Anne Brisden

It's very...

very disciplined of Waringa to have actually created the main character who is kind of boring and lost and you know a middle-aged man who doesn't know what's ahead of life other than you know the remaining parent who he's now looking after and you can see the writing on the wall there because he's got an ulcerated or he's got an infected ulcer on his leg and has to go to hospital and his life's dismal there's not a lot going for it and yet

Yeah, you want to follow this man to see where it's going.

He actually sells.

He converts the traditional family farm shed that's been there forever, which it's actually a mill shed.

He converts it into his operating business and he sells war memorabilia.

And he's doing it quite successfully, apparently, although he doesn't seem to have much money.

But he has people coming from all over Europe because he has such a fine eye for the collection of war memorabilia.

And I think it's a really interesting portrayal of what he's going through, that idea of trying to cling on to something that's not there in the way I have interpreted the reading, which is this missing mother that he's never seen again and has devastated him because she left.

The other thing that strikes me about this is his job, this is what he does.

He gets in his car and he travels around sourcing war memorabilia.

I really like the idea that he's got in the book that Paul can't go too far away from his hometown, even though he finds it dull and boring and he wonders where he's going.

If he goes too far away, he gets physically homesick.

physically.

So he'll actually vomit.

I struggled to... I guess I was struggling to try and find something that was a bit more positive.

I thought, Wieringa can't be saying this about men right through the entire book.

And it's like his view on the characters in the book, the male characters, Paul and his friend.

It does.

It gets more and more bleak as it goes through.