Cassie McCullough

I mean, what did you make of this changing culture at Bluebird Beach, Stuart?

But in a way, it's like there's, well, I'm wondering if it's a novel that as well as being about all these characters, and there's a lot of characters in this book.

Yeah, a lot of characters.

Well, it becomes a bit of a saga and almost melodramatic as it gets on and there's more and more action happening.

But given that we've got surfing and then we've got Gordon's son, Dan, who's also obsessed with cricket, it's like he's prodding away at the old images of a certain sense of Australia and Australian-ness.

I mean, would you read this as a social critique?

There were certainly things that made me laugh.

And at the very beginning, we're told that he loves the lodge and is invested in it.

But then the whole novel is spent trying to undo that and trying to work out if he does have

a point to his life, living in this place that is remembered as a site of golden summers, which we see weren't golden at all.

But one other thing I'm curious about, Stuart, is that this is a novel that's set by the beach, but how much is it actually about the surf?

Although I thought it was interesting that we've got this group at the centre of it, Gordon and his mates, and they're also looking back at the men who are older than them, their own parents' generations, and they say that those older guys had looked at Bluebird Beach and seen disorder in need of command, whereas Gordon saw only threat and loss and the last-ditch possibility of salvage.

So what they're remembering and what they think they're losing...

is actually quite different.

And for me, that was what made this book interesting.

So Cassie, you had some hesitations, partly about the style and what it was giving you.

So I'm wondering if Stuart and Johan, you could tell us what it was for you as a reading experience.

Cassie, I've long been fascinated by memory and how we make sense of the past.

And so one of the things I really enjoyed about this book was the way that memory was contested and reinterpreted over and over again in this book.

So it wasn't just about nostalgia.