Jessica Rudd on political campaigns and 'dick-lit'

Jessica Rudd was 12-days-old when she moved to Hong Kong from Brisbane. The family accompanied her father, now the former Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd, as he underwent intensive language training before starting his career as Australian Ambassador to China. 

“I spent the first six months of my life screaming my lungs out in a little apartment above a restaurant in Hung Hom,” says Rudd, “But we all fell in love with Hong Kong.”

The 27-year-old writer is “stoked” to be returning to the city for an event at Hong Kong’s International Literary Festival, where she will discuss her debut novel Campaign Ruby.

It is a sassy tale about Notting Hill fashionista Ruby Stanhope. Having been fired from her investment banking job in London, Stanhope gets drunk on red wine and buys a one-way ticket to Melbourne.

Through a series of mishaps characteristic of Bridget Jones-esque tales, Stanhope ends up working on a political campaign trail during “the biggest election drama in recent history."

The novel caused a stir when it was published August 2010, revealing a spookily prescient plot that involves an Australian Prime Minister being ousted by an ambitious female colleague.

Rudd explains that the manuscript was finished long before the real-life coup that expelled her father and put Julia Gillard in office. 

“It was strange and shocking at the time,” Rudd says of watching her story unfold in reality, but she is delighted with the response to her novel so far.

“The first time [a reader] came up to me and said, ‘I really loved Ruby, she made me laugh,’ it was almost like having a conversation with someone who’d had the same dream as me.” 

Why should we call a genre ‘chick-lit,' and then criticize it, when books that are representative of men’s experience would never be called ‘dick-lit’? — Jessica Rudd

Campaign Ruby has been popular with critics too. Douglas Kerr, a professor of English at Hong Kong University, wrote in his review: “The pace is cracking, the dialogue is excellent and it's often funny. The novel may not offer a profound political analysis, but its heart is in the right place.”

The Canberra Times offered, “Rudd is a natural writer who has written a page-turning book that injects lots of fun and froth into the corridors of power.” 

Rudd admits that her narrative is an exaggerated version of reality. Having worked on her father's election drive in 2007, her aim was to capture and share what it is to be on a political campaign.

Although she would "do it again in a heartbeat," she describes the experience as “relentless."

“Life on a real campaign trail is like you wake up one morning and you don’t know where you are, you don’t know where you were yesterday and you’ve got no idea where you’re going to be tomorrow.

"I feel sorry for Americans, whose [work] starts from the primaries. At least in Australia, we have a fixed campaign period."

On the subject of chick-lit, Rudd bristles slightly. She is wary of the genre’s unshakable stigma. “I don’t think we should apologize for loving what we read. We need to be careful about being too critical of a genre that the public enjoys, particularly in an age where people are reading less.”

She points out the sexist nature of the label. “Why should we call a genre ‘chick-lit,' and then criticize it, when books that are particularly representative [of men’s experience] would never be called ‘dick-lit’?”

Rudd's debut novel.

“It’s like having permanent performance anxiety. Now I know there are people out there who either loved or loathed my first book and I don’t want to disappoint them, or prove them right.”

Jessica Rudd speaks at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival on March 16, 6:15 p.m., at the Central Library and March 18, 3:30 p.m., at the Press Room. For updated program details visit www.festival.org.hk.