Claire Nicholls

Hi, Michael.

I mean, why would life be better if you were a dog?

Okay.

Introduce us to your character.

His name is Geoffrey Watson-Johnson.

He's a hydrologist in Mildura.

He's a husband.

He's a father.

He exercises a lot.

What is Geoffrey's life like before he makes this wild decision?

He also comes into a bunch of money.

And when we say he wants to become the family pet, he wants to become Hubert, this doesn't mean, Michael Winkler, that he's going to run on four legs and bark at people.

What does it actually mean to him to live as, say, the family dog?

Michael Winkler, where did this all come from?

This book, as you said, is set in Mildura.

What's the relevance of this place to you?

And as you say, there in Mildura, you can actually see climate change happening right in front of your eyes.

For a character like Geoffrey, who's worked as a hydrologist, who's probably been staring at those facts and figures for so long and feeling powerless, it struck me that this might be one of the weirdest climate change books ever.

Yeah, such grief, perhaps, about the state of the world.

Yeah.