Michaela Kolowski

This new novel is called The Labyrinth, and a labyrinth, we should say, is not a maze.

It does not have dead ends.

It's a path and sometimes a spiral, and it's a form that has its place in a whole lot of cultural traditions.

So, Kate and Angela, you've read this one.

What is so labyrinthine about it?

I was just going to say there seems to be a lot of fiction about asylums and institutions.

Have you read other works of fiction about asylums as well, Angela?

Do you think that's the appeal, Angela, of labyrinths in fiction?

I'm thinking about, you know, there's beautiful works by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Kate Moss has a book called The Labyrinth.

It's even The Labyrinth of a Library in the Name of the Rose by Umbrato Eco.

The labyrinth is about a kind of form of, you've talked about it as kind of healing, but it's a pathway to self-knowledge rather than the maze, which is just sort of trickery.

I said you have to be inside the labyrinth.

It's a wonderful analogy.

Thank you very much to our two guests today, Toby Martin, performer and lecturer in contemporary music at the Conservatorium of Music in Sydney, and Angela Bowne, barrister and mediator, former journalist, and also director of the Rose Scott Women's Writers Festival.

Angela and Toby, thank you very much for being our guests this week on The Bookshelf.

And don't forget, you can find details of the guests and of every single book we mentioned on the show this week by heading to the Radio National Bookshelf page.

And do come back next week because we're reading Sam Coley's State Highway One.

hello Kate hello Cassie hello Billy no there aren't it's a very sad moment I think for it was very sad I think five weeks ago when all of those emails and notifications started to come into all of our inboxes that most festivals had been cancelled and a few postponed but in in this strange world let's find out what you've been what you've been reading Billy what have you been reading I've been um

I went to a few new things, but maybe like a lot of people, when times become strange, I'm a big rereader.