Kate Evans

You were.

Yes, and also something about that moving between past and present, as you say, and doing it in quite a seamless way.

And just last week, I spoke to the writer Hannah Bent, whose book, When Things Are Alive, They Hum, has just been released.

Now, she didn't know that we were doing Tirralira for the book club, but I was asking her about influences and books that she admired, and this was part of her response.

When Things Are Alive They Hum is the name of Hannah Bent's novel, and we'll be talking about that in a couple of weeks' time on the bookshelf.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

And another woman, whose name was Monica, said, I recently read Tirralira after it had been on my bookshelf for many years.

What a great pleasure it was to see the wonderful portrayal of the growth of a creative woman as seen through her 70-year-old memory.

I don't know why I waited so long.

Yes, it's not all tied up because then we have the truthful fictions of our lives, which is how she describes memory, which I thought was quite beautiful.

And that's Tirralira by the River by Jessica Anderson, published in 1978, still available, and it's published by Picador.

The writer and critic Michael McGurr, now he suggested Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and he quoted from it.

My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of wartime.

These memories, which are my life, for we possess nothing, certainly, except the past, were always with me.

And Robert Fairhead, another member of the group, he quoted a line from the writer John Banville, memory is imagination and imagination is memory.

I don't think we remember the past, we imagine it.

So this is a debut novel from the Brisbane-based philosopher and academic Hugh Brakey.

To make sense of the novel, you really have to understand the premise and what has happened to the central character whose name is Robbie.

So Alison, can you set this one up for us?

What do we need to know?