Gee, 57, turns to me: "I don't see Bryce as someone who lies.
Listening to the conversation is his second wife and former publicist, Christine Gee. And sometimes it's very close to being a lie." Sometimes it's absurd, sometimes it's ridiculous, often it's laughable. He says he doesn't mean to mislead, exactly. But as it turns out, Courtenay admits freely to a tendency to tinker with the truth. Have you fudged facts? There is no nice way of asking that. But as he wraps me in his arms, I am uncomfortably aware that there are some strange inconsistencies in his life story. As a public speaker, he is so inspirational that he has been known to move even himself to tears. A small man with a big personality, he is a Member of the Order of Australia, an Australia Day ambassador and both sponsor and presenter of the annual Australian Hero Award. Credit: Fiona Lee QuimbyĬourtenay is not only this country's most popular purveyor of fiction - a more or less permanent fixture on our best-seller lists - but one of our best-loved citizens. The storyteller … Courtenay at a book signing in Sydney in 2004. "May I have a hug?" he asks when I arrive at his comfortable house in a leafy inner suburb of Canberra. His cheeks are pink, his mood is buoyant. His 21st book is coming along nicely and Courtenay looks as healthy and spry as any 78-year-old has a right to look. He prefers to take his chances without them. Post-operative chemotherapy and radiation therapy were recommended, he says, but he was told they would only slightly improve his prognosis and he figured the side effects would play havoc with his writing schedule. Since recovering from surgery to remove the tumours, he has been hard at work on his latest sprawling epic, putting in 12-hour shifts at his desk and tapping out thousands of words a day. As he points out, "Stage four is it." But the author of such blockbusters as Tandia and The Potato Factory sees little sense in wasting time worrying about his future, or lack of it. It is more than a year since Australia's top-selling novelist was diagnosed with stage three stomach cancer. "This might be the last interview ever," he says, with what can only be described as a devil-may-care laugh. Credit: Tim Bauerīryce Courtenay is in remarkably good spirits for a person in his predicament.
Bryce Courtenay with his second wife and former publicist, Christine Gee.
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