Helen Trinca

Yeah, interesting.

I mean, I think that's interesting because she was a clever girl.

And of course, her life story is that she never really made it in that, you know, that cleverness didn't really turn out to be her salvation.

So she, for many years from her, until she was really 15, she had started having success with the books.

she had been a very much had a very had no career basically she was working in little antique shops and she was doing little bits of um filing work for lawyers you know and she never sort of made it she couldn't get there so she she knew herself i think as um and recognized she was clever and i think had been really um held back by her own personality by events i guess she you know she no doubt blame she certainly blamed her father it's a very very clever line and um

But it's also, it almost, I think, reflects the fact that she had not enjoyed for a long time the fruits of her own cleverness, you know.

So I think that's, I guess that's what she's saying there.

Yes, I find that quite fascinating.

I was thinking about that today.

She, of course, she is not Lisa or Leslie's class.

You know, she's a class above that.

You know, the St.

John's had a place in Sydney society, not a hugely rich one, but at some levels quite privileged.

I mean, I think Madeleine had quite a sense of where she sat in the world, you know, a sense of herself in the world.

So it is interesting that she has as her heroine in the story someone who was held back by class.

And I guess that's just maybe that's really just her capacity for imagination as a novelist.

It's not completely autobiographical.

There are a lot of autobiographical elements to it.

The Women in Black, but it's not really an autobiographical novel as such.

You see her popping up.