Alissa’s Australian/American Affair of the ‘Art’
Paula Xiberras
Alissa Callen author of ‘Heart of the Country’ and ‘Down Outback Roads’ loves Tasmania and has visited twice. Once was on a family holiday when she and her family visited the national parks, admired rainforests and our beautiful buildings. One pleasing thing about Tasmania, Alissa says, is the short distances to travel from place to place and quite a climate change from the hot dry environment of her home in Dubbo.
When we chat I ask Alissa why she thinks the rural romance genre is such a burgeoning success. Alissa tells me one theory is that the global financial turmoil gave rise to people not wanting to read the regular chic lit, with characters living the high life, instead they craved real characters, strong earthy heros and heroines facing realistic situations. Alissa reminds me that the rural romance genre itself has its own diversity including sub categories such as rural medical romance and rural historical romance.
Time spent attending school in America informed Alissa’s writing and in her most recent novel ‘Down Outback Roads’ her heroine has the unique name Kree, a native American name. Kree was the name of a girl Alissa attended school with and was brought into her thoughts again when she viewed an episode of American idol and saw a girl called Kree as a contestant.
I mention to Alissa, author Morris Gleitzman’s idea of ‘the magic spaces’ that is, the place where author and reader meet and the reader brings their own interpretation to a work, coloured by their life experiences, Alissa tells me she has written levels of meaning into her novel for readers to decipher in these magic spaces. Alissa employs what she has learned from her sons work in audiology as one of these clues for readers to pick up on. Not only is a young child in the novel having hearing problems of a physical nature but the male hero Ewen has been badly damaged by a tragic accident that he blames himself for. Kree who has also suffered her own tragedies, tries to make Ewen ‘hear’ in a metaphorical sense that the accident was not his fault and he needs to move on with his life.
Alissa draws on real life again by making Kree a wonderful artist and painter of murals, which is a direct link to being impacted by the amazing murals of Sheffield in Tasmania. Additionally Alissa’s daughter is also a talented art student.
Further connections with Tasmania include catching up with what’s happening with Tassie local rural romance author Rachel Treasure when she is in Alissa’s part of the world.
Alissa has been able, in her own words, to cross pollinate her novels from her experiences in the US and international experiences closer to home like the stories of back packers visiting rural towns like her own such as the Irish girl who married a local farmer. Alissa Cullen demonstrated that while small town life might seem insular and small it encompasses a much wider world view.
‘Down outback roads’ is out now published by Random House.