Robert Lukens

So you're reading it in a very particular way, aren't you?

But it's also a book about the landscape and hearing the birds and making a sort of a case for an Australian voice, which is why I think we're reading it and why we can understand it as an important book.

And I wondered if you'd like to listen to this grab.

It's from that 1950s documentary.

And...

A man called P.R.

Stevenson, Inky Stevenson, who was a really important figure in Australian publishing history, he talks here about Miles Franklin's style.

So, David Hunt, the image of Miles Franklin yelling, smell the gum trees, at people in London, what does that tell us about her role in making an Australian voice and Australian literature?

And Maggie McKellar, what impact would you say My Brilliant Career and Miles Franklin's writing has had in this context?

Bold words from Cassie McCullough, and with thanks too to historian David Hunt and writer Maggie McKellar.

That's it for this week's edition of The Bookshelf.

Join me and Cassie again next week as we begin a whole new year of fiction.

It's just kind of percolated its way through the world, I suppose.

It was just my first novel, but I just got warned by all quarters.

Your book has this three-month lifespan.

You get told this three-month thing.

And after that three months, it falls off the cliff of the universe and it will cease to exist.

And it's been really nice that this book seems to have just slowly and steadily kind of waddled its way through the universe.

And it just seems to be happening in a kind of natural way.

And that feels really nice because it feels...