Anne Brisden

Yeah.

Well, he's referring to Castle Hill and he's referring to the, I guess, his anguish at the verge of the natural bush being taken over by the suburb.

But his writing is just wonderful.

The novel starts with Paul as an older than middle-aged single man.

He's living with and caring for his kind but somewhat emotionally remote ageing father in the old family home.

I was intrigued by the title of the book, The Blessed Reader, and being brought up as a country town Catholic, I could relate to the setting that he had.

So obviously I had to look up this saint.

And yeah, surprised to find, or not surprised, but it intrigued me to find that she's apparently the patron saint of hopeless causes and impossible circumstances because of her own difficult and disappointing life.

Well, maybe this is like the female version.

But I was surprised to know that.

And I thought, you know, I felt actually a bit bereft that my Catholic nuns hadn't, you know, really let me know about the Blessed Reader.

Yes.

And the Blessed Rita is very important to Paul, the main character, because his remaining friend from his primary school right through life days, who's still in the town with him, gave him a medallion to the Blessed Rita.

And there's another connection too with his relationship with adult women later on.

His mother, who was still chafing at the bit right through her early days with the life in this northern Netherlands area, decides that she's going to run off with this strange, not strange, but intriguing Russian woman.

pilot who has escaped Russia by flying a crop dusting plane out of Russia and crash landing on their farm.

Yes, and crashed.

Yes, so they treat him until he's well and then he gets on quite well with the family and very well with Paul's mother and Paul's mother runs off with him and never returns.

Yes.

No, he isn't at all.