Charlotte Wood

You know, they miss her terribly.

So Wendy is this sort of brainiac, I suppose, and she lives for her work and very...

She drives Adele crazy because Adele's very fit and looks beautiful and is very conscious of beauty and of her body.

And Wendy drives her nuts because Wendy just has zero interest in what she looks like.

And Adele's always saying, she looks mad.

Her hair's all grey and wild and she wears those terrible Indian wraparound skirts and why can't she just, you know...

because she's almost a protective impulse to think, people are going to think you're just some old bag lady.

Just get yourself together, you know.

Whereas Wendy's like, who gives a shit?

You know, she's got the life of the mind and she's very powerful.

Oh, I'm glad.

I wanted you to laugh out loud.

Yeah, Wendy has kind of, I think, at some point described as her noble head.

You know, she's one of those women who, when she was young, was so alluring because she was so...

sort of masculine in a way, and now she's older, she's just sort of, you know, like we all do, like, you know, I can... Sorry, tapping the microphone.

That sort of powerful beauty has become more mannish and...

And Adele has a very biased... I mean, these are all very biased, you know, views of each other, but that Patrick White line's getting quite around, which is lovely.

I feel very happy about that.

I think Patrick White would have loved it not.

Well, it was important to me because I wanted to write a book about older women who weren't portrayed as static,