Writing his way out of trouble

Alan Duff. Photo / Doug Sherring

Alan Duff is trying to write his way out of a deep financial hole.

For the past year, the 58-year-old has been in the Loire Valley, just south of Paris, turning his hand to three novels in quick succession.

Dreamboat Dad was published in January. The second, Who Sings for Lu?, hits bookstores next week. A third is due late next year.

"I can thoroughly recommend that as the old adage goes, inspiration is born from desperation," says Duff, who has returned to what he knows best.

"I thought I was finished with writing, I'd gone into business and that sort of thing.

"I'm broke but it's not the end of the world," laughs the Rotorua-born author, who got in trouble when his property investments failed.

Duff was given a stay of execution by the High Court in Napier last November after all but one of his creditors agreed to allow him extra time to pay back over $4 million of debt.

"Everyone else was getting it," he says. "Major finance companies are getting five-year moratoriums. I wanted more than 18 months but that was all he [Associate Judge David Gendell] was prepared to give us."

By his own account, Duff has not been so productive since the early 1990s when he wrote Once Were Warriors and One Night Out Stealing.

"I've been working incredible hours," he says. "Getting up in the early hours of the morning and putting in 15-hour days. I've got a lot of drive because I'm determined to get out of this. But we will have to see."

He worried that turning out three books in such a short space of time could have a detrimental effect upon their quality.

"It is difficult to get two novels out in eight months," he says. "I have a real fear that the pressure of it is inhibiting my creative juices."

But if Who Sings For Lu? is any indication, he need not worry. As compelling as it is harrowing, it represents something of a departure for Duff, who is banking on its more conventional narrative attracting a wider audience. "It's not straight reportage but it's a lot more accessible than my usual style," he says. "It's the first time that any of my novels have used speech marks. I just like a new challenge."

The Sydney-set novel could also attract interest from the Australian film industry, as it is Duff's most cinematic novel since Once Were Warriors, which was adapted for the screen by director Lee Tamahori. The 1994 film broke New Zealand box office records and propelled Tamahori and actors Temuera Morrison, Cliff Curtis and Rena Owen on to the world stage. The 1999 sequel What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?, for which Duff penned the screenplay, was less successful. But while he welcomed the cash that came with the film, Duff is taking a hands-off approach to any future movies of his work.

"I'm definitely over direct involvement in the film world," he says. "I've realised that writers, actors and people involved in film are very different to me; chemically we just clash. Let them write it and be done with it."

Despite its thriller plot, Who Sings For Lu? is very disturbing as it explores the damaging effects of rape and sexual abuse. After suffering for years at the hands of her paedophile uncle Rick Duncan, young takeaway worker Luana O'Brien seeks vengeance upon him.

Her feckless friends Bronson, Jay and Deano lure him into a honey trap with a brutal outcome. Luana is then embroiled in a vicious sexual attack on privileged music student Anna Chadwick. Both events are pivotal points in the book but crucially they occur off the page.

"They're too obvious for me," says Duff. "It's enough to be looking back on it. The two major scenes of violence are not done and yet I was able to do some quite explicit things with the sex scenes and the sexual abuse. I hope I've made the abuser look like a hopelessly inadequate mongrel. You can be explicit if you've got a point but you can't be gratuitous about it."

What the reader imagines is far worse than anything Duff can write. "That's the difference between a book and a movie," he says. "I just about never give descriptions like 'he was 6-foot-3'. But I let a few things slip through as we were going along with Lu.

"Because if someone tells a beautiful girl that she's ugly, she's going to grow up to think she's ugly because the man who has got the power over her is telling her she's ugly. How can you tell a child, 'You're ugly?' What a terrible thing to say to a child. You should say all the time, 'You're beautiful, I love you'. Let her feel like she's walking on water."

Despite their sometimes-unflinching detail, it wasn't the chapters told from Uncle Rick's perspective but the middle-class scenes that Duff found the hardest to write.

"I know how to do down and dirty and I know how to do emotional turmoil," he says. "I know what it must be like to be on the outside looking in even though I've got more friends than I deserve. But I'm probably more middle class than I think I am. My kids have had a normal middle-class upbringing; they went to private schools and have never seen any violence. Whereas me, I'm still volatile. The old warrior is still there. If you walk down the street and try and move me out of the way and you don't want to discuss it then end of discussion."

Duff has previously been criticised for the portrayal of women in his novels although he insists he has been misunderstood.

"The trouble with the feminists and all the chattering classes is that they think that the whole world is like them and goes to university," he says. "They think it's an intellectual exercise but it's a very practical experience for those who are not from the middle classes. When the feminists went out and burnt their bras and did everything else they did, there was a bit of a hidden agenda and I wasn't going to play into that. There's stuff being done to females that I don't like but I did that from the beginning with Beth and Grace in Once Were Warriors. Maybe people didn't get it."

Ultimately the men usually come off the worst in Duff's fiction. "Lu arrives at some kind of moral centre by the end," he says. "Her world is shallow because it's been handed to her that way but other people's worlds are shallow anyway. They've got all the advantages but they haven't made anything out of it."

Chastened perhaps by his experiences with the police - he was cleared in May 2008 of failing to remain at the scene after being stopped for speeding - Duff is particularly harsh on Detective Sergeant Kevin Ahern, who investigates the attack on Rick Duncan only to take advantage of Lu. "He's an arsehole," he says. " I happen to think that too many cops are thuggish, mindless brutes."

Duff also returns to one of his favourite themes: "The conceit of kidding yourself that your actions are somehow understandable because of your upbringing", as Anna's mother puts it in a letter she writes to Lu.

"Obviously some monsters are born but most are created," he says.

"Maybe you've got an excuse if you grow up to create social mayhem or become a serial killer if you live in Africa but not in our neck of the woods. New Zealand, Australia or for that matter America, none of those Western countries, have an excuse to say, 'The way I grew up is why I'm such a dangerous bastard'. It's a lot of rubbish but in the courts, they're using it as mitigation. We must all overcome our childhood afflictions."

While it takes place in Sydney, Who Sings For Lu? could just as easily be based in New Zealand. However, Duff is reluctant to elaborate on why he chose to locate the book in Australia. "It could be set anywhere" he says. "It could be set here in Paris or in New York. I don't give myself too many reasons but if I've got one underlying reason for everything I do, it's that I am not going to follow the herd. I'm not part of the New Zealand literary scene. They know it; I know it. I just go and do my thing but at least I produce something."

He is venturing even further afield with his next book.

Provisionally titled Tell Eleanore I Love Her, it is divided between pre-European New Zealand and France. It involves La Perouse, the French explorer who disappeared somewhere in the South Pacific. "It's a long novel," he says. "I've done 50,000 words so far and I'm about a quarter of the way through so I've got a long way to go."

I last met Duff in November 2006 when he visited Paris for Les Belles Etrangeres, an annual literary festival, which saw 11 leading New Zealand authors touring France for a month. "It was just sensational," he recalls. "Our hosts were just wonderful people. When we finished, we'd walk into a bar and have a beer. It might be 12.30 at night but they'd be sitting there listening to us talking. Whereas back home, it starts at 7pm and finishes at 9pm; here it starts at 9.30. It's like the rugby tests. They have 9/9.30pm kick-offs and they don't eat till late."

Although he'd prefer to still be in New Zealand, Duff enjoys living in France. "I love it, I'm trying to learn the language but I'm struggling."

Echoing the thoughts of Anna's father Riley Chadwick, who concludes that "there is none more feminine than a French woman", Duff admires what he sees around him: "If you walk down the streets of Paris, some of them are are out of this world," he says. "They're extraordinary with their grace and with the way they carry themselves."

He believes that Kiwi women could pick up some tips. "In New Zealand, you're not allowed to be fully feminine," he says.

"It's like you're up yourself or 'who do you think you are?' Whereas here you can be whatever you want to be. You can define femininity; no one's going to drag you down for it. I've got three daughters and I've always told them they can be as sophisticated and self-confident as they like, be aware of looking good and carrying themselves well. Maori girls in particular. You see them on the beach and some of them are wearing a T-shirt over swimming shorts. No one is saying, 'You're allowed to be glorious'."