Heather Rose

And then Astrid turned up and there I am like a fly on the wall.

And Astrid starts telling me things and showing me her family.

And we start to unravel this story that's all about, you know, protest and government and politics and current affairs and all that.

But then when Astrid reveals, you know, a fundamental truth in the book, it's as much a shock for me as it is for the reader because it literally woke me up at night when I found out the plot twist in the book.

Well, one of the plot twists.

So number one is The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

My father gave it to me when I was six years old.

It was my first book from the adult section of the Hobart Library.

He took me over into the adult section and

In fact, it's so vivid in my memory that it felt as if there was a step where you had to go up into the adult section.

In fact, there's not.

But in my mind, it feels like that was a very big step.

And he took this slender little volume off the shelf and he handed it to me.

And it was the old man in the sea.

And I grew up with a fishing line in my hand in Tasmania.

We used to do a lot of fishing and my grandfather took me fishing there.

And so it was very familiar subject matter to me.

But then of course, it broke my heart.

And it's the first time a book broke my heart because before then I'd had a steady diet of Enid Blyton and Dr. Seuss and rhymes and poetry and all of that.

But to have that ending, it's still vivid in my mind.