Cassie McCullagh

It's set during the Tampa crisis in 2001, and it's on the shortlist for the Miles Franklin Award, which will be announced in just a week or so.

Congratulations.

Thank you very much.

What does that mean to you, being on the shortlist?

And she started with a Twitter account, even though she was already a published poet.

And then she published a series of essays.

Now, the book that we're talking about today is fiction.

It's called The Pisces.

But that angsty, rather arch confessional tone is in a way...

the voice of this novel, the Pisces, Margot Lannigan.

Although maybe it's ramped up a bit in terms of dysfunction.

So we both read this book.

What's going on in the life of Lucy, who's both the main character and the voice of the novel?

Which I can tell you find slightly maddening.

I also did, I mean, she's a bit of a mess, but I found her quite funny.

Now, you've slipped that bit of the plot in and we probably need to explain.

So when we meet her first, she's living in a sort of inland part of the US.

She dumps her longtime partner and then immediately regrets it and becomes wildly needy and does things like punches him and then asks the policeman who turns up whether the new girlfriend, because he quickly gets a new girlfriend, is prettier than her.

All of which I actually found quite funny.

But then she goes to California, to Venice Beach, to live in her sister's house, to look after her sister's dog.