Mikki Brammer

But then you've also got like all of the translations.

And so it's interesting to see.

Yeah, and actually I will admit that I thought of you when I was writing the opening chapter because she wakes up and I'm pretty sure you've said don't start a book with a character waking up.

But in her case it's very particular because she's 89 and every time she wakes up it's a surprise, a pleasant surprise that she's still alive.

Yes, exactly.

And so there's a reason why her waking up is meaningful other than just like, here's the average day in her life.

And also I started it slow because, you know, when you're 89, one of the themes of the book is how elderly people, especially elderly women are rendered invisible by society or useless.

And so she's kind of, she's outlived pretty much everybody.

She's

you know, society doesn't take much notice of her anymore because she's an old woman.

So her life is very slow and she is in that reflective stage of her life.

And so it does, I feel it is that gentler time.

You know, I don't, there are go-getters at that age, but generally people are more in a looking back phase.

And I really wanted to capture that

especially to contrast where she is at the end.

And the final line of the book is also about waking up, but it's about waking up to life rather than physically waking up.

You know, I think it actually comes from I was a travel journalist for a while and I was also a photographer.

And so part of travel journalism, especially I wasn't so much like a straight reporting.

It was more creating the experience of being in this space.

and the stories that I would write for a particular magazine would be in the first person.