Emily Maguire chats with us about her new book,

Your first novel,

Age and gender and all that play a part in who we are, but how much of a part and in what way varies enormously. It would be a mistake to attempt to write ‘an eighteen-year-old’ or whatever. I can only write this particular eighteen-year-old and that particular thirty-five-year old woman and so on. So, in that sense, I’m no more aware of stereotypes related to their ages than I am about anything else. They each are who they are.

As for the differences between characters of different ages, well, again, it’s more about how those differences (and similarities) play out in specific situations. In the case of Taming the Beast, that relationship is criminal as well as unethical. In Fishing for Tigers it’s an unusual pairing, but the ethical questions it raises are more slippery. The specific life experiences and associated vulnerabilities of Mischa and Cal are, arguably, more important in terms of how their relationship plays out than the age difference.

I know everyone will ask this but why Vietnam? Did you decide on this setting before knowing the events, or the other way around?

Neither! In 2008, I went to Hanoi as an Asialink literature resident with an idea for an entirely different, non-fiction book. After a few weeks, I realised two things: one, that I was shockingly in love with Hanoi and didn’t want to leave; and two, that the book idea I’d had was ridiculous.

Fishing for Tigers came, partly, out of my longing to stay in Hanoi and my realisation that I couldn’t because of how much I missed, and was missed by, my family in Sydney. I spent agonised hours walking the streets of this place where I felt – irrationally and unexpectedly – happier and more comfortable than I did at home, trying to figure out how to reconcile these competing desires.

I couldn’t, of course, but while I was trying, these characters began to emerge. First, Mischa, a woman shocked by her love for this place, but one who, unlike me, was not only able to stay forever, but felt it imperative to her safety that she do so. And then Cal, who was on the other side of the kind of decision I wanted to make: his dad has chosen Hanoi over his family back in Sydney and Cal is hurt and angry and determined to understand why. And, of course, Mischa’s friends who all have their own reasons for living far from home in a place where they are free of familial or social responsibilities.

Do you believe a similar affair between an older woman and a young man would have had different consequences if it had happened in Australia?

It depends on what you mean by consequences. Certainly, ideas about acceptable behaviour differ between Vietnam and Australia, and within Vietnam, there are differences in what would be acceptable for local people and for foreigners, for men and for women. So, yeah, some of the fall out is context specific.

In terms of the emotional consequences for Mischa and Cal, I don’t think the location changes anything. The ethical questions about power differences and life experience and all that remain, and the tendency for people to condemn a woman who gets involved with a younger man is alive and well here, I reckon.

There is a memorable scene where a Vietnamese tour-guide describes the practice of young males ‘fishing for tigers’. Was this tale a prompt for the novel, and when did you decide it was going to be the title?

As soon as I came across the phrase in a book of Vietnamese folk history I knew I had my title. The novel was only at first draft stage, but the metaphorical power of the tale and the image evoked by the phrase were such that I knew instantly.

Most characters in your books are open and confident when expressing their sexual desires. Do you feel that this attitude is typical of the men and women you know?

I don’t know if I agree that most of my characters are open and confident about sex. I think that some of them are and some of them aren’t, and some of them are open but not confident, and some think about it a lot but don’t express those thoughts openly, and some of them talk about it all the time but don’t do it much, while others are swinging from the rafters every night but can’t even say the word ‘sex’ without blushing. And, yeah, people I know do (or don’t do) all of that, too!

Your writing on contemporary feminism is often praised for provoking discussions on issues of gender and sexuality. Do you feel that fiction can be equally influential in encouraging debate?

I don’t know how influential it is in encouraging debate, but I do believe fiction can be a powerful tool in opening minds and hearts. There’s a Virginia Woolf quote I love: ‘The reason why it is easy to kill another person must be that one’s imagination is too sluggish to conceive what his life means to him – the infinite possibilities of a succession of days which are furled in him and have already been spent’. At it’s best, fiction enables that act of imagination, enables us to see what a life means to the person living it.

A book doesn’t need to be Political with a capital P to have this kind of effect. Eliciting in the reader compassion or empathy or even a flicker of comprehension for someone who they’d previously thought of as an enemy or an inferior or simply not thought of at all is a powerful thing. Books that humanise both the loathed and the glorified, or complicate our view of the loathsome or pathetic – these kinds of books can change the way people think and expand the range of possibilities that people see for themselves and for society. Or at the very least, encourage us to be a little kinder, a little slower to judge and condemn.

Fishing for Tigers.

A book by Booki.sh