Today I’m asking Anne Buist 5 questions about her latest book!
1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?
Titles are so hard! The Long Shadow just seemed to fit all my criteria; suggestive of its rural location which is a big player in the book, as well as the psychological implications that are also apt.
2. If you could choose anyone from any time period, who would you cast as the leads in your latest book?
- Margo Robbie as Issy
- Clive Owen as Dean
- Jessica Mauboy as Teagan
- Nicole Kidman as Sophie
- Saorise Ronan (with weight added) as Róisín
- Leila Hatami as Zahra
- Kathy Bates as Kate
- Leo McKern (he played Thomas Ryan in Ryan’s daughter) as Conor
- Robert de Niro as Joe
- Jack Nicholson as Gordon
- Lauren Bacall as Grace Barclay
This was so much fun I could keep going but maybe this is enough!
3. What five words best describe your story?
Jane Harper meets Liane Moriaty.
4. Who is your favourite fictional team/couple?
It was a long time ago, but Hart to Hart (played by Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers) created by Sidney Sheldon.
5. What song reflects a theme, character, relationship or scene in your book?
I have to pick two; the book is a thriller, so moody at times and with tension which is captured by Mike Oldfield/Maggie Reilly’s Moonlight Shadow
But whilst The Long Shadow isn’t an “Indigenous” story, Teagan, the Indigenous character, and country, are an integral part of the story, and Jessica Mauboy’s I Believe has lyrics are of hardship, of scars, but with hope. Teagan doesn’t let go of this hope, and Issy as the group psychologist wants to instil in all her group members
About The Long Shadow
Old Sins Cast Long Shadows…sometimes you have to deal with the past before you can face the future
Issy Harris has never heard of Riley, a town on the edge of the outback, much less want to end up there. But her husband Dean is the Red Adair of hospital stuff ups, and Riley is where they and their two year old son need to go. A psychologist, at least she gets a job running the mother-baby postnatal group to keep her occupied.
From the first group, Issy knows something is wrong. Badly wrong. Pulled into the politics of a company town where a culture of corruption is putting the viability of the hospital at risk, Issy is forced to make sense of a threats made against her and her son if she is to protect him. Nursing her own secret and struggling to keep her marriage together, Issy is pitted against the local union boss, the politician patriarch and his family as she tries to work out how they are tied into a twenty five year old tragedy – the kidnapping and murder of the older brother of one of the women in her group. A desperate race against time and the unpredictable elements of nature results in a breathtaking climax where Issy is forced to choose what it is that she really values.
A story about mothers, attachment and the things that get in the way of being the parent you want to be.
Buy The Long Shadow
- Text Publishing
- Amazon Australia
- The Long Shadow (Amazon US)
About Anne Buist
Anne Buist is the Chair of Women’s Mental Health at the University of Melbourne and has thirty years clinical and research experience in perinatal psychiatry, including forensic work. She is the author of three psychological thrillers, Medea’s Curse, Dangerous to Know, and This I Would Kill For, with tart noir heroine, psychiatrist Natalie King, and a new stand alone rural thriller, The Long Shadow.
She has been married to Graeme Simsion for thirty years and they have two children, and a joint romantic comedy/feel-good mid-age novel, Two Steps Forward, and a sequel in progress, Two Steps Onwards.
So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.
What a cast that would be!
It would be a spectacular production!