Helen Trinca

looked at other people's lives.

And it absolutely fizzes.

Yeah, she's fantastic on dialogue.

I mean, at the opening of A Pure Clear Light,

is um there's a lot of dialogue at the beginning of that book and i think it's really captivating she um yeah she was just terrific on uh on language occasionally in the women in black she gets it wrong i was reading a little bit no it's it's a different book sorry it's not women in black i think it's a pure clear light she has a she has a party um in london and

And there's an Australian painter there or something, and he keeps saying things like bonza and beaut.

And it doesn't work at all well.

And she's writing in the 90s, and she gets it wrong, you know.

But, you know, she rarely does that.

That rarely happens.

And I think she certainly, the English books, the London novels, are, I think, fantastic on sort of language and getting the, you know, elements of class and family and,

You know, young, you know, middle class Londoners, professional Londoners.

She gets them very, very accurately, I think.

Look, I think she matters because I think the dialogue matters.

I think she's good at that and the observation matters.

But I think probably the thing that we ought to focus on a little bit more is the way that she was really interested in some really big questions around how to be.

Someone once said of her that she was interested in the theological issues.

She's really interested in knowing how you live a moral life in a secular society.

So there's a fair degree of

religion in Madeleine's life towards the, you know, by the time, in her 50s, by that stage of her life.