Alumni Interview: Suzanne Leal

by Diana Jenkins

Suzanne Leal is a woman of many talents. In demand on the literary circuit as a facilitator and presenter, she works as a lawyer and commentator in the areas of child protection, refugee law and criminal law, is the mother of 4 children and has somehow also managed to pen her hotly anticipated second novel, The Teacher’s Secret, while tending her insanely busy personal and professional life. Following up from an acclaimed debut – in Suzanne’s case, Border Street, commended in the Asher Literary Award – is no easy ask for any author, but The Teacher’s Secret is timely, disturbing, thought-provoking and ultimately very hopeful, despite throwing a clear, curious light across a fictional schoolyard. It’s a great pleasure to welcome Suzanne to the Varuna Alumni Interview Suite.

DJ: Suzanne, male teachers at the primary and secondary school level are something of an endangered species here. Another mum and I lamented the gender imbalance at my son’s primary school only days before I started your novel, and I kept thinking back to the exchange while reading The Teacher’s Secret. The other mum is German and completely perplexed by the absence of men in her daughter’s primary education in Australia. To what extent do you think well-meaning child protection laws have created an impossible situation for male teachers?

SL: I agree that the absence of male teachers to teach our children is of particular concern. I have three boys who, whilst they had some great female teachers, absolutely revelled in the male teachers who taught them. For some years I raised the boys as a single parent, and the care and mentorship they received from their teachers, especially their male teachers, was of enormous benefit to them.

As a tribunal member, my job is to implement the current law on child protection to decide whether an applicant before me presents a real and appreciable risk to children. Because of my position, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to offer a view on the laws themselves.

DJ: Like your sons, I had really great male teachers too – although my stepfather was a high school teacher and a bastard – but as a society, has it become almost a default position to suspect a man’s motives if he chooses a classroom career these days? How did you approach this awkward subject from a creative point of view, Suzanne, and why did it pique your interest in the first place?

SL: I hope it hasn’t become almost a default position to suspect a man’s motives if he chooses a classroom career. I hope that most parents appreciate the importance of male teachers as mentors to their children. I understand, however, that details of the awful treatment meted out to children in institutions, including schools, has rightly shocked the community and made people less trusting than they have been before.

I have four children – three boys who are 19, 16 and 12 years old (with my first husband) and a 4-year-old daughter (with my second husband). For some years, when my three boys were little, I was a single mother. Although my boys saw their father every week, I was their primary carer. During these years, I watched the boys gravitate to the men around them, particularly the male teachers at their school. These teachers were wonderful to them – fun, supportive but strict, as required – and my boys loved them.

At the same time, community attention was being brought towards the historical and continuing abuse of children by mostly male figures of authority, including teachers. This juxtaposition – between the supportive, essential teachers my children had experienced and the abuse that other people’s children had endured – made me ask myself the question: when does the behaviour of a teacher become inappropriate? When does behaviour, perhaps long accepted, become unacceptable? And what is the place of policy and procedure in making such decisions? Rather than driving myself and everyone around me mad with these questions, I thought I’d explore them in my writing.

DJ: Writing is a wonderful (albeit challenging) outlet for one’s own peculiar preoccupations, isn’t it? It’s just a tragedy that real life keeps offering up such appalling instances of institutional abuse – I wish it were all fiction. As you’ve already intimated, Suzanne, you have legal experience in child protection, but you’ve also worked in criminal law and refugee law; all three get a workout in your novel. How does your work as a lawyer influence your creative output as a novelist?

SL: I think that there are story lawyers and puzzle lawyers. I’ve always seen myself as a story lawyer – I like those areas of the law where I get to hear people’s stories. This is particularly the case in criminal law and refugee law, and although I don’t write either about my former clients or about people who have appeared before me in the Refugee Review Tribunal, their circumstances and their dilemmas often haunt me. It is through the vehicle of my fictional characters that I can consider questions prompted by my legal work.

In The Teacher’s Secret, issues of child protection come to the fore in the character of the assistant principal, Terry Pritchard, through whom I explored the question: when does a teacher’s behaviour become inappropriate?

Through the character of Rebecca, who has fled to Brindle from her homeland, I wanted to consider the everyday life of asylum seekers who had appeared before me in the Refugee Review Tribunal: when you have come from great fear and great dislocation, how do you find a new home, how does a marriage survive, how do you fight loneliness, how do you find a new place to be, a new way to live?

DJ: I love that idea of story lawyers and puzzle lawyers. A disproportionate number of my friends are lawyers, so I’ll be very busy contemplating who is what from now on. Now, you live in a close-knit community not unlike the one you create in the novel; how closely do the novel’s characters mirror some of the townsfolk of your own lived experience?

SL: I live in Malabar, which is a small coastal community in Sydney, between Maroubra and La Perouse. In The Teacher’s Secret, the fictional town of Brindle is geographically very similar to Malabar: there is a gaol and a golf course and a rock pool and a small strip of shops. While the setting itself is very similar to Malabar, the characters are fictional.

Having said that, I have known men with the characteristics of Terry Pritchard: a hard-working man who eschews procedural requirements and hates management speak. In Nina Foreman, who is new to Brindle, there is something of me and something of the many other women I know who have juggled single parenthood with the demands of a career. Rebecca is inspired by the many women who appeared before me in the Refugee Review Tribunal.

DJ: Your 3rd person plural structure must have been challenging – why did you elect to tell this story from the point of view of so many characters, and what difficulties or solutions did that decision deliver?

SL: For the structure, I must give credit to my publisher and editor, Jane Palfreyman, and my editor, Ali Lavau. Originally, the story was told from many more perspectives: from the point of view of many of the adult characters and from the point of view of some of the children, too. Jane and Ali suggested that I focus on the main characters of the book and head each chapter with the name of the person from whose perspective the narrative is being told. It was, I think, a good way to tell a story that is peppered with secrets that many of the characters don’t know. It works to keep the momentum of the book and enables the reader to understand why the characters behave the way they do.

DJ: Because we get to see things from so many angles, no one is demonised: we get each individual’s point of view. As a result, there’s a really empathic energy radiating throughout – how conscious were you of building that spirit of kindness into the novel, where people might be grievously mistaken but are genuinely trying to do the right thing?

SL: In The Teacher’s Secret, I wanted to consider serious issues – what happens when a marriage ends, when a career ends, when a family is forced to relocate – without becoming mired in darkness. I wanted to keep humour, kindness and lightness within the book. My great interest is in understanding people’s motivation: why they behave badly or what encourages them to behave well. Generally, I think, most people are just trying to live a decent life. I wanted to see how a group of people, who are mostly good people, manages changes and crises in their lives.

In terms of building a spirit of kindness into the novel, I think that when you love the characters you write about, a sense of kindness automatically pervades the writing.

DJ: The perils of bureaucratic rigidity are examined and critiqued throughout the novel, and the disconnection between theory and practice is particularly fascinating in the small town setting. How difficult is it to implement change in a place where things have been a certain way for a very long time, thanks very much, and official policy and process directives are both alien and unwanted?

SL: It is important for institutions to have both transparency and consistency. This is particularly necessary where children are concerned. For this reason, it is entirely understandable to have strict procedures and policies so that everyone is clear on what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.

Children’s needs, however, are individual and do not always work well within the confines of policy and procedures. In a small community, in particular, the relationships between the residents often are not at arm’s length: everyone knows everyone and a teacher may well have taught a couple of generations of the same family. This, in itself, will affect the teacher-student relationship. Vulnerable children, in particular, need extra support. They are also susceptible to, and need protection from, unwanted attention. It is this line between the inflexibility of procedures and the dangers of absolute freedom that I wanted to explore in the book.

DJ: All the characters are very vivid, Suzanne. I felt a flutter of hope as soon as Sid and Joan – two lovely, lonely people – crossed paths, and I quickly developed affection for most of the characters. How did you go about the process of settling on the precise mix of secondary characters that surround Terry?

SL: The working title for the book was Brindle, and essentially, that is what the story is about: the little community of Brindle and the people who live there.

It’s quite a long book, and I had to work out how much of the characters’ stories to include. I had initially included some of the narrative from the perspective of the children but ended up confining it to the adult characters and using their voices to bring out the children’s stories.

With Nina, the new teacher, I wanted to examine that tricky mix of being a single parent and a workingwoman. I also wanted to examine how difficult it can be for a new teacher to break into a new classroom, a new school [and] a new community.

The school’s general assistant, Sid, is the unlikely elder of Brindle. Whilst his is a more solitary existence – he lives alone, has never married and doesn’t have children – I would not call him lonely. He is happy with himself and grateful for what he has. He has a greater role at Brindle Public School than his job description would imply. In terms of the narrative, Sid is an important vehicle for relaying information to the reader: because he is always walking around the school to repair things, he often catches conversations that would otherwise be unheard.

In Joan, who has recently lost her elderly mother, I wanted to consider resilience in the aftermath of grief.

I love Mel, who is one of the school mums. There are subtle similarities between her story and that of Terry Pritchard, similarities that may only become clear after the book’s conclusion.

Rebecca is one of my favourite characters. Through Rebecca, I wanted to examine dislocation and the struggle to find a new home.

Laurie, the new principal, is a prickly and inflexible character. By telling part of the narrative from her perspective, I was keen for the reader to understand the difficulties of being a new figure of authority in a tight-knit and established community like Brindle.

DJ: Terry, the first character we meet and the central figure insofar as there is one, really has no recourse once the acting principal Laurie narrows her eyes at him. It all feels very real and horribly so; do you think it’s an accurate impression of what would happen to a teacher in Terry’s position, and from a legal perspective, is there really nothing to be done about his status?

SL: Because, as a tribunal member, my job is to assess whether people should be allowed to work with children by being granted a working with children check clearance, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to give an opinion on the law as it stands in relation to a fictional character of Terry Pritchard.

It’s also a bit tricky to discuss Terry’s position without giving away too much of the story!

Suffice to say, in considering whether a person should be granted a working with children check clearance, a person’s criminal history and any history of complaints or notifications has to be taken into consideration. People who have a conviction for particular criminal offences are not entitled to apply for a working with children check clearance.

DJ: You maintain terrific tension throughout the novel by withholding information – we know something happened, but we don’t know when or what until very late in the novel – how did you manage that from a structural point of view? And how and when in the creative process did Terry’s particular circumstance become the engine of the story?

SL: Terry was always going to be the focus of the book. In a time of great concern for child protection, I was interested in considering the line between appropriate and inappropriate behaviour towards children by their teachers.

The tension of the novel was managed by dividing the novel into chapters told from the perspective of different characters. Because each character offers a different piece of the puzzle, this technique allows secrets to be revealed slowly.

The resolution of the book was difficult: I had to work hard to reveal the secrets of the story without making the narrative sound self-conscious. The device of the school play worked well from that perspective: it was a way to gather all the characters together in a finale that wasn’t unlikely or contrived.

DJ: Yes, the play is very effective, not least because of its plausibility. Suzanne, each character’s personal history is revealed with great economy and care; each is a product of things that have already happened, but very focused on the possibilities of what might yet be. How did you strike the balance between the disappointments of the past and their hopes for the future?

SL: I didn’t want to write an unhappy book. Partly the book is a love song to the place where I live, and where I feel very much a part of the community. It’s a place where difficult things have happened – my marriage broke down there and it was challenging to raise three little boys in the aftermath of this – and yet it is a place that has always made me feel uplifted. Partly this is because it is by the sea, and there is something beautiful about coming home to water. When, then, it came to writing The Teacher’s Secret, I particularly wanted to explore the importance of community and the nature of resilience. In this way, I sought to strike a balance between my characters’ past disappointments and their hopes for the future.

DJ: I live on the coast too, and there’s a real village life here, despite it being a suburb of Sydney, so I feel I know just what you mean.

This is your second novel, Suzanne. Could you tell us about any changes in your process from the first to second project, and some of the nitty gritty, like how long it took to write The Teacher’s Secret, how you manage the juggle with work and family, how you put it all together and where you encountered any major difficulties?

SL: My first novel, Border Street, was both the wartime story of my former landlord and neighbour, Fred Perger, and a partly fictionalised account of my friendship with him; in that way, it was a much more biographical work than The Teacher’s Secret.

Structurally, The Teacher’s Secret is more complex: there are more voices and the narrative itself required more control – there were challenges in working out what to reveal and when. Because I cram my writing in between everything else – mainly my work and the kids - it’s hard to work out exactly how long it took me to write the book. In all, it probably took a bit over two years.

The difficulties I found in writing the book were structural: from whose perspective to tell the story, how much to tell and when to tell it. Many of these difficulties were solved in the editing process through suggestions by my publisher Jane Palfreyman, and my editors Ali Lavau and Sarah Baker.

When the routine is going well, I try to write for between an hour and three hours a day. When possible, I prioritise my writing so that, regardless of the day ahead of me, I will start with an hour’s writing, or more if I can manage it. I carry a backpack and always take my laptop with me so that whenever I find myself with some unexpectedly spare time, I’ve got everything I need to start writing. I use the time app Pomodoro to force myself to keep writing when I don’t feel like it and I stream meditation music to keep me focused. The software package Scrivener, which is a word-processing program for writers, has been a fantastic tool.

DJ: Catherine Lee, a Varuna writer friend, recently gave a Scrivener tutorial to some of my Faber Academy group. There were a couple of instant converts, but I’m still struggling to move across to the program and probably need a one-on-one with Catherine before I’d be game! Speaking of Varuna, how has the National Writers’ House contributed to your development as a writer?

SL: Varuna has contributed to my development as a writer in very many ways. In the early stages of writing my first novel, Border Street, my confidence was bolstered when I received a manuscript development award and follow-on fellowship under the mentorship of Margaret Simons, who was instrumental in her advice to me.

Since that time, I have received two further fellowships with Varuna. On each of my stays in Varuna, I have met with inspiring and interesting fellow writers whose careers I have followed with interest. Writing is a solitary practice and Varuna provides a community of people who well understand the imperative to write.

DJ: The Teacher’s Secret is published by Allen & Unwin. Scribe published Border Street a decade ago. Could you tell us about your path to publication, and what if anything, has been markedly different second time around?

SL: For my novel Border Street, I was represented by the UK agent, Toby Eady, who sold the book to Scribe following the Frankfurt Book Fair. Aviva Tuffield [now Black Inc. after a couple of years at Affirm Press] did a beautiful job editing the manuscript and tthe book was well received. All in all, it was a quick and easy path to publication.

Over the following years, the publishing industry suffered a number of setbacks and getting published became more difficult. After starting a novel about a man on trial for manslaughter, and another about the tribulations of a young man on his release from prison, my husband suggested I try something upbeat. So it was with this in mind that I wrote The Teacher’s Secret, which, while it deals with important contemporary issues, does so, I think, with humour and lightness.

With Toby Eady’s blessings and continued support, I became a client of the Australian agent, Margaret Connolly. Shortly afterwards, Allen & Unwin picked up the manuscript for The Teacher’s Secret. The UK rights have since been sold to Legend Press who will publish the book in 2017.

This time around, I think I know the publishing industry much better: I have been an interviewer at Sydney Writers’ Festival and Waverley Library and the State Library for some years now and have also been a judge for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. I understand that everyone is working hard in an industry which remains tough and that as an author, it is important to be actively involved in the promotion of your book. I am mindful to enjoy the delights of the industry: the access to bright and creative people and the privilege of getting to work with highly intelligent and thoughtful publishers and editors.

DJ: One of your sessions at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival was about small towns and secrets. Tell us about your fascination for what we hide from the world, and why small towns are such a hotbed of intrigue? Did you discover anything new from any of the other panellists and what was your favourite part of the discussion?

SL: I think curiosity is a driving force for many people: we want to know what it is we aren’t being told. On the flipside, there are things we really don’t want to reveal to others about ourselves. So it’s a fine line between wanting to satisfy our own curiosity whilst retaining our own privacy and secrets. Small towns are a perfect way to examine this tension, because it is difficult to keep secrets in a place where everyone knows everyone else. I found this when I first moved to Malabar. The closeness of this little community is terrific, but it is hard to keep things quiet and I had to learn techniques for keeping some things to myself.

The secret to a great panel is often the facilitator and Ailsa Piper, our facilitator for the Secrets and Survival panel at Sydney Writers’ Festival this year, was terrific. Her questions prompted a really interesting conversation, in particular about the author as secret keeper.

Mireille Juchau’s novel The World Without Us is a fascinating account of the aftermath of a commune gone wrong and the secrets that both bind and break a family.

Emily Maguire’s novel An Isolated Incident is about grief in the aftermath of the highly publicised murder of a young girl. I enjoyed finding out how Mireille and Emily managed the revelation of the many secrets that infuse their books.

DJ: You must be a very acute observer of other people, judging from your capacity for fine, perfectly judged details in characterisation. Have you always been curious about other people, and as a novelist, do you think you have to be sort of pathological about it?

SL: I think curiosity is necessary to any writer – I certainly thrive on it. Whilst I find myself musing about the lives of strangers I pass on the street, my work as a lawyer has given me an actual insight into the predicament of the many people I have encountered over the years: people who have fled persecution; people who have spent long periods of time in gaol; people who find themselves in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. The resilience of many of these people continues to fascinate me.

DJ: I can’t help it: I keep imagining everyone in your real town sitting down over vanilla slices and chocolate chip cookies, poring over the novel and cackling and/or cringing with recognition – is it unavoidable, in realist fiction, inviting comparison with actual people and factual history? How do you manage the inevitable encroachment of the real world as you create a fictional one?

SL: I think Helen Garner said that although people always recognise themselves in her novels, they invariably get it wrong. When there are great geographical similarities between a fictional community like Brindle and Malabar, where I live, the natural tendency is to assume that all the characters in The Teacher’s Secret will be based on people living in Malabar. For me, the creation of a character is so much more complex than this. I might have an idea for the physical appearance of a character – a woman I frequently see at the shops, for example – and from that, I will imbue her with the characteristics I need to make the character work within the narrative. I might remember a child I used to know and will use the way he spoke, or some of the things he might have said, to create one of the children in my book.

None of the characters in The Teacher’s Secret are based on anyone I know, although many of them will be familiar to readers: they will have had a teacher much like Terry; they will know someone like Mel, a woman whose intelligence shines not in her job or her qualifications but in her humour and her sparkle; and they will recognize Nina as one of the many women who, finding themselves unexpectedly single, struggle to manage both family and work.

DJ: Brindle Public gives The Teacher’s Secret both a discrete, familiar setting and the temporal structure of a school year. You’re a mum yourself (and I have to say, Mel’s visit to lost property is hilariously familiar – I’ve already told the ladies in the office about it), so you have daily though limited access to school life – did you speak to any teachers or kids specifically as research for this novel?

SL: I have a number of forgetful kids, so well know the various lost property haunts.

School is a familiar place for most people and as well as having been a school student, I come from a family of teachers. My father was a university academic and my mother was a primary school teacher, so even as a child, tales of various schools surrounded me. One of my close friends is a primary school teacher and natural storyteller, and for years she has regaled me with tales of her students and colleagues. Her stories are vivid, funny and heartwarming and have always stayed with me. For a couple of years, I taught French at the local primary school and this gave me a great insight into the workings of the school and the personalities of the kids and the teachers.

DJ: One of the 3rd person narrators is Rebecca, an African TV personality, seeking asylum with her academic husband and son after she is forced to flee her country. She’s a fascinating character, full of contradictions. Despite the terrible event that changes her reason for being in Australia, Rebecca has a great sense of humour. What or who inspired this character?

SL: When I was on the Refugee Review Tribunal, I presided over hearings for people claiming refugee status. In the course of this work, I encountered many people from Africa, in particular Zimbabwe. Many of the women who came before me were strong, articulate and impressive women who had experienced great hardship. I often wondered how women like this – women who were well known in their country, who might even have been activists - would manage their relocation to a country that was foreign and where their experience and qualifications might count for nothing. Rebecca came from my experience of these women and my imaginings of their subsequent lives. It was important for Rebecca to have a good sense of humour: even in the midst of great uncertainty and great distress, the minutiae of life continues: meals need to be cooked, children cared for and work completed. Even within dark times, humour may not be completely extinguished and can, in itself, fan resilience and recovery.

DJ: Well said. I wholeheartedly agree. Finally, what’s next, Suzanne? Have you already started the next novel and if so, what can you tell us about it? Do you have ideas on the backburner, or is it more a matter of being overtaken by an idea once it strikes you?

SL: I’m almost finished the first draft of a book for older children. It’s a time travel story about a boy called Leo. I’m also plotting a new novel for adults about a woman whose worlds collide when she returns home after years of living away.

DJ: Hmm, it sounds like both projects are about time travel, in a manner of speaking. Goodie – I look forward to hearing about them once you reach the other side. Best of luck on the promotional trail (don’t forget to pack snacks), happy writing and thank you for playing!