ELEANOR CATTON 'Why I had to rebel'

The internationally acclaimed New Zealand author opens up about her insecurities, the landscapes that move her to tears and why motherhood has changed everything.

- JUDY BAILEY

The ending will catch you unaware. Eleanor Catton, the Kiwi author of Booker Prize-winning fame, has a new novel on the shelves and it's very readable. It's a contemporary thriller, but certainly not your run-of-the mill potboiler.

Although she's partial to thrillers, laughs Eleanor. "It's the one genre my husband and I agree on. We always want to watch thrillers. My experience of reading thrillers is that I want to stay up all night reading to find out what happens next." This one will have you doing just that.

When she famously won the literary world's most coveted prize, the Booker, for her second novel, The Luminaries, the chair of the judging panel commented, "It's a dazzling work." Another critic wrote, "She is destined to be one of the most important and influential writers of her generation."

At 28, she was the youngest person to ever win the Booker. And while it was a profound endorsement of her writing ability, it also came as a mixed blessing.

"I needed to take time out after The Luminaries," explains Eleanor. "I felt real self-doubt after the prize. The exposure was so crazy. There were invitations from all over the world. The media interest was so intense, it plunged me into a place where I started thinking about weaknesses in the book. People go looking for weaknesses."

She lived her life for a long time in the spotlight. It didn't sit well with her. It took her a while to come back to writing.

"I had to learn how to trust that that's a good sentence. I lost my radar for a while. You begin your writing life as a liability to a publisher - you might end up costing them money. After the Booker, suddenly I'm an asset to a publisher. It's a fearful place to be. I worried that people might not tell me if things weren't ready."