Kate Evans

It doesn't feel gratuitous.

But there he is, a small thing alone in the reeds by the side of the lake.

And the rest of the novel is concerned with two main things, how White happened and the aftermath.

Yeah, Like Mother, that one was called.

And that one was set in the past, in the 1960s, and the mystery of what happened to that baby wasn't resolved until later in the novel.

And it was sort of frenetic with worry.

Whereas this one, the style is very different because...

We know from the start that something has happened to this baby, but we don't really know how it's happened.

So, Michael, this is a novel that also takes us into a really particular Australia, I think, in the present.

It begins in the 2010s.

Gillard is Prime Minister.

And we're in a place called Shorehaven beside this shrinking lake with a woman named Emma.

I wonder if you could describe her and maybe put her in her house.

Is she the mother of the child that's died?

She has three children under the age of five.

So there's Clem, a girl, there's a boy called Arthur, and then there's this baby, Robbie.

And with three very young children, she seems almost like a character under siege.

And these children, especially the baby, they sort of relentlessly need her attention.

But she's also a sort of outsider in a way.

And this dynasty, the Cormacs, they're part of, you know, we're in regional Australia.