Meg Rosoff

So all my friends getting divorced in their 50s are asking those questions with a kind of urgency.

that I remember from when I was 16, 17.

Who am I?

You know, they're changing careers.

They're having sex with new people after being married for 30 years.

And so that sense of transition, I think, and you might even call it the getting of wisdom, is the theme that I can't seem to get away from.

Oh, well, probably the Bible and war and peace.

You know, I want to be in good company.

Well, yes, that's an interesting question.

I mean, I think The Great Gatsby would have to be there, not because it was my favorite novel, but because there is that echo of doomed love.

You know, it's not a love.

I mean, it is a love story, The Great Gatsby, but it's a really perverted, twisted love story.

And nobody gets the girl in the end and nobody ends up happy.

And on the other side, which would possibly be quite weird, there's an English writer of pony books called K.M.

Payton.

Now, I don't know if she's known in Australia, but she wrote a very famous book called Flambards.

And it was made into a TV series.

And she was very big on ponies and horse books.

And she wrote a wonderful series of three books for younger kids of 8 to 11.

which I read as an adult called The Swallow Tales.