Q&A: James Norcliffe
Award-winning and beloved poet and children’s writer James Norcliffe has just published his first novel for adults. The Frog Prince is a novel about a disappearance, searching for love and the power of stories; it’s a story within a story within a story. James answers our quick Q&A below.
1. How are you and what have you been up to lately?
I’m really enjoying a quiet New Year period: catching up with old friends, reading, writing, pottering in the garden and picking blackcurrants. We live in a very pleasant part of the world – Church Bay near Diamond Harbour – and at this time of the year it’s more a balm than usual. We can almost kid ourselves that climate change and Covid are happening on some other distant and more hostile planet.
2. If you were working in a bookshop, how would you hand-sell your book to customers? What would you say to convince them to buy and read it?
Given my usual diffidence and dislike of sales pitches, I’d not be very good at this. If I were pushier I’d say that with The Frog Prince you’ll get a lot of bang for your buck: a mystery, a romance, historical fiction, a social comedy, with a range of characters, some real, some imagined, some comic-grotesque. They’ll also be getting two books in one (which may require some multi-tasking).
3. What books (or other art/media) influenced you while writing this book, or generally in your life?
A few years ago I read Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 (I’m a huge fan of Murakami). I was so taken with his use of the dual narrative, seesawing from one narrative strain to the other, I tried the device with my children’s book, Felix and the Red Rats. It was great fun and the book worked well. It was just as satisfying to return to the device with The Frog Prince. It goes without saying, that the book was informed by my reading the stories of the Brothers Grimm, especially by the complete edition translated by Jack Zipes.
4. What good books have you read lately?
I’ve just finished Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways. It’s a rich and satisfying meditation on walking and the literature of walking as well as a description of a number of the long walks Macfarlane has taken in various parts of the British Isles, the Middle East and Spain. Wonderful.
I’m getting through my Christmas books. One of the best has been When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labutut, translated by Adrian Nathan West, a cross-genre work mixing fiction and biography to examine the mysteries of quantum mechanics. Brilliant.
And I’ve just started another Christmas book, How to be a Liberal by Ian Dunt. Promising.
Buy The Frog Prince (Penguin NZ), $36
