Au revoir, Paris: Sarah Turnbull comes home Author, Francophile: Sarah Turnbull. Photo: Andrew Goldie It's an old lesson: there's always a snake in paradise. Sarah Turnbull learnt the lesson several times as she moved from paradise to paradise - from Paris to French Polynesia and back to Sydney's northern beaches, where her house is near a placid swimming hole that is actually called Paradise Beach. An idyllic life, right? But one of Turnbull's skills as a writer is to look beyond the surface of places that are the stuff of fantasy. "There are two things about writing that give me a high," she says. One is the visual aspect: I see something so clearly and want to capture it and I feel fabulous when I've conveyed it - it might be just a line. And when I feel I have captured some sort of truth in a very ordinary experience. The backgrounds might be exotic but the experiences are just human, ordinary life, and I find that quite exciting. Her 2002 memoir Almost French was the romantic story of an adventurous backpacking journalist who settled in Paris after falling in love with Frederic, a cravat-wearing French lawyer, and it was also the self-deprecatingly funny account of an easygoing Australian stumbling through the traditions and formalities of French society. Frederic was appalled that she wore tracksuit pants to the bakery; she couldn't comprehend the French custom of arriving 90 minutes late for dinner. In person as on the page, Turnbull is warm, down-to-earth, optimistic and unmistakably Australian, though her accent has wandered after a dozen years among French speakers. Her honesty and humour helped make Almost French an international success, with sales of almost 250,000 in Australia and another 200,000 in the US and Britain. That's a lot of readers waiting for her next book, which has taken more than a decade to appear - a clue to the challenges that have filled those years. All Good Things is everything I didn't think I would write. It's another memoir; it's more personal than the first," she says as we sit at her old dining table and gaze across Pittwater, eating goat-cheese salad for which Fred meticulously chose the chevre before going to work at his city law firm. For me, Almost French was very much a book about France and cultural differences. The publisher said, when they saw the sample chapter, 'This is interesting but if you want it to be published there has to be a personal story'. Every scene, every chapter, I was asking myself, 'What does this say about France or my own culture?', whereas All Good Things is a deeper personal story. It's the next phase of my life but it's a very different book. I fought it a lot. All Good Things follows Turnbull and her husband and their West Highland terrier, Maddie, to French Polynesia in 2003. Frederic was asked to open an office in Papeete, the administrative capital on Tahiti, for his French law firm and Turnbull went with her own agenda. As she writes, "Book and baby: I'd never dared speak them but my aims for the next two years were clear in my mind before we moved." Living on the island of Moorea in a beachfront house that faced across the lagoon to Tahiti, Turnbull began her mornings by swimming in luminous, 28-degree water that spread around her like "a silvery skirt," marvelling at the clownfish, rays, schools of tiny fish and other underwater miracles. She felt exhilarated and free of "a weight I can't name." Yet after swimming for years in Paris pools, she found herself carving a regular lane across the empty lagoon and set herself a strict rule: "No lingering in the lagoon." As the sun set each evening, she and Fred took their wineglasses down to the beach at the bottom of their garden, "and we'd sit there watching the colours on Tahiti with our toes in the water." Yes, it was beautiful but Turnbull says, "There was a long stretch of day between the swim and the drink. It's funny, when you're given this fabulous freedom you realise you need boundaries and structure. Every day for months she sat trying to work on the novel she had begun in France based on the 19th-century artists who lived and painted on the rugged coast of Brittany. But for all her research and effort she couldn't seem to bring them alive. Turnbull has an artist's visual sense, which she says has sharpened since living with Fred, who is a fine amateur painter but is colour-blind and asks her to describe colours for him. Despite his urging to think of herself as a tube of wasabi and squeeze until something came out, she eventually put the novel aside. Turnbull had hoped the lush, fertile environment of her new home would fire her own creativity, but she realised that being on an isolated island intensified her feeling of imaginative and physical barrenness. In Paris she and Fred had infertility treatment and, as she approached 40, her unfulfilled longing for a baby did not go away. People say you come face to face with yourself on an island. If there had been an element of escape in our move, it hit home that there's no running away," she says. Trying to pull herself together, she saw one of Tahiti's psychotherapists, who are kept busy with bored expats and locals suffering from a form of depression called fiu, thought to be brought on by living on remote, sea-circled islands. Dr M broke through Turnbull's attempted stoicism with his simple words, "It's not a crime to hope, you know." In the interests of suspense, it would be fair to leave the story there. But the book's title hints that all good things come to those who wait. And Turnbull's home is scattered with toy trucks and a handwritten sign that warns, "Do not touch the Lego" - evidence of the seven-year-old boy who lives here. Oliver was born after his parents decided to give IVF one more go in Sydney, where advanced infertility research and family support bolstered their hope. It was a stressful time and with the thrilling news that Turnbull was pregnant came an outpouring of suppressed grief. Relieved of his support role, Fred silently sank into a chair with his head in his hands and later took out his watercolours to paint the radiance of the sunset. It is one of the most moving scenes in the book. Having a baby on an island brought its own dramas - including a terrible accident - and about a year after Oliver's birth the couple moved again, keen for a return to playgrounds, footpaths and old friends as well as libraries, art galleries and cinemas. Chasing an intruder from the house armed with a didgeridoo helped Turnbull's resolve; break-ins and assaults were becoming too common. Again it was a job offer for Fred that brought them to Sydney five years ago, and when the job evaporated they made the bold decision to travel around Australia in a caravan. Again Turnbull tried to write a book, about those nine months rediscovering her country, but her heart wasn't in the kind of superficial travel stories she felt she could tell. She has, all the same, interesting insights into Australia's self-contained isolation that comes from being a big island. Finally, with Fred's encouragement, she knew what she had to write. "I know it sounds ironic but it doesn't come completely naturally to me to write about myself," she says. Also I felt strongly that when it came to the personal thread of wanting a child, I was very mindful that we were a success story and I thought it would be insulting to other people if I brushed over what had been a really painful part of life. I think if you write from the heart and you write truthfully then you have more of a chance that it will resonate with people. Turnbull is insistent, however, that All Good Things is more than an IVF story. Her notebooks from Moorea were full of images of clouds and she lyrically describes the changing weather and landscapes. She touches on colonial history, which left its scars on the Polynesians and created the image of a south Pacific paradise in the writing of James Michener and the paintings of Paul Gauguin. She explains her preference for the artworks of Matisse, who snorkelled in wooden goggles off Fakarava atoll, where Turnbull did her most exciting scuba diving. He was unable to translate the underwater beauty into art until 15 years later when he lay ill in bed and created his famous tissue-paper cut-outs, which captured the lagoon's light and fluidity. She writes about her friendships with expats and Polynesians, including the housekeeper Nelly, who redecorated their "sad" house with colour. Among the souvenirs that blend into their Sydney house is a vivid red and white tifaifai - a bedcover intricately appliqued by Polynesian seamstresses for five months. The family is now its own contented hybrid of all the cultures that have flowed through their lives. Beloved Maddie died last year. On his wife's advice, Fred has learnt to be punctual, though he still has not mastered the barbecue. Oliver has an Australian accent and is in love with his new home. Turnbull likes the confidence of Australian children but favours stricter French attitudes to child-raising, especially in restaurants. And, despite living in a beachside paradise, she has taken up jogging. What about those unmissable morning swims? "No, it's too cold," she says. It's freezing! All Good Things is published by HarperCollins, $23.99. Sarah Turnbull will be a guest at the Sydney Writers' Festival, May 20-26.