Interview with Award Winning Author Joanna Nell!

Joanna Nell talks about her latest novel: The Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home (Release date October 27, 2020, Hachette Australia)

Can you describe the heart of The Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home and what inspired you to write it?  Did it start with an image, a voice, a concept, a dilemma or something else?

At the heart of the book is the unlikely friendship between reclusive nature writer Hattie and gregarious dad-joke comedian Walter. On the surface, all they have in common is that they are equally reluctant inmates of Woodlands Nursing Home. When the home’s rule-bending night nurse is dismissed over an unfortunate incident, Hattie, Walter and their partner in crime Murray join forces in a clandestine operation to have her reinstated. 

“Everyone expects so little of us. That’s our secret weapon.”

The only thing I knew about the novel before I started was that it would be set in an aged care facility. Usually, I start with a single character but as the manuscript progressed it became clear that Woodlands Nursing Home itself was actually the major character in the novel. As in my previous novels, I was drawn to the central question of how we experience ageing, and in this case, what happens at the very end of our lives when we can no longer care for ourselves? Again, I wanted to explore this through the eyes of older characters themselves and their day-to-day experiences of aged care.

My protagonist Hattie Bloom was inspired by the woman I’d never met but imagined lived in an overgrown and neglected sandstone cottage at the end of my road. My children used to joke it was haunted and after years of walking past and letting my imagination run wild, I’d created a character that was reclusive by choice and more at ease with birds than with people. A major motif in this book is the owl, and in many ways, Hattie is the embodiment of this shy, watchful yet highly intelligent bird. As a writer, however, you have to be pretty cruel to your characters otherwise there is no story, so poor Hattie had to endure a fall from a ladder that put her into a nursing home where she was surrounded by strangers with only a caged budgie for company.

It is a moving story told by two memorable characters, Hattie Bloom and Walter Clements. Through their unique viewpoints you reveal your incredible understanding of seniors and their issues and provide valuable insight that draws us effortlessly into their lives. We become sympathetic to their dilemmas. Did research or personal experience help with this?

Clearly I haven’t had the lived experience of being a ninety-year-old woman in a nursing home (not yet, at least) but as a GP I have visited my patients in nursing homes for more than twenty-five years. Although Woodlands Nursing Home is completely fictional, I drew on details from the literally dozens of similar facilities. Having visited residents at all hours of the day and night, including weekends and public holidays, I had a wealth of observations to draw upon. Again, all the characters in the book are fictional but having sat down with and listened to many, many residents talk candidly about their lives, I felt I’d witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly of aged care. In particular, I’d always been struck by how after dark, many residents – especially those with dementia – were wide awake and roaming at a time when staffing levels are at their lowest. The idea for The Night Owls, the clandestine social club run by the maverick night nurse Sister Brownyn, was reading Providing Good Care at Night for Older People by Diana Kerr and Heather Wilkinson, a professional handbook that aims to educate staff about the care needs of residents during the night.

There is an incredible thread of humour but also heartbreak running through this novel. Did the writing of it have an emotional impact on you? If so, how did you manage it?

You could compare writing to method acting in that a writer, like an actor, must draw on their own experiences to literally feel the emotions of their characters. Unsurprisingly, inhabiting the lives of characters that are experiencing grief, loneliness and the loss of independence does take an emotional toll. This is one of the reasons I use humour as a writing tool, both to create light and shade in the narrative but as an emotional circuit breaker too. After all, life is full of accidental comedy and I’ve laughed and joked with residents as often as I’ve shed tears with them. More often than not, it’s residents themselves who are first to point out the funny side of a challenging situation. Although the difficulties people face in aged care are anything but funny, it’s been shown that laughter releases endorphins – nature’s natural painkillers – and makes people feel better. In that respect, I see my books almost as a prescription. 

Which character in your newest novel holds a special place in your heart? If so, why?

Walter was probably the most fun to write. I’ve never written from the point of view of a male character before so this was both a new and exciting experience for me as an author. Like many men of his generation he is struggling with physical decline and emotional vulnerability as well as a loss of identity due to old age. Unlike Hattie, Walter craves company and human touch, and has always used humour as a way to connect with other people. When his long-held views about the world are dismissed as un-PC and no one laughs at his jokes, he becomes lonely and bewildered. The biggest challenge as a writer was to create a subversive and at times deliberately cringe-worthy character that was also hopefully relatable.

Which character was the most challenging to create? Why?

The character I was most keen to get right was Sister Bronwyn, the unconventional night-nurse. She is a favourite among the residents and so naturally, I had to get rid of her as soon as possible by having her dismissed! The challenge was in creating a sympathetic but sufficiently flawed character that didn’t fall into the cliché of ‘nurse as an angel’. We learn just enough about Sister Bronwyn’s backstory to know that she’s a real person facing her own set of issues and simply trying her best to do a job in a system that doesn’t support her. As with carers in real life, it was about finding the right balance between showing the public/professional persona and revealing the private/personal side of the character.

What key theme and/or message do you hope your readers uncover from your book?

At the heart of the book is the message that an older person does not stop being a person with a wide range of human emotions such as hopes, dreams and fears just because they’ve moved into aged care. Rather than being seen as a burden on society, I wanted to show that just because someone is frail and needing care, they are still capable of having a meaningful life of making new friends and even falling in love. I hope this book will shine a light on the lives and untold stories of the many extraordinary older people who are often hidden away and neglected in a youth-obsessed world that prefers them to be ‘out of sight, out of mind’. In particular, I hope the book opens up a conversation about how we as a society can create an aged care system that offers freedom and dignity, and is designed to meet the needs of its residents rather than the other way around.

When did you discover the power of language? Was it a force that inspired you to become a writer?

I discovered as soon as I could read that words and ideas were very powerful. Growing up as a painfully shy child, I didn’t have much of a voice and being spoken over, interrupted or ignored was something I simply accepted. Fortunately – possibly because of that – I was a good listener, which is probably what drew me to being a doctor. It wasn’t until I started taking my writing seriously in middle age I realised that after all those years of watching and listening, I had plenty to say after all. In fact, I had decades of stored up thoughts, ideas and opinions, and literally millions of unused words to express them with.  

If you could time travel, what would you tell your younger writing self?

Keep a notebook. Trust me, you will NOT remember all those brilliant ideas in the morning!

Have you taken any literary pilgrimages? Any courses or mentorships that shaped you as a writer? 

In 2017, as part of the prize for winning the Fellowship of Australian Writers short story competition, I won a writing residency at the beautiful Bundanon Trust in NSW. I spent two glorious weeks in the historic Writers Cottage, in the company of an itchy wombat that lived under the floor. It was there, sitting in the same chair as some of my literary idols such as Rosalie Ham, that I started the novel that would become The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village. One evening I had dinner with the other artists-in-residence (including one Stella Prize shortlisted author) and there was something so transformative about that place that I briefly overcame my imposter syndrome and for the first time, introduced myself as a writer.

What books and authors from your childhood and later in adulthood have influenced you in becoming the writer you are today?

My early reading experiences (and writing attempts) were almost exclusively pony-themed. I read and re-read the entire Silver Brumby series numerous times. As a teenager, I read everything by Thomas Hardy, the Brontes, Agatha Christie and Daphne Du Maurier. My very favourite book from childhood was Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, which I read again with my own daughter, only realising as an adult how unique it must have been for its time. Written in 1877 by a woman, from the point of view of a horse, the book was a turning point in animal welfare and is a story that has endured for generations – something any author would aspire to.

As an adult, although I read very widely, I try not to be influenced by other writers. The notable exception is the British playwright and author Alan Bennett whose wickedly funny and brilliantly observed Talking Heads monologues are something I return to time and time again, and can only hope to emulate.

Creativity is unleashed and aided in many ways. Some authors like to write with music playing. Others like to jog, walk, cook, binge on tv shows/movies, even pin out the washing while working out plots, settings and characters! Are any of these activities part of your writing or thinking process? If not, what helps you?

For me it’s walking. I have a dodgy knee and haven’t run or jog since 1995 (it’s a long story…) so I’m with Friedrich Nietzsche who wrote in Twilight of the Idols, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking”. I’m sure that there are many writers who recognise this phenomenon already. I try to start every writing day by walking my black Labrador, Margot, who is my furry and slightly smelly muse. As soon as my feet (and her paws) hit a certain rhythm, it’s as if my brain loosens up and the creativity starts to flow. At the end of the walk we sit at our favourite café together and I quickly jot down the ideas on my phone before I forget them.

Do you have any new projects you are currently working on or about to begin that you are free to mention?

My work in progress is a fourth novel for Hachette, due for publication in 2021. I never like to give too much away about a project but I can reveal that the book was inspired by an unplanned visit to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford last year. We were over visiting family and my son had been complaining of a painful elbow since Christmas Day. Being the unfortunate child of a doctor, he’d been completely ignored until New Year’s Eve when his elbow was the size of a cantaloupe and naturally, every GP surgery was closed. I hadn’t visited the John Radcliffe hospital since I finished my medical training in 1991 and was delighted to find the volunteer teashop was still serving the same tea and buns in spite of a new large chain coffee shop that had just opened down the corridor.

Thank you, Joanna, for sharing your thoughts on your writing world and your journey through the beautifully written, heart-changing The Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home. We wish you incredible success on its exciting release date of October 27, 2020.  A big heartfelt thanks to Hachette Australia for an ARC of this stunning five-star novel.

To learn more about Joanna and her books, visit her website.

To read my previous news feature ‘A Strong Pure Voice in Fiction for the Aged’ about Joanna’s books follow the link.