J.P. Pomare on book reviews: "The truth is my favourite reviews are the ones that stroked my ego the most."
J.P. Pomare on book reviews: "The truth is my favourite reviews are the ones that stroked my ego the most."
This year Melbourne-based Kiwi crime writer J.P. Pomare followed up his bestselling debut, Call Me Evie, with another stonker, In the Clearing.
Reviewers get creative when describing your books ("more twists than a Slinky", for example). What is your favourite review?
I'd love to say one of the more creativeones or one of the endorsements I've received from other writers I admire but the truth is my favourite reviews are the ones that stroked my ego the most. Publishers Weekly in the US gave me a fantastic starred review. And more recently reading the review of In the Clearing in the arts pages of The Australian was a particularly exciting moment. I'd quote these reviews here but then it really would be my ego talking.
Which came first - the racehorse called Call Me Evie, or the book?
The book came first. My father, who is a horse trainer, wanted to celebrate the release of my debut by naming a horse after the book. It's had a few wins and many placings. I'd tip it in its next start but I'd be surely guaranteeing it lost - the only times it seems to finish out of the money is when I choose to back it.
Your father Bill claims to have been a founding member of the Mongrel Mob. Did that make things tough for you growing up?
To be honest, until my mother passed away when I was 10, I had a reasonably privileged upbringing. My father had a modestly successful whiteware appliance business and was training racehorses. Despite the fact both my parents were "working class", we had all the trappings of a middle-class family in the 90s: a beach house, a large idyllic family home, a Sega Master System and PW80 motorbikes to tear up the paddocks on our lifestyle block. My father had reinvented himself as a stable family man by that stage but I still remember when I was 7 or 8 it was the first time Dad spoke about the early days of the gang. It was touched upon, I vaguely recall seeing something that resembled a membership card with Mongrel Mob printed on it (although I accept memories at this point in a child's life are unreliable and this still seems too odd to be true.) Back then it was something Dad wasn't particularly proud of and neither was my mother. My understanding has always been that Dad happened to kick around with a few rough sorts as a teenager in the 60s, mostly Irish and British boys. He was there in court when the judge called the group of youths before him a "pack of mongrels" a title that was quickly adopted by the boys. However, beyond the early pre-patch era, I don't think he has had a great deal to do with the Mongrel Mob.
J.P. Pomare, crime writer, says as a teenager he was obsessed by writing, but was "lazy, narcissistic, a real s*** actually."
What is your best memory of 2020?
This one is easy: we welcomed my daughter, Blake Esther Pomare, into the world in June. She brought challenges - no new parent is really prepared - but she also brought perspective and great joy. It's awful and amazing at the same time. I don't have half as much time to write, I never get enough sleep, I have a Pavlovian response to any sound that resembles my daughter screaming (I think of it as akin to the phantom noise humans hear in absolute silence) and yet somehow I feel much more fulfilled and happier than before. It's a miracle, really.
Had you asked me this at the beginning of February I would have told you nothing could top the catastrophic bushfires and the blithe dismissal of hard climate science by the Murdoch-controlled Australian media but, of course, I had no idea what was to come. I don't know if this counts as a memory but being locked inside for half a year with a newborn without having any opportunity to introduce her to my family in New Zealand was really tough. Let's not go through this again in 2021, please.
What did the teenaged you want to do with your life?
If I had the courage to be earnest back then I would have admitted that I wanted to be an author. I was obsessed with the idea but I was also lazy, narcissistic, a real s*** actually. As an ego defence mechanism, I think I told myself I wanted to work in media, journalism or politics, maybe even start a business. Writing books seemed like too much hard work, or at the very least it was contingent on too much luck. I'm a completely different person now to who I was back then but I think my teenage self would be contemptuous and maybe envious actually. He'd say, "This guy thinks he's pretty clever, probably thinks he's doing all right; skinny git."
