Melina Marchetta on her new novel The Place on Dalhousie

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Melina Marchetta on her new novel The Place on Dalhousie

By Melanie Kembrey

At the heart of Melina Marchetta's new novel is a house - the eponymous place on Dalhousie Street in Haberfield in Sydney's inner west.

It's not just bricks and mortar. The house is a space that unites and divides Marchetta's characters, the fulcrum of narrative complication and resolution.

Melina Marchetta is the author of nine novels. Her latest is The Place on Dalhousie.

Melina Marchetta is the author of nine novels. Her latest is The Place on Dalhousie.Credit: Wolter Peeters

The Looking for Alibrandi author based the property on her previous home in Balmain, the former owner of which, a police officer, had painstakingly rebuilt, one weekend at a time, over many years.

"The idea that someone builds something themselves, who isn't a builder, that fascinated me. I was used to that from the migrant experience, of people doing things themselves," Marchetta says.

Melina Marchetta's new novel emerged out of two separate short stories.

Melina Marchetta's new novel emerged out of two separate short stories.

"If I have to close my eyes, I don’t think [the Dalhousie home] looks very different to the place I lived in. Sometimes I don’t think I have the imagination to be able to go into a room and decorate it on my end. But sometimes that was hard because I couldn’t quite put on paper what I was seeing in regard to that Balmain house."

Marchetta can pin many of her nine books - which have traversed genres including crime fiction, young adult fiction and fantasy - to the house in which she wrote them. She wrote Looking for Alibrandi in her bedroom in her parents' home, Saving Francesca in a place in Leichhardt, On the Jellicoe Road in Lilyfield.

"I’ve lived in a few places. I think it is because I have always been searching for where I belong," Marchetta says.

In The Place on Dalhousie, Seb Cennaro has passionately laboured over his Haberfield property for years, transforming it slowly with careful craftsmanship.

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After Seb's death, his daughter Rosie and her young son Toto share the home with Seb's second wife, Martha. It's an uneasy relationship. Who owns the house? Should they sell?

I’ve lived in a few places. I think it is because I have always been searching for where I belong.

Marchetta has since moved from the Balmain home to a larger property in Russell Lea, which offers plenty of room for her adopted daughter Bianca, 7, to play. The author has endured a tumultuous few years, but good news came at the end of 2018 when Bianca's adoption was formalised.

Bianca was two when she started living with Marchetta, and it took a stressful four years, involving court proceedings, for the contested adoption to be approved.

"I felt like I drove myself a bit crazy by the end. The logical side of you says of course it will be fine, but the logical side of you isn’t there at three in the morning."

Marchetta isn't sure whether she will use the painful experience in her fiction, but two minor characters in The Place on Dalhousie - couple Julie and Alana - are in the midst of adoption proceedings.

The broad themes of community, generational change, relationships and Sydney's inner west, which run across Marchetta's oeuvre, continue in her latest work. There's an eccentric mothers' group, a no-nonsense Italian grandmother, an empowering netball team, a handful of love stories, and all hands on deck to help look after baby Toto.

The Place on Dalhousie emerged out of two separate short stories, although the character of the loveable, if lost, Jimmy, the father of Rosie's son Toto, appears in two of Marchetta's other books.

The story is set in 2011, before the NSW government's WestConnex motorway project started, the construction of which has seen homes compulsorily acquired in what the local Haberfield association has called "the biggest threat to this community in a generation".

"It wasn't originally set in Haberfield. I just felt in the end that Haberfield still has that incredible Italian feel to it. That main street hasn’t been refurbished, which we love. You do end up in the little hole-in-the-wall bakery, the IGA is still very Italian," Marchetta says.

Now the novelist is set to turn her attention to creating a chapter-book series, inspired by her desire to enthuse Bianca, a "reluctant reader", about books. She has seven books planned with the heroine, the cheeky Zola, who lives with her mum and grandparents. Marchetta says reading to her daughter has revealed to her the lack of diversity in chapter books, and she hopes to show families of different kinds - gay and lesbian, multi-generational, single parent - in her series.

"It's not about ticking boxes. I don’t want to fill in a hole, I think that’s such an arrogance. I just think that there should be a lot more diversity in chapter books for kids who are just starting to read independently."

The Place on Dalhousie is published by Viking at $32.99. Melina Marchetta is a guest of the Sydney Writers' Festival (April 29-May 5).

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