Stuart Coop

that was inspired by that era.

You know, it's not happy tales.

It's dark.

You know, it's stories of, of course, Manson, you know, the political underground.

You know, we had the weather underground.

You know, we've got the Black Panther movement.

You know, we've got some really tough, vigilant political stuff happening.

Look, I thought really about some things that I've read, you know, quite recently, in a couple of cases, things that I've wanted to read for a long time.

I mean, I had read all of Dana Spatira's, if I pronounce that correctly, books except Eat the Document, which I think is her third novel, and I was completely riveted by this because

It so successfully takes what was happening in the late 60s into the early 70s.

The two main protagonists have been part of an underground political group and something has gone hideously wrong with one of, you know, this was the time of pipe bombs and, you know, bombs were going off in Australia.

In letterboxes, in banks, and, you know, there were just hundreds of random bombings.

Something has gone wrong.

And the two main characters are forced to go underground and assume different identities, move away and hide in sort of, you know, out of the way parts.

parts of America.

So she follows the story of Mary Whittaker, who becomes Caroline Sherman, and her fellow radical, a guy called Bobby, and just takes their journey through the 70s, 80s, into the 90s.

And this does it really effectively, you know, because the characters have caused to reflect back on what it was like in the late 60s, and what it was like in the 70s,

and the dreams that they were pursuing and what they hoped.

And, of course, Mary Stroke Caroline, you know, has a son and he, of course, is going back and discovering the music of the 1960s, you know, and he's a Beach Boys obsessive.

And at one point Mum says, oh, well, I met Dennis Wilson in a bar, you know.