Cassie McCullough

And on and on it goes with these sort of little couples of words, which, you know, poetic, of course, but rich, a little too rich for me.

They love it, do they?

So compare it with other translations.

I mean, have others followed this as closely as she has?

And just for listeners, there is a version available of him reading it, which is just unbelievably beautiful.

Isn't it fantastic?

Incredible.

It's just English as you've never heard it before.

And, of course, he was so conflicted about doing that translation as well with his Irish origins.

If a story survives for a thousand years, it's got to have some, you know... Legs.

...ripping yarn element to it.

That's right.

If they're turned into corpse portions...

And now on the bookshelf, we're moving away from epic heroes to an apparently ordinary family in Middle America in 1981 with Una Mannion's book, A Crooked Tree.

Now, Kate and Petronella, you've read this one, and I believe it begins with a car ride.

Wow.

That is a fantastic start to a book.

Petronella, what else can you tell us about what happens next?

A symbol of domesticity perhaps.

But look, my mind is still snagged back at that kid being dumped out of the car and left behind because it actually reminds me of this very early Jane Campion short film called Peel and it's about a family returning from a day out and one of the kids is tossing orange peel out the window and that drives the father crazy.