Aoife Clifford

But then so some people outside are starting to kill animals because it is so confronting for them.

And what's also confronting is what the animals start to tell us.

And that's one of the kind of amazing parts of the book, I think.

It's really fantastic.

So, for example, just to give the specific sort of example you were just talking about there, like there's an absolutely harrowing scene, I think, where Jean is having to deal with the mice that have just been raised in the park to feed the reptiles.

There's this amazing description of the mice that are sort of screaming death with a yellow gas type smell.

And so that's part of the beauty of this book is that

that animal language is so complicated.

It's not just what we would think in the sounds.

It's the way their fur moves, the way their body moves, their smells.

So it's an amazingly rich world that she builds for you that you totally believe, I think.

Absolutely.

So then perhaps moving on specifically to Sue the dingo, who kind of becomes Jean's partner in that they end up having to journey with each other.

And so their relationship, and it is, and this is where Jean is the perfect character to take you through it, because she is a relentlessly kind of don't let life go.

put you down but keep on going no matter what positive sort of person.

She is the person that allows you to find humour in it, sort of the joy of it.

It's presented as a really complicated gift.

No, well, in fact, it's more complicated in that she really only talks in sort of, I don't know how you found it, Kate, but almost these kind of in poetry sort of haikus.

So it's kind of quite opaque.

And so they're almost like little cryptic crosswords that you're trying to work out what Sue's saying.