Sue Miller

In a way, I sort of feel it's almost a 19th century novel in its concern for character and in its concern for this world that I want to have everybody sort of understand very deeply and be part of.

And, you know, I'm very careful about style and about writing in a very clear and open way, but I'm not a stylist in any way, so I wouldn't put it up against those folks.

It is a domestic novel that is

very clear.

One of my favorite writers in England, anyway, is Tessa Hadley.

And one of my favorite Australian writers is Helen Garner.

Although, you know, I think each of them is very different in one way or another.

Then my favorite Canadian writer, just to go on with the former colonies, is Alice Munro.

And I think there's a strain in my work that's like all three of those people.

The most brilliant Australian book of Helen Garner's, I think, is The Children's Flock.

Because it sort of does, in a sense, what I'm doing in this much larger way.

It does it in 95 pages or something because she's just such a master of compression.

But I'm just more discursive, I guess.

Oh, I think they're just part of his sort of great exploratory joy in people who do things.

At one point, in the arts, he talks about his feeling very shabby about his own betrayal of Annie, which he doesn't know about while he's alive.

And he's talking about the fact that he forgot to ask her something very important, which is that at the very beginning of the book, she's about to have a show of her photographs.

She's a photographer.

And she hasn't had a solo show in about five or six years.

And this is the morning when she's going to take her, the morning that begins the book, really.

She's going to take her photographs over to the gallery that's going to give her the show.