Claire Nicholls

They need the community around them to give them a kettle and pairs of shoes.

They have absolutely nothing.

And then the dad, you know, strikes upon a great business idea and suddenly they are very, very, very wealthy.

That must be a real kind of whiplash feeling.

Yeah, one character comments, they became more American than the Americans.

I love that line.

And their eldest daughter, this one that the father hopes will become a Supreme Court judge, her name is Zora.

Who is Zora?

And we do find out in the novel that Zora has died.

This whole book is told by the people around this story reflecting on this moment.

It's almost like

watching a documentary or listening to a podcast.

You've got all these different voices telling their version of this story.

Tell us what you can about what has happened to Zora.

And this chorus of voices, the way you tell this story is so effective.

How did you land on this structure of hearing from everyone around this family, but never the family itself?

It's really clever because...

You'll be reading one person's testimony, say a friend of the parents, who might say, these parents were loving and caring and took such great care of this girl.

And then you might see in the very next chapter, one of Zora's school friends saying, they were so strict, they never let her out of the house.

She was raging against them.