Cassie McCullough

My favourite book, hands down.

I would credit that one with kind of inspiring me to have a go at writing myself.

I think I've read it about five times.

And, yeah, it's still amazing.

Yeah, it is.

I love rereading.

It's my favorite kind of reading.

You know, I read a lot and my kind of metric for, you know, whether I loved a book or not is will I reread this?

And when I first read Carpentaria, I was not a writer.

I just really loved the story.

And

rereading it as a writer, you see a lot more.

You can kind of understand what's going on.

You can demystify some of the magic and try and learn from a master and hopefully try and apply some of those techniques to your own writing.

So Margaret Lightning is the, you know, at the time we meet her, she's young but she becomes the matriarch of the family and later on she's fairly instrumental in some, you know, the kind of main, the big events that happen in later chapters in another form.

You mentioned that there was a, you know, that's quite idyllic and nostalgic in the campgrounds and I definitely agree with that.

I thought that as the book went on it,

got a lot more sad and harrowing and, you know, I think in that respect it's a bit of a tragedy, you know, kind of story.

I really love that it's a saga because with a saga you can show these transgenerational voyages of trauma and strength and healing and all those things that come down the line and are passed through parenting or not parenting, you know, as it may be sometimes.

And I thought that this book did that really well.