Charlotte Wood

Well, it wouldn't be hard to be a more celebratory book than The Natural Way of Things.

But in one sense, it was a joy to write because

Mainly because it wasn't the natural way of things, because it was really a very hard thing to write and living in a very frightening kind of world in my head for three years.

So this was, you know, living in a house by the beach for three years.

I would start by talking about the people.

The people of this book are three women aged in their 70s and their names are Jude, Wendy and Adele.

And they have come together for sort of the long, hot weekend just before Christmas to clean out the beach house of their recently deceased and very, very beloved friend, Sylvie.

So they're not there for a holiday, as Jude keeps telling everybody.

They're there to work and clean out this house.

They've been friends for around about 40 years.

There's no frail old ladies in this book.

They're sort of feminist...

firebrands of their generation and they have been very powerful actually in their working lives.

And it's sort of only just dawning on at least two of them that the world doesn't think they're powerful anymore even though they feel exactly the same.

So Jude was a very famous restaurateur.

She ran the city's finest restaurants for decades.

Wendy is a public intellectual whose books on feminism and politics and power are still set on university lists around the world.

And Adele is a very fine stage actress whose career never quite reached the heights that her talent sort of promised her that she would have.

I think it's Adele who says, your 30s was the time you fell most dangerously in love.

Not with men, but with your friends.