Cassie McCullagh

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, great to have you along, Fiona.

And also today, Lynne Malcolm.

Well, we didn't have to go far to find her.

She's a science broadcaster and presenter of All in the Mind here on RN.

Lynne, always a pleasure to have science and literature and you together on a bookshelf.

Fiona Lowe, 30 books.

Can you give us a sense of your range and style of writing?

Well, that's always an interesting theme, particularly when they're set in Australia.

But with the romance books that you've written, there's been a lot of talk about changing the structure of romance so that it departs from that traditional kind of girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy structure.

Well, in the New York Times, actually, I've been reading about it.

my question to you.

What's the point?

If you can't have that as a structure, why turn up?

That's what you're there for.

Yeah, that's what I thought myself.

Yeah, it is.

So the first half of the book, she keeps talking about her sister and it's not until this big kind of reveal that you realise that she's been talking about a chimpanzee and it's really heartbreaking.

Do you remember, Kate, when that book came out, you had a copy of it on your desk?

I got to interview the author.