By Louise Sapphira.
Kelly Gardiner’s Act of Faith is a story about a young lady’s passion for books and the printed word. In 1640, the protagonist, sixteen-year-old Isabella flees from England with her father, but life takes a painful turn. Travelling to Amsterdam and Venice, Isabella is thrown into a series of adventures and meets both allies and enemies on her journey. In Amsterdam, Isabella begins to work with Master de Aquila, a printer with a dangerous but powerful cause. She also befriends a young man, Willem, and the two challenge each other. The novel inspires its readers to experience the value of free thought through difficult circumstances. When I interviewed Kelly, we discussed the crafting process of writing the historical novel, Act of Faith including the exploration of censorship and oppression.
We started with speaking about the research in the novel. Kelly explains the book is set in the seventeenth century, ‘In the early centuries of printing and censorship.’ Before beginning to write the novel, Kelly needed to have a sense of the time, place, and people she was writing about. From here, ‘I need to get myself into their worldview, which is really the most important perspective in historical fiction. Understanding how the characters see the world and how they see themselves.’ The research involved understanding the religious frameworks of the time, including the economic and political history of printing. But also, commerce, and trade, as well as the wars taking place during the seventeenth century. She adds, ‘Particularly censorship and oppression that were happening in different ways in different places in Europe at that time.’
Kelly also drew from her own rich experience of Venice. ‘I didn’t necessarily go back to do detailed research…I had my own memories,’ followed by book research and map research. However, Kelly did travel to Cambridge, where the novel begins. This was about gaining a sense of place and of the buildings, including people’s movements around a city. Kelly says, ‘Because I have done travel writing and travel photography for so long, I do try and bring that sense of place and space into anything I write.’ However, cities have changed dramatically in the centuries that have passed. Kelly adds, ‘You have to imagine the way it was then when there’s nothing actually to look at. Even Venice, you have to rethink it,’ because people now consider the buildings in Venice as historic.
The novel explores staying true to your beliefs, but this was not always Kelly’s intention when she started to write the book. Kelly says her research involved coming across ‘fantastic quotes in letters and diaries from the time, from the early decades and centuries of printing.’ These quotes included content on how readers could not handle all the new information. In the current times, ‘People were saying the same thing about social media.’ She adds, ‘Every new technology brings with it this kind of culture shock and information shock, and this was the first time people on a mass scale had access to the printed word.’ This included books, posters, petitions, and pamphlets distributed on the streets. She investigates the reactions to this and how there was an effort to ‘stop this flow of information.’
Challenging stereotypes is another element in the narrative of Act of Faith. Kelly says, ‘My works are acts of subversion disguised as historical fiction.’ She explains, ‘One of my little bugbears that often come up in historical fiction…is this idea of the feisty heroine…one young woman defies expectations and goes out to work.’ But Kelly grew up in a working-class family, where generations of women worked. Therefore, she created Isabella, the protagonist who is an educated young woman who understands many languages. Isabella ‘had to work due to circumstances, then discovers this world of other women who are working.’ The novel questions this idea of when women started to work.
The second challenge was around the genre of young adult fiction. Kelly says, ‘I want it to be an anti-romance [novel]’. One of her intentions was to show the friendship in relationships, as opposed to people pairing up romantically. With Isabella, she finds herself in a community of people who become friends. Kelly adds, ‘You can go on adventures with people. You can learn to trust people with your life, and people of all different ages, and in this case, different religious backgrounds, different nationalities, and that is enough to keep a story going.’ In the book, there is particular attention on the character Willem in Isabella’s adventures, and the audience is left to interpret this on their own accord. Kelly says, ‘The sequel, which is called The Sultan’s Eyes, I went full Pride and Prejudice on purpose,’ while still trying to subvert the romance narrative in different ways.
The inspiration for the protagonist, Isabella is further discussed in the context of the English Civil War. Kelly says, ‘One of the things around that time in history, is that in Britain, in Europe there was these incredibly educated, intelligent, creative, productive woman, many in networks, so they were writing to one another.’ They may have been artists, musicians, philosophers, or mathematicians. Kelly was inspired by this generation of women. ‘They were out there doing things. Many of them were acknowledged in their time.’
Isabella’s adventures are a highlight of the novel, and Kelly explains how not all of them were inspired by real events. She discusses that the time when Isabella dresses as a boy to travel from Venice with Willem is based on reality because women often needed to travel this way for their safety. Another adventure centred around a history of events is book and pamphlet smuggling with information travelling across Europe. Publishers of that time were very aware of ‘Galileo and his persecution for daring to suggest that all the planets did not revolve around the sun.’ Kelly adds, ‘We’re talking about people who were just asking questions about how the world works and getting into trouble for it,’ and the consequences differed from one place to the next.
When reflecting on the audience Kelly says, the historical novel, Act of Faith is ‘about books for people who love books.’ She says, ‘I was thinking about myself as a sort of bookish young woman’ and how books are ‘precious things that we can hold close to our hearts,’ regardless of your age. It was about finding, ‘A perspective on…the history of books as a craft, the history of thought and writing, and women’s place in that history.’ From Isabella’s perspective:
I loved the impression the blocks and type made on the skin of the paper; the shapes and form and meaning that made a book; the feel of the pages in my hand, and the impact of the words on my mind.
Kelly has also previously taught writing in universities which she loved. She now runs her own workshops and retreats. For Kelly, thinking about writing and explaining why something is the way it is when crafting a narrative while also finding a way to articulate it, teaches her more about writing. She adds, ‘I am not sure [why] but it’s always a joy. I absolutely adore it.’
Kelly’s next book is co-written with Sharmini Kumar titled Miss Caroline Bingley: Private Detective. It is the first time Kelly has collaborated with someone else on a novel. Miss Caroline Bingley ‘is one of Jane Austen’s great characters in Pride and Prejudice left at the end disappointed…So, Sharmini and I just wondered…she’d make a great private detective.’ Kelly adds, ‘She’s got a brilliant brain, and she’s curious…plummeting around London in a carriage doing most unbecoming activities for young ladies, trying to preserve their reputation and solve murders at the same time.’ We look forward to reading about another creative protagonist who takes on courageous journeys. Young readers can be inspired by the adventures in Kelly’s book, sparking enthusiasm to discover where one may want to go in this world.
Kelly Gardiner writes historical fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction for all ages. Her latest series is The Firewatcher Chronicles and her other books include 1917, shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Young People’s History Prize; Act of Faith and The Sultan’s Eyes, both shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards; and the Swashbuckler pirate trilogy.Goddess, a novel based on the life of the queer, sword-fighting, cross-dressing opera star, Mademoiselle de Maupin, is being adapted for the screen. Her Austen-inspired crime novel, Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Detective, co-authored with Sharmini Kumar, will be out early 2025.
Kelly taught creative writing for many years and is now writing full-time. She is President of Sisters in Crime Australia and Deputy Chair of the Australian Society of Authors.