Always looking for trouble

Writer D.J. Connell. Photo / Supplied

You have to wonder how a New Zealander living in London can write a book about Tasmania. But that is exactly what Diane "DJ" Connell has done with her hilarious debut novel Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar.

However, as the Hamilton-born author tells me over a cup of tea in north London's Kiwi cafe, Sacred, her version of Australia's smallest state is not drawn from reality.

"It's not the real place, where people live," she says. "What I've done is explore the idea of an isolated small town, an insular society. It's about someone who doesn't fit in and how, when you're different in a small society, that is seen as being wrong. Tasmania was the perfect place for that. Even mainland Australians laugh at Tasmanians, they're cruel. It's an island at the end of the world, so it's the perfect place for a story about the struggles of someone who is different but wants to be special."

While the novel could easily have been located in some remote New Zealand settlement, Connell was reluctant to set a book in her homeland.

"It's similar to how I couldn't write about my own life," she admits. "It's almost like I have to make things into a slight fantasy kind of thing. I've made up all of the names of the pubs, beer, hospitals and the film company. There is no Abracadabra Television, Tasmanian Wallaby or Golden Microphone. You name it, I've made it up. Perhaps I'm not capable of writing about something that's too close to my heart. I don't know how to laugh at New Zealand but Tasmania was another degree away from me, so I was able to do it."

She also denies that the book is specifically concerned with homophobia, although the flamboyantly gay Julian suffers constant prejudice as he strives to become a famous television star.

"He could have been Asian or a black boy in a white world," she says. "It's all about the myths that get created about people and how if you're a victim or an underdog, you'll always struggle. But at the same time, Julian is a funny kid. He refuses to see that things are against him and he knows he has to be sneaky to survive."

Whether it is getting an outlandish haircut or humiliating a gun collector during an ill-fated stint as a cub reporter, Connell's hapless hero has an uncanny ability to attract unwelcome attention.

"I love the way he self-promotes," she laughs. "Some people are just born to be show-offs, they can't help themselves. Julian is a show-off and he has to find out how to channel that, to make it into something that will work for him personally."

Connell has partly based the extrovert, larger-than-life character on her own childhood experiences.

"I was kind of like that myself," she recalls. "It wasn't so much that I was rude but I couldn't help myself. I'd always sit at the back of the class and say things that would get up the teachers' noses. I was very easily distracted, I couldn't keep my eyes on the blackboard and was always looking for trouble."

Although she has mostly been based in Japan and France since leaving New Zealand two decades ago, Connell has led something of an itinerant existence.

"I've lived in so many different countries, so I like a bit of everywhere," she says with a wry smile. "The novel was written in Paris but in a way it doesn't matter where I am because I lead such a strange life anyway. When you're writing a novel, you spend most of your time sitting in front of a computer, there's no glamour in it."

Connell moved to north London late last year in preparation for the British publication of Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar by boutique Harper Collins imprint Blue Door.

"I love Hamilton," she declares. "I didn't leave it because I didn't like it, it was because I had wanderlust. That's why I live in Hampstead, near the Heath, so I can get out there and walk around. It's like being in the Waikato."

According to Connell, Harper Collins has high hopes for her novel, which has been described by Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer as "a laugh out loud funny and genuinely touching magical journey". It has also been optioned for a film by independent producers Sarah Radclyffe and Marian MacGowan, whose previous credits include The Edge of Love and My Beautiful Laundrette.

"I'm very lucky at the moment," says Connell. "I've been toiling away underground for so long, I've finally got a chance, so let's hope the public like it."

Connell has not only just put the finishing touches on her second novel but also started planning her third and fourth.

"I'm like a factory," she says with a grin, revealing that the follow-up to Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar takes place in Britain.

"It's about another misfit, a young woman who has just got a job after living an insular life for a long time. Her boss, Mr Chin, tells her one Friday that she is abnormal and that she has got to get normal by Monday, so she goes off, very naively, into the world to do just that."

* Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar (Harper Collins $32.99)