Michaela Kolofsky

And Karina, were you just delighted when we sent you a book with no connection at all to journalism or crime fiction?

He likes to raise all the big issues.

But we'll come back now.

Thank you.

We'll come back now to the book that we did send you to read, Karina, by the American novelist and screenwriter Rebecca Dynastine Knight, and it's called Hex.

Kate, can you tell us about the premise of this book, please?

Michaela, I think you were going to come in there.

Yeah, I was going to pop in and say, Karina, the description you give of not loving Nell, in fact of not even liking her but sticking with her, is a really good one.

I think there's a pressure sometimes for all these characters at the centre of stories to be likeable, to be relatable, and I think sometimes they leave a bigger mark on us when they're not.

And I think it says a lot about the writing that you could stick with this the whole way through the story, even though she's somebody who you really didn't like very much.

And I think you set a new bar for a test of fiction, which is can I read it backwards?

Yes.

Superb.

It's going to be a very high bar for people to pass.

Well, when you first started talking about it, both of you, Kate and Karina, that it's called Hex, I expected something witchy in the storyline and there's not anything witchy or supernatural, is there?

Thank you both very much for those fantastic reviews of two downright weird books here on the bookshelf, where I should say I'm Michaela Kolofsky and our guests are Chris Raja and journalist and crime writer Karina Kilmore.

And Karina Kilmore, what would you recommend?

Christopher Raja is a writer who lives between Alice Springs and Melbourne.

His books include The Burning Elephant and his latest, Into the Suburbs, A Migrant Story, based partly on his parents' experience of coming to Australia from Calcutta.

And that's it for this week's edition of The Bookshelf.