Q&A: Bruce Nash, Author of ‘All The Words We Know’

We chat with author Bruce Nash about All The Words We Know, which is an unforgettable novel about murder, secrets, and memory that is perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Fredrik Backman.

Hi, Bruce! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

Hello, readers. I am an ex-teacher of high school English, and have been writing fiction for more decades than I care to count. I live on the far south-east coast of Australia, in a landscape of incredible natural beauty. Here I spend my days reading, writing, gardening, and looking around me in amazement. Creating and restoring native habitat is a passion of mine, particularly in order to provide for our unique fauna and birdlife. Grow it and they will come, I’ve discovered.

When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?

I have a memory from before I could read or write, of filling exercise-books with page after page of a sort of made-up cursive which was untranslatable even to me. I think I was in love with language  before I even knew what it was.

Quick lightning round! Tell us:

• The first book you ever remember reading: Once upon a time there was something called the Classics Illustrated comic, a kind of early graphic novel. I read the version of Homer’s Iliad in a barber shop when I was about six. Changed my life.
• The one that made you want to become an author: When I was sixteen I was mad for Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse. I remember not leaving my room for three days while reading Crime and Punishment. When I came out I was determined to write great novels of my own. Insane, I guess, but I’ve never stopped trying since.
• The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The latest is Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake. I love the unique voice of the protagonist: detached and knowing yet so much more complex and contemplative and vulnerable than she lets on, or perhaps even realizes.

Your debut novel, All the Words We Know, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Woman with dementia solves mystery.

What can readers expect?

An older woman character that readers won’t easily forget. Rose has issues with memory and language, but she also has a life-force which is inextinguishable. Living in an aged-care  facility with sinister undertones, she refuses to see herself as powerless. Her wicked, playful humour and intelligence make her a formidable presence. In order to solve the central mystery, she must  somehow access the truth about her own past, her attachment to the natural world, and the great lost love of her life. Expect to laugh and to cry, not just on the same page but within the same sentence.

Where did the inspiration for All the Words We Know come from?

When my own mother went into aged care, I promise you that I didn’t immediately think “ what luck, here’s a great subject for my next novel”. But the setting was just too irresistible to my writerly instincts. When I sat down to write, a woman began to speak. Not my mother, not anyone I knew, but a voice that was intensely and individually alive. Only after I’d finished did I realise how much my mom had subtly insinuated her wonderful self into the character.

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

Apart from Rose herself, I am particularly fond of The Nice Boy Who Mops The Floors. A troubled youth undergoing a gender transition, everything about him is completely outside Rose’s comfort zone. Yet she is vey good to him, and he to her, and together they make a hell of a team.

Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?

The great challenge was to not get in Rose’s way. As soon as I heard Rose’s voice I knew I was really on to something. My job was to follow that voice wherever it took me, to fully cleave to it. Which was a challenge but a very enjoyable one. As I would often tell my partner during the writing process, I could hardly wait to get to my desk everyday to find out what Rose would do and say next!

What’s next for you?

I’m close to finishing something completely different (I’m not at all interested in writing the same book twice). I think of it as a sort of metaphysical noir that blends many different voices (that word again) set in a small holiday village on Australia’s sublime yet haunted coastline.

Lastly, what books have you enjoyed reading this year? Are there any you’re looking forward to picking up?

• The Seasonal Quartet by Ali Smith (for the second time, and I was awe-struck all over again).
• Pearl by Sian Hughes.
• Cherrywood by Jock Serong.
• Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (which also wins best title).
• The Golden Age by Joan London.
• And I can’t wait to begin Ellmann’s Joyce, Zachary Leader’s new “biography” Of Richard Ellmann’s classic biography of James Joyce. And by the way, Ellmann’s daughter Lucy’s novel Ducks, Newburyport is scarily good.

Happy reading!

Will you be picking up All the Words We Know? Tell us in the comments below!