By Callum Ludwig
A former Yarra Valley author is coming home for a special appearance at the Yarra Junction Library next month.
Karen Viggers, known locally from her time as a veterinarian in both Yarra Junction and Healesville, is visiting the library to talk about her latest novel, ‘Sidelines’.
Ms Viggers said it’s great to be coming back.
“My parents still live down in Yarra Glen, and I’ve done a number of events at the Yarra Junction Library before for my previous novels and so I’m excited to come down and chat to readers,” she said.
“When I was working at Yarra Junction, I was living up at Warburton and when I was a little kid, my early years of school were at Warburton Primary School, I rode horses and did Pony Club and all of those things in the Yarra Valley up until I was 28 and it was shortly after that that I moved to Canberra for love, but the Valley is where my roots are.”
Sidelines is Ms Viggers’ fifth novel, having also written The Stranding, The Lightkeeper’s Wife, The Grass Castle and The Orchardist’s Daughter which explored the topics of dying with dignity, displacement of First Peoples, wildlife conservation, clear-felling of native forests.
Ms Viggers said as her previous works have mostly been set around Australia’s amazing natural landscapes, wilderness and nature, this book is quite a departure from those.
“It’s about junior sport, particularly teens, and parents trying to support their kids from the sidelines and how sometimes if they get a bit pumped up about their kid’s winning and that sort of thing, it can get out of control and have an impact on kids wanting to continue to play,” she said.
“I wrote it about sport, but it could be about anything competitive from ballet, gosh, some of the stories I’ve heard ballet, or music or even academia because it’s focused on competitiveness in society and anyone who has been a player or an umpire or ref will relate to some of the things,”
“I wrote the book for adults because as an adult, you often forget what it is like to be a young person and I wanted to try and get right inside the head of those teenagers.”
Sidelines begins with an ambulance arriving at the chaotic scenes of a fight at a junior sports game before flashing back nine months and telling the story leading up to the opening event from the perspective of six different characters, both parents and children.
Ms Viggers said she hopes that her readers will have sympathy and understanding for each of their characters.
“We are not just black and white, we are not either bad or good, we all have strengths and weaknesses and that’s what I really enjoyed exploring in this book,” she said.
“Hopefully you’ll feel like a fly on the wall in their lives and relate to some of the challenges that they experience. But I also hope that people will think about some of the behaviour and some of the issues that the book raises and maybe be forewarned or be able to chat with friends about things like this,”
“Maybe it will stimulate discussion about how to be better sports parents and support rather than pressure kids, let it be their interest and I hope it helps to foster greater respect which is a very important thing.”
Interestingly, Ms Viggers is a bestselling author in France, where a translated version of The Lightkeeper’s Wife won the ‘Les Petits Mots des Libraires’ award and was shortlisted for the French Readers Prize in 2016. She is also co-host of the Secrets From the Green Room podcast where she interviews writers and others in the book industry and now lives in Canberra with her ecologist husband, Professor David Lindenmayer.
Ms Viggers will be visiting the Yarra Junction Library from 2pm to 3pm on Monday 22 April and you can book your place for free at: events.yourlibrary.com.au/event?id=57312
