Eleanor Kirk on Very Impressive for Your Age

Allen & Unwin
Sep 29
4 min read

Eleanor Kirk answers our questions about talent, ambition and her debut novel, Very Impressive for Your Age.

Very Impressive for Your Age by Eleanor Kirk

A&U: Could you tell us a little about Very Impressive for Your Age?

EK: On the surface, VIFYA is a book about an opera singer who loses her voice and then is forced to return to her hometown in Sydney while she waits for its return. But underneath that, it’s also a feminine rage against the capitalist machine, a scathing critique of individualism, a reminder that everyone around you has their own shit going on, and an impassioned plea to for readers to actually enjoy living their lives rather than just blindly chugging through them. It’s also about how your ambition dies when you hit your late twenties, and you lose all that hustle energy you had in earlier adulthood and start craving a more stable life. And starting all over again when it feels way too late to be starting all over again. And also how some people never get over their ex.

In a nutshell: it’s Saturn’s return.

AU: What inspired you to write this novel?

EK: Much disillusionment about working in the arts, as well as a general morbid fascination with the world of opera, courtesy of a couple of friends of mine who work in that space. During Covid, I had a lot of conversations with one such friend about how much of our sense of self we placed in our jobs (which were hanging in limbo during lockdown), and how we’d each started questioning whether the constant insecurity (both financially and emotionally!) of a job in the arts was worth it. I worked in TV and she worked in music, but our experiences were surprisingly similar. So I wrote this for both of us, and anyone else who is unfortunate enough to relate.

A&U: Evelyn’s therapist believes that the danger in doing what you love is that you lose what brings you joy. Do you believe this to be true?

EK: Yeah I think there’s a real risk of that, for the exact reasons Rebekah talks about at the beginning of Part 2. If you’ve seen the Matildas documentary on Disney Plus (huge Tillies fan here, quiet disclaimer), you’ll know that Caitlin Foord quit football for a bit because she was getting too stressed and in her head, and it took her a while to remember why she’d loved the sport in the first place. And because I’m basically a Matilda myself, I get exactly where she’s coming from – sometimes when I start to see writing as this massive chore, like when I’m doing it for work, I can forget that I ever found it fun. Since recognising that (which, honestly, writing this book helped me to do), I’ve started forcing

myself to hit pause, and only come back to it when I feel keen again. My new hot take is that you shouldn’t actually do what you love, despite what your careers guidance counsellor might say – you should do something totally different, which enables you to do what you love in your spare time. That way you can always remember that you are choosing to do it, not being forced to for work, and it can remain a joyful hobby.

A&U: Your book explores the downside of being a gifted child – do you think it’s better just to be ordinary?

EK: Absolutely. Mostly because 99% of the kids who get called gifted actually aren’t. I mean, occasionally you get an actual child genius, but most of the time you just have kids who got lucky during a test or audition or scholarship interview early on in their life, and who spend the next decade believing they’re special only to have a rude awakening upon entering the real world. And if that sounds like it’s from personal experience, no it doesn’t! Shut up! But yes, being ordinary is soooo underrated, and in fact we should all strive for happiness in mediocrity. It’s hands down the best way to live.

A&U: What do you hope readers take away from reading Very Impressive for Your Age?

EK: A reassurance that it’s never too late to start again, and that you’re not alone if you happen to feel like you’ve gone too far down one path and are now realising it’s not the right one for you. Perhaps some gentle discouragement from being too career-focused or ambitious, because you will almost certainly burn out. Permission to burn out, but then get back up again. A reminder to look for moments of Joy. A reminder that even when it feels like everyone is watching and judging you, they aren’t really. Or, as the old adage goes: those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.