Morag Fraser

I think it's the dialogue that gives it to you and also the way in which Robinson describes her.

The voice is always quiet and the presence is radiant.

She just shimmers the whole time.

And she's witty and she's sharp.

and very determined and also caught in this sort of vortex of history.

She comes from an extremely established African-American Episcopal Methodist family, so extremely established family that believes that the black race should get by in a segregated way because that's the only way that they can achieve.

So she comes from that background.

Absolutely, separatism, yeah.

And that's what she goes against.

Do you remember, Michaela, that wonderful passage in the cemetery?

She tells Jack how angry she is, and she doesn't say why she's angry, but there's something about the world that induces in her a sort of sense of anger.

She says, I've been problems on myself.

Some of them are worth it.

She calls herself a vial of ire, and they've put phrases for one another.

He calls himself the prince of darkness, and she's this vial of anger.

The dialogue's wonderful.

I felt that absolutely, because it comes so gently, doesn't it, as you say.

It's not a themes novel.

It's not a novel where she started with a whole lot of ideas and thought, okay, I'll flesh them out with characters.

There's a certain amount of theological underpinning.