Morag Fraser

Thank you very much.

You make me sound very old and tired.

You must have read a hell of a lot of books, Morag.

Isn't that what you do?

Well, two novels, Kate Grenville's A Room Made of Leaves and Amanda Lowry's The Labyrinth, both really mysteriously sort of radiant novels.

I like them both.

The marinas, you know?

Oh, but they weren't the husbands.

I mean, you've got the wife and she's better with sheep than he was anyway.

We're talking about Elizabeth MacArthur as the historical character.

There's a lot of sheep knowledge, sheep lore early in that novel, even before she meets MacArthur and...

When Elizabeth MacArthur ends up being in Australia while her husband is back in England in legal trouble, it's Elizabeth that's actually handling the fleece and working with the workers.

So no, there was plenty of sheep.

I've just finished reading Alex Miller's beautiful memoir sort of of his friend Max, Max Blatt, a character that if you've read Alex's novels, you'll know sort of moves in and through them all the time and all that history of the Holocaust.

And also it's a lovely revealing book about Alex himself.

Very broad, very, very intellectually challenging, but also she's not so much a puzzle as a mystery because she's been an academic.

She taught for many, many years at the very famous Iowa Writing School.

You've got this contrast between a woman who's profoundly intellectual and yet writes these utterly instinctive novels, who has a wonderful ear.

Her dialogue is as good as any I've ever read.

She once described herself, she said, people worked out if you bioengineered someone who was unhip,