'A lot of people hated it': the author without second book nerves

It's not something most writers would be content with, which is why it fascinated author Jessie Tu.

"Fundamentally in order to be a writer of fiction you have to have some ego, you really do," she said.

They might seem similar, but an ego - or lack of - is the fundamental difference between translators and authors.

"I was thinking about what it means to love a vocation [and] be completely dedicated to it," Tu said.

'[Literary translation] was about advocating for someone else's work. That was the perfect example of what true love looks like."

That vocation inspired Tu's second novel, The Honeyeater.

A child of a Taiwanese immigrant, Fay navigates workplace politics, race and a complicated mother-daughter relationship while trying to establish a career in literary translation.

Tu's debut novel, A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing, made waves when it was published in 2020. It has received funding by Screen Australian to be developed into a drama series.

ABC journalist Annabelle Crabb said on her podcast Chat 10 Looks 3 she was "completely floored by" Tu's first novel.

"It's incredibly forcefully written, it's sometimes quite confronting," Crabb said.

"She's got a bizarre relationship with her mother... and she's got a complicated relationship with [her mentor]."

The same could be said of Tu's second novel. Fay's relationship with her mother, who she lives with, is uncomfortably enmeshed.

Mother-daughter dynamics interest Tu because "every woman I've ever met has had a very tumultuous relationship with their mother".

"It has taken a lot of my life to understand it," she said.

"There's no clear frameworks for women to try to navigate that relationship."

Some of the book's more confronting passages reflect the complex and dysfunctional dynamic between Fay and her mother.

"I wanted to explore something that is really perverse and not talked about a lot," Tu said.

Tu was born in Taiwan.

She moved to Australia at age four and grew up in Sydney, where she still lives.

She was a classical violinist until her mid-20s before becoming a music teacher and then a writer.

Tu works for Women's Agenda, and writes book reviews for Nine newspapers.

She does not write characters in order to make up for a lack of Australian stories about women or people of colour.

"I write completely and always for myself, I'm the only person I care about when I write a book," Tu said.

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"I write in order to feel seen and because I grew up not seeing a lot of Asian narratives, I'm so hungry for them.

"I set out to write what I want to read myself because the stories that have moved me on a very profound level have been stories where I feel like I've been seen."

In The Honeyeater, the politics of race in academia is explored through Fay's relationship with her boss and mentor, Professor Samantha Eagan-Smith, and Eagan-Smith's husband James.

"I wanted to really explore the ways in which within the field of literary translation these [racial] power imbalances can play out," Tu said.

After writing The Honeyeater, Tu realised she had needed to process her experiences with a particular kind of boss.

"In every field I've been in, music and education and law, I've noticed that I've had the same type of white, female mentor," Tu said.

"I've spoken to so many other women that have also had these kinds of female bosses.

"They don't really know how to navigate intersectional dynamics between themselves and other women."

Unlike some other writers, Tu did not struggle with "second book syndrome".

Before The Honeyeater, Tu wrote an unpublished book which did not ending up working.

"Having got that out of the way was very liberating," Tu said.

"The success of a book is not measured by the number of people who have loved it.

"My first book, a lot of people hated it, and that's OK.

"It's just part of putting any work out as a creative person.

"You just have to tell yourself, I cannot write it for everyone."

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