“Grief is not a linear process”. A simple phrase commonly used to package the aftermath of death and its related emotions. Yet, it fails to capture the intensity, chaos and turmoil of grief and its effect on internal emotions and interpersonal relationships. George Kemp disrupts this simplification through his debut novel, ‘Soft Serve’.

The novel revolves around the death of Taz - a son to Pat, and a best friend to Jacob, Ethan and Fern. Using third-person shifting narration, Kemp gives voice not only to the wide array of emotions under the umbrella of grief but also to its related coping mechanisms. Through the banal setting of a rural Australian McDonald’s, Kemp captures how the simplicity of life juxtaposes the overwhelm of grief. However, the clever use of the pathetic fallacy, as the bushfires intensify throughout the novel, reveals an inability to suppress the effects of internal emotions on how one presents themselves in the external world.

When talking to George, we delved into the layers of grief as an emotion and how it presents itself in people, especially temporally. We also discussed how craft choices for the novel were chosen to represent grief accurately.

We see that Taz’s death affects everyone close to him internally, yet externally, the world seems to be in motion. What do you think about this notion of grief as internally felt but not seen by everyone, and do you think it's something inevitable or part of social conditioning?

Wow, what a great question. Yeah, I do think it's inevitable. I think that it is something that touches everybody. Some in their lives, from a pet rabbit to a mother or father - grief has so many different little ways that it pops up. And I find it to be kind of the longest process we have, but it's almost kind of so long that it's almost never-ending. You think it might be over or past it, and then suddenly you see someone overseas that looks like your friend from school who died, or you get an email from somebody that has the same name as somebody you love who passed away, and then suddenly you feel like you're almost like back to square one for that little period of time. Yes, it's inevitable. I think it's aimlessly fascinating. 

What's interesting about [grief] is it is hidden? Grief is almost like a secondary emotion, a bit like anger, right? When somebody's really, really angry. They're not angry just because they're angry. They are angry because they feel humiliated or embarrassed, or inadequate, or jealous, or those really specific emotions - anger is a sort of umbrella. 

Grief isn't really an emotion to me. It’s an umbrella concept. 

And those emotions peek through in different ways. For some people who are grieving, it comes through in how they clean the house. Or they lean really into work. Or they go on a 3-year trip and do the Camino Trail, or they burst into tears on the train because the doors close in front of them or whatever. I think that socially, we accept [grief], but we can only accept it as so much because we can't see what's going on inside everybody's mind.

There's this representation in this book of grief being a limbo between the present and the future. What made you represent grief in this way?

Yeah, the book plays with the present and future in a very deliberate way, with bits of it literally in past, present, and future tense. 

Part of that is exploring whether you can detach yourself from your past or your present enough to have the future you wish for.

So that's one of the reasons that tense is playing in that way. I think that it's linked to that thing that grief is kind of just a never-ending cycle, you know? 

Part of the process of grieving is that you feel sadness that this person is not around anymore. That you have these past memories that then mean more because that person isn't around to remember. You grieve the present tense of being able to send that person a text message and say how funny the thing that happened to me today is. And then you also grieve for the future. You grieve for that hope we always said we wanted: to go to Bali together, and we never did, or to be each other's bridesmaids at our weddings. So, I think that grief is enduring in different tenses.

Great answer! I thought it was interesting how you use third-person shifting narration to show the interiority of all these characters before and after Taz's death. What made you choose this for the book?

I think I was just being greedy. My background is in theatre, and so I am really interested in character. That's kind of where most of my ideas originally come from. This is my first book, so I get nervous about being tied to one perspective. And that you only get to, if you do [third person limited narration], you only get to experience other characters through that person's lens, right? And I wanted the reader to be able to kind of be inside the heads of all of those people individually. I think we learn so much about Taz from being in Fern's mind. There's something we learn about Ethan from Pat that Taz doesn't necessarily know. Or Fern doesn't necessarily know. Ethan doesn't necessarily know. I love exploring character in the depths of different characters. I think being able to do that through various POVs not only deepens the reader's understanding of these characters but also adds richness to the tapestry of all the other characters, allowing them to give their POV on that character.

That's such a good use of dramatic irony.

Yeah, I mean, I love that we know what is happening with Jacob and Ethan before Fern does. And if it was just Fern's POV, we couldn't explore that idea, you know? 

Yeah, for sure. Adding on to that. There is also a sense of the pathetic fallacy, with the bushfire reflecting the character's internal chaos. A part I also really loved was Pat's dream, where she uses her hands to stop her boat from sinking, but it's not working. What made you construct the setting to be reflective of the internal state in this way?

Yes, so bushfire is obviously this plot device, this tension driver, tension builder. Other than that, there's also this idea that I wanted it to be a little bit in the periphery. I wouldn't say that this is a climate fiction book, really. There are other books that do that so well; that is the focus. So I wanted to have it on the periphery because it feels like that's kind of how we experience it these days. We experience climate change as this thing that just keeps going on and on, and we see it on the news, and it's just over there until suddenly it's on your doorstep. And so, I kind of wanted to experience that through these young people’s viewpoints. And just this power and speed that everything can change in bushfires. You see it a little bit in the scene with Jacob when he's fishing, and the ember starts the grass on fire. That it just happens so quickly, and it's kind of the one thing in the book that causes him to act and not overthink something. 

I think this idea of lives feeling like nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing until BANG, suddenly something happens, and it changes their lives forever, mirrors that process of these little embers that even look quite beautiful in the air, suddenly hit the ground and just go whoosh. That can happen in our lives. Anything can happen in our lives that just suddenly goes whoosh, and our life goes from amazing to awful, or awful to amazing. That's an interesting way of exploring this generation's approach to building a future. It takes work to build, but it can also just disappear. We're seeing on the news every single night, not just with the environment, but with everything going on. And so I think that it's scary to build a life when you know that it can just disappear. It's hard to want to work towards something or want something when the world feels much like that at the moment.

Absolutely. There's this sense of animosity and connection, as two sides of the same coin, in grief that you mentioned in the story. Why do you think this conflict exists?

I think it's because everyone experiences it at a different time, at different paces. So while somebody is luxuriating in their grief and somebody is feeling it quite acutely, there's going to be tension there. And that tension is going to lead to either aggression, apathy, frustration, or people saying things they don't really mean. So there is this kind of animalistic quality to grief because it's the ultimate representation of fight or flight. People are protective of their grief in that way, I think, because it's a way of navigating through this evolutionary brain that we have that is saying survive at all costs, stay alive at all costs. And grief reminds us that that's not easy. Everyone just experiences it differently, and that's going to lead to animosity that will lead to incredible tenderness. And I think when those two things meet each other, that's interesting for drama. 

I listened to this amazing interview the other day with an amazing playwright called Jez Butterworth. He wrote a play called ‘Jerusalem’, which is amazing. His motto of writing everything is that “Everything has to mean two things. Everything has to be two things.” And grief like that. 

Grief is love and pain put together more than anything.

There's a sense of preservation and destruction associated with death. For example, when Pat tries to save all these artefacts related to Taz during the fires. What do you think preservation of someone looks like after death?

It's hard, isn't it? Because you obviously want to keep everything and never throw anything away of that person. But if you do that and then keep trying to live your life, I think all those things become too heavy. I think grief sort of, sadly, is the process of shedding. And that shedding occurs at different paces. So I think that Pat is going through that process. And obviously, what is happening during that day means that she has to go through it a little bit faster than she probably would. And it's impossible, right? It's like, how do you know what makes up a life? How do you know what to keep to remind yourself of that person? Like, what is the essence of that person? 

I think [Pat] kept that letter in her locker because it represents both the past and the future, maybe for Taz. It's like, I love you, thank you for everything, but I have to go. I have to go do this thing. I have to live my life. And there's probably nothing else that she has that represents the future in that way or represents the past that cleanly as well. So, that's something that she's keeping in her pocket all day, and we don't know about until the end. And there's something really lovely that, you know, spoiler alert, that's what that goes with her, this piece of paper - the most flammable thing in the world that can easily disappear in a fire.

George Kemp will be part of three events for the Sydney Writers’ Festival. On Thursday, the 21st of May, from 3-3:55 pm, he will be part of the panel event ‘Your Next Favourite Book’ alongside writers Rebecca Armitage, Tyree Barnette, Raaza Jamshed and Chloe Wilson. On Friday, the 22nd of May, from 8-9:30 pm, he will be a part of 'Queerstories' alongside Raewyn Connell, Victoria Falconer, Lee Lai, Steve MinOn and Sofi Oksanen. On Saturday, the 23rd May, from 2-2:55 pm, he will be part of the panel discussion 'Theatre Kids' alongside S. Shakthidharan, Zoe Terakes, hosted by Victoria Falconer. Hope to see you there!

Anagha Abhi (full: Anagha Abhilash Kumar) is a Bachelor of Arts student, majoring in Creative Writing. When she is not writing for Blitz, she edits for UNSWeetened. You will likely find her drenched in pink.