writer of the Welsh national anthem.
Katherine says such is the state of the literary world, that she needs to stick to her genre, and the brand she has created and so it is that every two years she produces another novel. It is an added advantage that she just happens to love her setting of Africa. Katherine however hasn’t always written about Africa. Early in her career as a schoolteacher on the east coast of Tasmania on Flinders Island she wrote a book ‘the boy and the whale’.
Another Swahili phrase is a lyrical way of saying how are you. It’s the beautiful “how is the stare of your heart?”.
If you want to know if Katherine’s protagonist Kitty can answer that question, and if she reaches a state of being with joy you need to read her book ‘The Perfect Wife’ which is out now by Penguin.
