Cassie McCullagh

Well, we meet him as a boy called Jude.

He's got a gentle mother, a bullying soldier dad in World War II who connects Snake.

We get his whole life spread out in front of us.

Florida by Lauren Groff is published by William Heinemann.

You're listening to The Bookshelf on ABC RN, online on ABC Listen.

I'm Kate Evans.

Cassie McCullough will be back a bit later.

And we're here today with writer Rowena Gonsalves, journalist Brett Evans, no relation, and with Michael Delaney.

Now, we've talked so far about a lot about American fiction and some Australian fiction.

Well, what about Irish fiction?

And last week, Peter Rose here on the bookshelf talked about his admiration for the late William Trevor, who died in 2016.

His last book is called, appropriately enough, Last Stories, and I see that Julian Barnes loved it.

But Michael Delaney, you told me before we came in that you did not.

Well, particularly, I guess, if you'd finished the Weidman collection, American Histories, the very first story in William Trevor's book, The Piano Teacher's Pupil, takes us almost into a Muriel Spark kind of character, a woman who's been disappointed in life in a way, living on her own, teaching piano.

And it felt a bit too genteel to me.

And then he twisted it.

So a boy comes in and plays the piano for her and he plays so beautifully that she's just transported and thrilled.

And she doesn't quite understand why he kept on leaving other piano teachers because she's so excited.

Then she realised he's a little light fingered and that things keep going missing around her house.

And she's so conflicted and she doesn't know what to do.