Cassie McCullough

have this wonderful relationship we get to learn about, which is full of tussles and arguments over literature and music and a very rich cultural life that they've brought with them and they're trying to maintain in Sydney in the 1950s.

And she's a little arch perhaps to the other women on the floor because she runs Model Gowns, which is a long way from hosiery, I can tell you.

Yeah, what I absolutely love about this book is, and I love it when I see it in other things, it's like a slice has been made right down a section of society and you can look at all the components that are present in there.

So all these women come from different situations but they're all in the same place and they're all doing similar jobs and so what we're given is a fantastic piece

kind of vista of Australian society at that time.

Yes, that bit about Ed not telling his wife what he earned just grated on me.

That's one of the things that has stayed with me after finishing it.

What a rat.

And how common would that have been?

How standard it would have been.

It would have been.

Or with a wry smile as well.

What about you, Yumiko?

In fact, the voices that Madeline St.

John manages to articulate in this is one of the incredible strengths.

There are whole chapters and some of them are brief, but they are just one person talking and they are just the responses to a conversation that you don't even hear.

So by the time we're well into the book, she has established their characters so well.

We don't even need the description of the scene or what's going on.

It's

Just amazing use of spoken word.