Kate Evans

Nice to have you back, Robert.

Hello.

Now, you're in Melbourne.

How's your lockdown reading life been treating you?

Well, let's get right into Jessica Anderson's Tirralira by the River, which was Anderson's fourth novel, by the way.

She went on to write three more novels after that one, Cassie, and she did win the Miles Franklin a second time.

in 1980 for The Impersonators.

But we're going to start today with Tirralera by the River, as we said.

But maybe the best way to think about this novel, Cassie, is to go straight to that first page.

Oh, as you say, there is so much in that first page, both her voice and what's happening, although it's not entirely clear why she's there and what's going on.

So, Robert, maybe you can help set us up.

What else we need to know as we read that first page?

Just thinking about those opening pages again, Cassie, one of the things I liked about it was the combination of this sort of spiky voice, which is an internal voice because she's feeling sick and she's hot and she's wearing the wrong suit and she wishes these people would go away.

But she doesn't say that.

And she actually says she's irritated with herself for being a toady.

So there's this sort of self-awareness, this highly critical voice, and yet we're seeing her behave as this sort of ostensibly respectable older woman who's come home to the childhood home.

I like that tension right from the start.

But also this novel is so architectural in a way.

It takes us in and out of houses and places.

In the first couple of pages, in that first chapter, Robert, she steps into a room and remembers what it meant to look through distorted mirrors and in a way into the imagination of her childhood, which is where we get the image of the title.