Cassie McCullough

It's called The Mother Fault.

And the government has tracking chips inserted into the hands of its citizens in that one, Kate.

Andrew Pipos is a former journalist with a doctorate in creative writing.

He now teaches at the University of Technology in Sydney and grew up in a Greek-Australian family that had long-owned cafes.

Now, these, of course, are very close to my heart and no doubt to yours as well, the staple of country towns and suburbia right through to the centre of our cities.

They're the place where, Kate, you can grab a hamburger, maybe a steak sandwich with a few chips, milkshake, that kind of thing.

And his family, Andrew Pipos' family, interesting he brings up the Greek mythology there.

They're from Ithaca, which of course is the home of the king of Ithaca, Odysseus.

Yeah, well, there's a couple of different timeframes working in this novel.

And maybe you could explain that.

I've got a confession to make.

I was distracted this weekend by the American elections and I didn't finish reading this book.

But one of the things I was sketching out in my brain was how...

these two, at least two time frames fitted into the narrative.

So can you do a bit of the structure for me?

Yeah, he's down on his luck.

I mean, things have gone wrong, clearly.

So there's a few problems that the characters have to solve.

Clearly we need to find out what's happened to Lucky and why this amazing chain of franchised cafes called Lucky's failed.

We need to figure out why Emily's father...