Kate Evans

Elizabeth McNeill, congratulations on Circus of Wonders.

And thank you so much for speaking to us on the bookshelf.

Now that one, Cassie, is all about surfing, rock and roll and a truly wild party.

So make sure you join us for more books, more reading recommendations and plenty of opinions.

I'm Kate Evans.

All right, this is going to be good, isn't it?

And they do terrible things in order to get what they want.

Hi, how are you?

I was about 15 when I read The Talented Mr. Ripley.

And it's funny, about that time I'd gone into John le Carré and I'd read The Spire Came In From the Cold.

And I remember at the time probably preferring le Carré.

But it's quite strange when I came to write, you know, whereas I think Susan Sontag once said that writers either write about...

the outside or the inside.

And, you know, in terms of write about the world and trying to make sense of it or write about the human psyche.

And even though I thought I preferred Le Carre, when I chose to be a writer, I became a writer on the inside world.

I became like Patricia Highsmith.

It's funny, I mean, certainly on the new book that's coming out, When You Were Mine, you know, it's got a protagonist that's very much like a Tom Ripley, female, but very much like a Tom Ripley character.

And I didn't realise that until actually I reread the Ripley, you know, two of the Ripley novels before coming in today.

And I suddenly saw how much the Tempe Brown character shared in common with Ripley.

So I think the influence was definitely there, even if it was subconscious.