Claire Nicholls

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.

And none of this is clear at the start of Grief Dog, I should say.

When it opens, we know we have this narrator.

We're not sure who the narrator is.

They're preparing what seems like a eulogy for Geoffrey.

We're yet to find out exactly what has made Geoffrey so interesting in his life.

Can you read to me from the start of the book?

That's Michael Winkler reading from his novel Grief Dog.

Michael, can you talk to me a little bit about your writing style?

Because as we've heard there, it's very funny.

It's disjointed.

It's distinctive.

How do you categorise your style?

Absolutely.

I had to keep reading to the end to find out what happened to Hubert or Geoffrey.