Maggie Ball: This is your first full length novel. In what way does writing a novel differ from writing short stories?
Joan London: It's lack of containability. Gilgamesh just kept on growing,
back in time, forward in time, sideways: it was too big to be compressed into an essence, which I think is what stories are. There wasn't a sense of closure, of a single illumination: the closure couldn't happen until a very long journey had been made.
Maggie Ball: Were you worried that Edith's voyage was simply too daring, too unusual for a girl of her background and life experience?
Joan London: That was just what I wanted to explore. Edith's journey was
like my journey, to test out, to examine, just how possible, in all the smallest, most practical ways, i.e. the suitcase, the passport, the money, the nappies for Jim, it would be for a totally impoverished young mother to make a preposterous journey if there was
enough will, enough desperation. And to examine what allows her to survive.
Maggie Ball: Talk to me about some of the parallels between the epic of the
King and the epic of Edith; of Jim; of Leopold; of Aram?
Joan London: All of them, like King Gilgamesh, set off on their major
journeys after suffering loss of some kind and the reason for their journeys could be seen as an attempt to restore that loss, and to 'find eternal life', through love or heroic deeds, or perhaps in Jim's future, artistic production. Jim is just starting out, and Aram
dies, but Edith and Leopold have to suffer, like Gilgamesh the painful process of return, of finding one's place.
Maggie Ball:What about the religious elements, such as the fanaticism which
takes hold of Frances while Edith is away? Is that a microcosm of the bigotry which is
experienced in a broader sense by Ada and Jim, as they try to settle in Australia?
Joan London: The extreme loneliness and loss which Frances suffers make
her fall prey to the false religiosity of the Brothers and Sisters, who could only thrive during the War because of the desperation of those left behind. They are chased out of the rural communities once the war is over. In fact I don't think that the bigotry Edith and Jim suffer would differ from attitudes at that time all over the world in
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