Last year, after reviewing The Love School by Elizabeth Knox - and eagerly reading most of her previous books while I was at it - I got the chance to interview her about the sequel to her most successful book, The Vintner's Luck. Her story about a homosexual angel who falls in love with a French winemaker gained so much international acclaim that New Zealand director Niki Caro turned it into a film. The premiere at the Toronto Film Festival was a few weeks away when I went to Knox's house for the interview.
As it turned out, the film got panned by critics and created an upsetting local controversy in New Zealand. But Knox was friendly and optimistic when I met her, and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to her. We did the interview in her kitchen over coffee, while her three cats took turns sitting on my notebook.
* * *
TEN YEARS after its publication the last pages of The Vintner’s Luck can still break your heart. Sobran Jodeau has died, the years have passed and the fallen angel Xas wanders the Earth, hiding the scars where his wings used to be and grieving for his lost love. It feels satisfying and complete but for Elizabeth Knox the story is just getting started.“I was always going to write a sequel,” she told me. “But I didn’t get around to it for years, because Vintner was a success and I got stage fright.”
‘A success’ was putting it mildly. There on the table was a colour proof of a new paperback cover promoting Niki Caro’s film adaptation. Earlier, Knox had turned the sheets over to show me publicity stills of Jérémie Renier and Keisha Castle-Hughes, and even one of herself in a cameo appearance on location in the idyllic countryside of Burgundy, France.
