Sydney author Sophie Green has set her latest novel in Terrigal and will hold an author talk at Erina on August 21.
Published by Hachette Publishers, Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon was released on July 30 and is set in a Terrigal hair salon in the 1980s.
Following the success of such novels as The Bellbird River Country Choir and Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society, this latest book from Green follows four women on their journeys for love.
Green’s debut novel, The Inaugural Meeting of The Fairvale Ladies Book Club, was a Top Ten bestseller and was shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards for General Fiction Book of the Year 2018.
It was also longlisted for both the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year 2018 and the Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction 2018.
“I always set out to write meaningful entertainment,” Green said.
“This is four love stories and it’s also a love story to community and connection, things we all need.
“My grandparents moved to the Central Coast in the 1980s and I spent a lot of time there, especially in Terrigal.
“I’ve long wanted to set a novel on the Coast, also because it is such a picturesque location.
“It is set in the 1980s because at the time the story came to me I was listening to a particular album, Girlhood by Hayley Marsten (a Queenslander) which has 80s influences, and also watching a lot of character comedy by American comedian Casey Dressler, some of it set in Hot Looks Salon in the 80s.
“It was the big hair and big shoulder pads that drew me in.”
Green said the characters for her latest book came to her “from the ether”.
“It’s an odd process, writing fiction, when characters appear and take residence in your mind for a while – but that’s what they do,” she said.
“I learnt long ago not to get in the way of stories when they want to come through.
“So even though I don’t tend to write love stories, these four wanted to be told and I simply got out of their way.”
Green said she chose a salon as the setting for the novel partly because so many women spend a hefty chunk of their free time at the hairdresser.
“Salons are hubs of connection and community,” she said.
“They’re places we go to feel better about ourselves, or to hide things, or simply to adorn, and adornment is common to all cultures, so there would be versions of salons all over the world.”
With this, her seventh novel, now available, Green said realistic characters and dialogue were the key to success.
“Readers like being able to see themselves in the story, they like that the characters talk like real people because that helps them be relatable,” she said.
“Some readers like the humour that’s in some of the characters; some of them like the emotion.
“I think it all means that readers want to have an experience when they read a book, and hopefully I give that to them.”
Green said her process for each novel involves doing a fair amount of planning, starting with profiles for each character who has a point of view.
“That helps me get to know them – as they reveal themselves to me, rather than me deciding who they are – and then I start to work out the broad arcs of their stories,” she said.
“The final stage is a table in which I document the plot, although it always changes as I go.”
She said themes of friendship and community were important to humans generally.
“While there are many cultures that emphasise individual achievement, we are nothing without our social connections – indeed, we can’t survive without them,” she said.
Green will give a talk at Erina Library at 10.30am on Thursday, August 21.
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