Daniel Carr leaves her bloody and bruised after every meeting, but despite the protestations of her best friend and sometime lover, Jamie Wilkes, Sarah is adamant that Daniel is the love of her life. She sees his monstrousness as a challenge and believes she is strong enough to "tame the beast."
The novel's chief concerns are sexual politics, transgressive relationships and what it means to love someone who damages you body and soul.
Taming the Beast attempts to overturn modern expectations of twenty-something relationships and female desire, while seriously challenging the contemporary paradigm that real love is healthy and nourishing.
How long did it take you to write it?
A couple of years. I was working full-time in an office, so I wrote it mostly during the insomniac hours.
It was first published in Australia in 2004 and then published in the U.K. in 2005. The U.S. edition has just been released this month [September].
Which aspects of the work that you put into the novel did you find most difficult?
Cutting was the hardest thing. I started with a manuscript almost three times the length of the final book. Throwing out chapters, pages, plot lines and characters in order to produce the novel was very, very difficult. But very necessary.
Which did you enjoy most?
I just love to write. I love that I can sit down at my computer with my head full of real-life stuff and 10 or 20 minutes [later] I am just gone.
Taming the Beast has a very dark view of human nature. My subsequent novel and my non-fiction are a touch more positive about human motivation and behavior.
My fiction is always about challenging the accepted ideas about what is right and good. Taming the Beast fits with my obsession about questioning mainstream morals and mores.
Which themes will you be exploring in is your next book?
My second novel, The Gospel According to Luke, is about religious terrorism, belief, family, grief and hope.
Article comments
1 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Nice interview, very quotable.
2 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!