Stephen Herrick

It's just the thing that I kept coming back to though was that I was privy to these fictionalised conversations between

all these well-known writers, which I think she does.

It's a wonderful job she does.

I don't admire having to try and make sense of it.

As a writer, I wouldn't like to have tried to do this, but she does it brilliantly, I've got to say.

Yeah, I guess it is because to me, if we look at Charmian and George, George is given the role in the novel of saying all the nasty stuff.

So he comes across as being very bitter, very selfish, and I'm not denying he probably was that.

But you juxtapose that against Charmian's heroic multitasking.

She's a mother, a writer, an editor, a co-writer, a cook, a cleaner, and a confidant to Erica.

And she is a wonderful character, obviously.

And if anything, I hope this book gets lots of people to read Peel Me a Lotus and Mermaid Singing because it forced me to reread those books.

And they are just the most wonderful books.

You know, 50 years before A Year in Provence and Eat, Pray, Love and all those other living in a foreign country books, there was Charmian Clift on an island in Greece living with the locals and writing beautifully about that.

So I hope this book does that at least.

I sound like I'm being very negative about the book.

I'm not.

I think it is a really, really great book.

It's just, yeah, I constantly was aware of the Erica being fictional, Leonard Cohen being a real life person.

Yeah, there were all those books, like Under the Tuscan Sun as well, those sorts of things.

And it's startling to learn that Charmian did it 50 years earlier and 50 times better.