Cassie McCullagh

The names, as a Victorianist, I mean, Helen, Estella, instantly I'm thinking of Dickens, and Gwendolyn, like Gwendolyn Fairfax from The Importance of Being Earnest, I think.

What's that about?

What are those names about?

I actually thought Gwendolyn Daniel Deronda.

So is Tiffany Stow deliberately pointing us towards this literary period?

I'm not sure that she is because there's another whole argument in there about the names.

And one of the nice things about this novel is this sense that there is a whole lot of references to Chinese literature, mythology, Indonesian stories.

And so the name Estella was at first the father didn't like this name because it sounds like another word.

You know, or a reference to death or, you know, something that was a misfortune.

But that there would be references to a whole other canon of literature that's part of this rather than an Anglo one.

And here on the bookshelf, we will be able to uncover some of those references, I think, because Tiffany Tsao, while she was born in America, lived in Singapore and Indonesia as a child.

She was educated at the University of California, Berkeley.

She is now affiliated with University of Technology in Sydney.

And so she's going to do a bookshelf that may be a discussion with us in the next couple of weeks here on the show.

So what do you think, Clare Monigal?

So put on your goggles and pick up Tiffany Sells' Under Your Wing, published by Viking Penguin.

Well, we've really passed the time very quickly here.

Almost time to go.

But before we say a final farewell to you both, let's find out what's on your to-be-read list.

Let's start with you, Helen.