David Hunt

It does make you feel from the very first words.

And there are a range of different and very strong emotions right through it.

Well, let's find out also what David Hunt thinks of this book.

Now, he's a historian and a TV and podcast presenter whose books include Gert and True Gert, the best name for a sequel follow-up book.

G'day, David.

G'day, Cass.

And g'day, Maggie.

I hadn't seen that at all, but that's fantastic reading of it, David.

I still loved the very unexpected moment where the two young girls in the part where we're remembering them as young girls, where they're obsessed with Princess Diana and they're recording cassettes that they're going to send to Princess Diana and talking to her about life.

And I just...

That's so refreshingly fantastic.

And obviously, you know, it's loaded with ideas of the mother country or the colonial figurehead, you know, the royal family, but also with this really intimate way the girls are quite obsessed with her and then devastated by her death.

So, David, you already mentioned the fact that there are sort of three strands in the storyline here.

One of them is the story of a young woman, well, maybe not so young, who's returned home because, well, she's going to a funeral.

And when you return home after a long absence, often things return to you when you get there.

And you wouldn't necessarily think that they would come together in a seamless way by the end, but they do.

And it makes a really significantly stronger whole because you've been on these three different tangents.

And actually, when you're saying that, I'm reminded that when I was reading it, I was wondering, it sort of had a sense of magic realism just through those names and through the ideas that those names bring to a place, a town.

And when you, David, said the shifty magic that Poppy Albert refers to, maybe it's a sort of shifty magic realism because it's more sinister than, say, Marquez's.

the impact of of dispossession and the impact of separation from culture from from kin and from country and it's not just history either it's both very present and a threat from the future and part of what poppy albert is doing in creating this dictionary although it's far more than just a collection of words and meanings it's a sort of spiritual tome as well a passing on of knowledge