The significance of the setting
Cottesloe Beach was the first place we lived as a family in Western Australia. It was where I first swam in the ocean, where I hung out as a teenager, and a place I always came back to after I moved away.
When I came to write my second novel, I knew I wanted to set it in my hometown of Perth in Western Australia, that it would be a very ‘Perth’ book, and in many ways The Shark could not be set anywhere else. The Norfolk Pines, the grass terraces, the Rottnest Channel Swim. In others the Cottesloe beachfront could be anywhere in the world with an ocean across the street, a thriving beach culture and a shark net.
The location of the book changed several times as I was writing it. At first it was going to be a novel that travelled like my debut No Country for Girls. I trekked the streets of Claremont, through Karrakatta Cemetery, and flew eight hundred kilometres up the coast to Shark Bay, until I realised the story and characters worked perfectly well back where they’d started.
Once the characters, story and I arrived back at Cottesloe Beach, the protagonists came into focus and elements of the plot began to fall into place.
The location of the book changed several times as I was writing it. At first it was going to be a novel that travelled like my debut No Country for Girls. I trekked the streets of Claremont, through Karrakatta Cemetery, and flew eight hundred kilometres up the coast to Shark Bay, until I realised the story and characters worked perfectly well back where they’d started.
Once the characters, story and I arrived back at Cottesloe Beach, the protagonists came into focus and elements of the plot began to fall into place.