Carmel Bird explores faith, loss and the theft of an icon in her new work Child of the Twilight (February, Fourth Estate). Here she answers questions from National Library of Australia bookshop manager Candice Cappe.

The issue of art theft is important in Child of the Twilight, in particular the theft of a religious icon which resembles the infant Jesus—based on a real incident. How much of your work is inspired by real-life events?

When I heard about the disappearance of the statue from the Roman church I knew I had to write about it. I knew in my heart that this was something I wished to explore in a novel. There is a thread that runs through my work—an interest in, focus on, the  entrality of the child, which is of course also central to the Christian faith. This focus in my fiction sometimes leads to disappearing children (as in novel The Bluebird Café), and the fact that this was a stolen miracle-working statue of the infant Christ seemed fascinating to me. I perceived a metaphorical dimension to the disappearance. It came at a time when women appear to be having trouble conceiving, and are able to take advantage of medical procedures such as IVF, and I wished to explore some of the implications of such interventions. There were two real-life matters inspiring me—the statue and IVF. Bringing the two together was absorbing work. The statue is wooden, like the statue of Pinocchio, and stories of the making of children from substances other than human  material (flowers, snow) appealed to my imagination.

The themes of faith and loss are central throughout the book, almost asking readers to question the beliefs that we live by. Did you set out to pose the questions about myth and belief in this book and do you think faith becomes more important once we have experienced loss?

It sounds rather routine to say this, but the process is more or less: 1) the inspiration 2) the situation 3) the characters 4) the development of the plot. (more…)