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Books have been my lodestone since, despairing of my mother’s one-chapter-read-out-loud-a-night rule, I brazenly asserted independence and read ahead, finishing The Little House on the Prairie in one glorious gulp. After that liberating moment, I have been a person whose nose is always in a book. Books have been my window into other people’s worlds. I love seeing life from different perspectives, seeing how others make choices. I read not only for comfort but also because I relish being pushed to think differently, feel differently.
I have been writing for a long time but realized only recently that I could write what I know. I had thought my world, the international business community, was not worthy of exposition. But I have come to believe it is as ideal a setting for a novel as a small American town, Tudor England, or a dystopian future. Indeed the world I live in is curious, even to me, an insider.
Several characters have been living out their lives in the pages of my writing, but over the last few years I have brought Charles, the protagonist of Man in Armour, to the fore. I wondered whether it was possible these days to write a novel sympathetic to the much-maligned privileged-white-man?
I hope Man in Armour provides readers with a glimpse into my world. A world where the path to profit inexorably reshapes everyone, often to the point where even the most resilient don’t recognize themselves.
Siobhan McKenna is chairman or director of several companies including Foxtel, Nova Entertainment and Woolworths. During her career she has worked in telecommunications, oil and gas, healthcare and government. She was a commissioner of the Australian Productivity Commission, a chairman of NBNCo and a partner of McKinsey & Company. She was born in Canberra and now lives in Melbourne with her husband and three teenage sons. Man in Armour is her first novel.
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