Krissy Kneen

We will never catch up.

And I've been doing a lot of reviewing.

I still host literary events at festivals and so on.

I just judged the Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

So I'm finding that almost all my reading is still current books related to work of one kind or another.

And I'm perfectly happy with that, but I'm still not catching up.

No, it's more the literary novels that I should have read.

while I was literary editor that I never got to, that people still say, oh, of course, you've read such and such.

And I say, well, no.

And I'm not even going to name them because there's so many.

I'm embarrassed myself.

At first I thought the novel was set in the past because Kitty is living alone on this island that is sinking into the rising sea and you can feel it's been buffeted by tides and storms and she lives in a very run-down old timber house that's falling apart.

And she is described as the last woman on the island.

So the time in a way is very uncertain, but it soon becomes clear from certain references to contemporary issues and devices and so on.

that it is set, I think, in the very near future.

It feels as though it could be next year if we're not careful.

And Kitty Hawk has deliberately taken herself away from the mainland, or the main as she describes it, and secluded herself on this island to devote herself to her art.

So she's left behind her family, which is a fairly controversial thing for a woman to do,

And she's a bit of an Olive Kitteridge character.

She's grumpy.