We’re greeted at the door by Clare Testoni, the 33-year-old playwright and puppeteer who is Silvey’s partner of six years, or possibly 10 years, or … well, it’s complicated. Silvey has been on a journey over the past decade that has seen him spending years writing and finally abandoning a new novel, embarking on an unexpected second career as a screenwriter, going through a personal crisis that has altered his family dynamic, and making a profound step in his approach to relationships.Ĭraig Silvey steers the Golf into the carport of an unassuming blond-brick townhouse in a quiet street of Beaconsfield, a little south of Fremantle. Sam’s not the only one going through changes. The book is about transformation – quite literally in the case of teenage Sam, the main character, who is transgender. Then the hard work begins for both of them. The man saves the boy and in so doing saves himself. He meets an old man on the same bridge, intent on doing the same thing. It opens with a teenager on a bridge late at night, ready to end his life. The reason he’s agreed to meet Good Weekend is next week’s publication of Honeybee, his first novel in 11 years. But as you now know, he doesn’t do heels. He winningly describes himself as “a short-arse, around five-eight, maybe five-nine in heels”. He has favoured face stubble for years, and it’s now frosted with grey around the chin. The 38-year-old has close-set eyes that fix on you without blinking too much. Then in 2017 it received the big-screen treatment from director Rachel Perkins ( Bran Nue Dae, Radiance), with Toni Collette and Hugo Weaving in the cast.Īnd here comes its author, dressed in his laid-back uniform of plain T-shirt, jeans and thongs. It then leapt from the page to the stage courtesy of playwright Kate Mulvany, debuting in Perth in 2014 before being produced in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and even in Japanese translation in Tokyo last year. The iconic coming-of-age story set in mid-’60s small-town Western Australia against a background of prejudice and racism was translated into 12 languages, published in 16 territories and has sold an estimated 800,000 copies. That award was one of the many he picked up for his second novel, 2009’s Jasper Jones, a book often referred to as an Australian To Kill a Mockingbird.

He was wearing a pair of dress shoes and he did not look comfortable.” “It was to accept the Indie Book Of The Year award. Jane Palfreyman, his long-time publisher at Allen & Unwin, has known him for 12 years and can only remember seeing him in a pair of shoes once. I’ve just taken a half-hour train trip south from my home in Perth and Craig Silvey has picked me up from the station in his 10-year-old VW Golf. It’s a cold, grey, drizzly August day in Fremantle.

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Craig silvey new book