'An Unreal House Filled With Real Storms' by Elizabeth Knox

Is it fiction's job to make the supernatural (whatever that is) natural (whatever that means)? Or to blur (or erase) the line between the two? Should (can?) 'genre' be hollowed out and filled with 'literature' (whatever that is)? How do the forces impacting on an author's (or a reader's) personal life alter the world view informing their writing (and reading)? What does loss leave you with? Can the omnipresent (whatever that is) be encountered in a taxi in a tunnel? What should (can) we make of all this? This unique insight into the tectonics of Knox's creative mind was delivered as the inaugural Margaret Mahy Memorial Lecture in August 2014. For me it raises more questions than it answers, and the implications of some of its assertions stretch over the border into what I would class as fantasy but Knox may well not, but it is exactly these restless and irresolvable blurrings (misclassifications?) between imaginative and quotidian worlds that makes Knox’s fiction so fertile, fresh and sometimes frustrating.

Dec 14