Maggie McKellar

I think there's connections between those two books that would be interesting to explore.

Fiction has become this delicious bath of otherness that I am swimming in.

Oh, it made me feel good.

in my body, all the things that I think that she wanted us to feel.

And it's funny, Kate, that you pulled that first quote straight out about the word for country should hit you right in the back of your mouth.

And I thought that first paragraph summed up for me what the book was about.

She talks about country.

She talks about body.

She talks about language.

And she talks about time in that first paragraph.

And I found that so powerful because it just sort of said, this is the story I'm telling.

Come with me.

Be confident that I can take you where you need to go.

I really enjoyed it.

I did.

And one of the most powerful bits of the book, I think, is the way she intertwines language with body and how she's constantly tasting the world around her through the land.

And, yes, so the country is really familiar to me and even more so because my daughter is studying at Charles III at the moment just outside of Wagga, which is where this is set.

And she has from her veranda a view out towards the rock

which is in this book known as Kengal by its Aboriginal name.

And I think one really important thing about the book is the way that it names things.