Cassie McCullough

And it is just such a gorgeous, beautiful, profound novel.

So expertly and exquisitely put together, there's the language behind

It was so inventive and so interesting and so lyrical and musical.

It was hugely influential to me in terms of how I structured Rhubarb particularly and how I played around with language in that novel.

That book meant a lot to me and still does.

This is good to hear.

I'm heartened to hear that.

Well, I suppose the obvious one, especially as we move towards me working on Jasper Jones, it would be remiss of me not to mention my affection for To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, obviously.

It's a book I go back to almost annually, to be honest.

It's such a mainstay in how I think about literature, how I've assembled my own morality.

Um,

The extent to which I think books can be meaningful to our development because I read that book when I was a teenager and I consistently go back to it.

I continue as I mature to extract fresh wisdom out of it, I suppose, if that makes any sense.

It's so rich, that book, and so important.

And it's interesting for me that as I grow older as well, I identify with different characters more.

When I first read the book and Scout was my

main nexus point, my connector.

But as I get older, I feel much more closely aligned with Atticus, for example.

But that book has had an enormous impact on me, not just in terms of how I approach writing, but how I want to live and what kind of man I want to be.

It's as close to a perfect novel, I think, as has ever been written.