Lisa Ireland

But I tend to be, I've got a big stack of novels that I'd love to reread.

Like one of my favourite books, which I've been meaning to reread for ages is...

The Harp in the South, which I haven't read for probably 20 years.

By Ruth Park, yes.

That's a book that I remember really resonating with me the first time I read it and I'd really love to go and revisit that, but I haven't, but it's on the to-be-read pile.

You know, I really love unlikely friendships and prickly protagonists, people who don't necessarily come out as the traditional hero or heroine straight away.

So I loved Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine.

Eleanor's not your usual heroine.

She's a very straight-laced heroine.

quite boring person in the beginning of the novel.

I just thought that was a masterful novel in the way that Gail Honeyman has taken a character who was really quite unlikable and made us care about her throughout the novel.

And so by the end...

There's actually quite a lot at stake.

It's not a thriller.

It's not, you know, there's nothing, the world's not about to end or whatever.

Eleanor works in an office.

She's a very nondescript little character at the beginning, but there's a lot going on under the surface that Honeyman brings out and there's enormous tension in that book.

When I first got to that bit in the novel, which was quite early on, she was this very straight-laced, flat-shoe, beige cardigan kind of wearing woman who heads off to her local off-licence, I think it's said in the UK so it would be an off-licence, to get a couple of quarts of vodka every weekend.

Yeah, and she finishes them all.

That's a really interesting, rich detail, isn't it?