Suzanne Leal

So she dresses herself always in white.

And quite striking woman.

They call her the angel dressed in white, I think, because she has such a great demeanor and a great sense of presence for the patients that she's treating.

I don't see her as necessarily beautiful, but she certainly is with her height and with her sense of ambition as well.

I mean, she wants more for herself.

She's a good nurse, but she's not happy to be as a woman herself.

is expected to be in 1865.

Just to take back on what you said in relation to the layers of the book, I think you're saying, Kate.

So on one level, it seems like a melodrama.

And then when you go a

I read earlier by Rose Tremaine a book called The Gustav Sonata, which I must say I preferred to Islands of Mercy, but she said in describing The Gustav Sonata, and it's a book that's set in post-war Switzerland, she said she wanted it to be like a Swiss watch, so apparently very simple but masking very complex workings.

And I'd say that Islands of Mercy is a little bit like that.

She has a fairly dry...

writing style and some humor when you look hard enough I mean it's not it's not always pinpointed but she's quite dry she's very descriptive and as you say the plot is is not dense so much but it's a very full plot and it's got a love story it's got desire it's got a fair bit of sex in it

and it's got colonial interests in Borneo.

But all this, as you say, I think, Kate, masks what are quite serious concerns, particularly in relation to the status of women during that time.

And I think what was particularly interesting for me was to see sometimes almost throwaway lines about the position that Jane finds herself in,

For example, Jane at some stage looks like she's going to inherit some money and perhaps some property.

And it becomes very clear that were she to be a married woman, that she would lose any control over that property and what she would do with it.

And of course, I'd forgotten that.