Kate Evans

So what does she see or remember as she looks through those windows of her childhood?

perhaps before getting to the marriage we should talk about the way that memory and the structure of this book works because we've talked about her arriving in the house and then we're getting visions of the childhood and her longing to escape

which people are so suspicious of.

Who does she think she is that she thinks she can get out of Brisbane and into the world?

But now that she's back as the narrator of the story, she's both immersing herself in memories and avoiding them.

And the way that this is explained is that she's imagining memory as a spinning globe that light falls on or doesn't fall on, depending on how you spin that globe.

So, Robert, that image of the globe, I thought it was a really clever way of describing the process of memory.

And one of those memories, as you say, is of both the moments when she does escape, but also the marriage.

So what do you think, Alison, is so interesting about this marriage of hers?

So Cassie, I can see why she'd want to keep that marriage and that relationship hidden on the dark side of the globe, because it was pretty ghastly, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Well, that's the great thing about memory, isn't it?

How contested and difficult it is and how everybody's memory of the same event will be completely different.

Because, I mean, there was some solace and escape and creativity for her, Robert, isn't there?

In that she is an artistic person.

I mean, does that help?

And then there's such interesting stuff going on with the writing, the way in which she's moving between moments of exhilaration and moments of sadness and anger.

And in 2010, ABC Sydney did an on-air book club about this novel, and the critic Geordie Williamson was the main commentator on it.

Now, this is what he said about the style.

And Cassie, you were actually a part of that book club back in 2010, doing some readings for Deborah Cameron.