← A Podcast of One's Own with Julia Gillard
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- [00:00]
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- [00:37]
Julia Gillard
As a woman who hasn't had children and has talked about that publicly, you know, I think it is good for us to have open discussions about all of the reasons that women choose or don't choose to become mothers.
- [00:50]
Cathy Lett
Especially now with Vance saying, blaming, saying all the Democrats are childless cat ladies.
- [00:56]
Julia Gillard
Cat ladies.
- [00:57]
Cathy Lett
And what I loved about that, that whole awful thing that he said was that all the who responded with great humour and sort of kneecapped him with comedy to show that we, you know, childless cat ladies are a formidable force and very, very funny.
- [01:15]
Julia Gillard
Hello and welcome to another episode of our book club. And I'm delighted to be joined by the wonderful, the witty Cathy Lett.
- [01:24]
Cathy Lett
Woohoo. Woo hoo.
- [01:26]
Julia Gillard
Now, Cathy, this is not gonna make Australian listeners happy because they're shivering in the middle of winter, but we're in London and we Sunday having a long slow Sunday lunch in beautiful sunshine. I know, amazing.
- [01:40]
Cathy Lett
The whole of the English summer, the sun kind of rang in sick and just didn't turn up. So we had this one glorious day just slowly drinking wine. It was like that Tim Minchin song, you know, white wine, sipping white wine in the sun with my favorite friends. It was delicious and you were the most scrumptious part of that human menu.
- [01:59]
Julia Gillard
Thank you very much. And I didn't get sunburned, so that's good. Not that often in London you have to worry about sunburn. But even though we have been drinking white wine in the sun, we've also been reading. And the novel that we're discussing today is Blue Sisters, which is the second novel from Coco Mellors. Listeners might recognise that name. She had a best selling debut with Cleopatra and Frankenstein. So this is her second book and it has rocketed up the charts. It's selling very well. If you've been wandering around a bookshop, you've probably seen it on the tables. So despite being a popular fiction, the novel does tackle some pretty heavy themes. It centres on the Blue Sisters. That's not their colour, they're not aliens, that's their surname. And they are Bonnie, Avery and Lucky. And they are reeling from the sudden and tragic death of their fourth sister, Nicky, who died from an accidental overdose. The novel is set a year on from Nicky's death and opens with the sisters really scattered around the world and effectively estranged. Bonnie' Avery is in London and Lucky is in Paris. And as the story unfolds, we see the ripple effects of Nicky's death and how the sisters attempt to navigate it all and come back together. We learn a lot about their past lives as this process is going through. Now, sisterhood is obviously the huge theme here, and you and I, I think we're suckers for discussions on sisterhood because we're both blessed with sisters. I've got only one sibling, my older sister Al. But there's a pride of let siblings like a pride of lions.
- [03:44]
Cathy Lett
I know, it's so true. I'm so lucky. My mother gave me the greatest gift imaginable. Three sensational sisters. And we have a psychological shorthand where we know what each other are thinking and we can finish each other's sentences. They're the most formidable, loyal and loving support team. I mean, when one of us is going through a rough time, the other three kind of rally with offers of chicken soup or internal organs or whatever we need. And if one of us is under attack, you know, the wagons kind of circle. Although it's not really wagons, I'd have to say having three formidable sisters on your side is like having a bomb proof, flame retardant armored vehicle on hand for, like, quick getaways. And I would say my sisters constantly lift me sort of two octaves up on the happiness scale. And even without realizing that they're doing it, and just the quipping and the quaffing and the laughter, I mean, it is the greatest gift. We're like Orion's belt. There we are, always sort of lined up alongside each other. And whenever I feel lost and can't find my place in life, they're like my bookmark. And I imagine your sisters like your bookmark. But the sisters in this novel, I felt were lacking in joy and comedic camaraderie because I'm sure with your sister too, we cackle like kookaburras.
- [05:05]
Julia Gillard
We do do a fair bit of cackling, that's true.
- [05:08]
Cathy Lett
And it's sort of how you get through your worst times. Because if you've got those, if you're lucky enough to have that strong sibling connection, Even when our darling dad died, we found the funny. We found laughter, which was like, you know, a pressure valve. Being able to, you know, be together and somehow find Humour through it all. But these sisters, I just felt they were joyless and juiceless and every time they were together they were bickering without being also, you know, loving and supportive. And that's what I didn't quite. Didn't work for me in this novel. I mean, there was one fabulous quote which I actually typed out and sent to my sisters. I've written it down to read out to you. Being one of four sisters always felt like being part of something magic. Once Bonnie noticed it, she saw the world was made up of fours. The four seasons and the elements, the points of the compass. Four suits in a pack of cards, four chambers of a human heart. Bonnie loved being part of this mystical number, this perfect symmetry of two sets of two. Until, you know my sisters, she used to say, you don't know me. And I think that is true of my sisters. But I didn't feel these four sisters had anything in common at all except this unusual upbringing and their painful sense of grief at losing their other sibling. How did you feel?
- [06:32]
Julia Gillard
Yeah, I felt very much the same. I think there are some beautiful lines about sisterhood throughout the novel. That's wonderful, the four and must have really resonated for you, having four sisters. I liked the opening lines of the prologue. A sister is not a friend who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal, as a friend. Yet this status is used again and again to connote the highest intimacy. My mother is my best friend. My husband is my best friend. No. And she goes on to say, true sisterhood is about sharing, and I'm quoting now, an umbilical cord, tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential. And compare it to a friendship bracelet of brightly woven thread. That is the difference between a sister and a friend. And I liked all of that. I thought some great lines about sisterhood and of course some of my, you know, best loved novels are sister novels, Pride and Prejudice, little women, novels like that. But there was something for me inherently not believable about these four sisters. And it was in their interactions, which I agree were all very argumentative, bickering on the difficult side, but also in the character descriptions themselves. I mean, when we go through them one by one. Avery, she's the older sister, the sort of self appointed leader. And because of difficulties in their background, she's had to take on the maternal role, whether or not she's wanted it. You know, her backstory is heroin addiction, overcoming it and then finally becoming a Very straight laced and incredibly successful lawyer. Then there's Bonnie, the next sister along, who is a world class boxer. And then Lucky, the baby of the family, who since the age of kind of 14 or 15 has been on a glamorous lifestyle of jet setting and partying. Because she's a world famous model, she.
- [08:43]
Cathy Lett
Puts the fun into dysfunction. Really. Yeah.
- [08:47]
Julia Gillard
She must have been having quite some fun. But then addiction rears its head and the sister, they. Nikki is the only one that you would say has an ordinary life, if I can use that term.
- [09:00]
Cathy Lett
She's a teacher.
- [09:00]
Julia Gillard
She's a teacher and she's the one.
- [09:02]
Cathy Lett
I think I would have liked. She's the one I wanted to get to know. But she's absent from the novel.
- [09:06]
Julia Gillard
She is largely absent from the novel. I mean, we hear a bit of her backstory, but not. We clearly don't get to know her in the same depths as we get to know the other characters who are trying to feel their way through in the wake of the grief of losing Nicky. Nicky, we learn, died of an accidental overdose after she became addicted to pain medication for untreated endometriosis. And that's her central tragedy. She wanted to be a mother. And so when things were being recommended to her, like she could have a hysterectomy and that might fix it, she didn't want to give up on her dream of having a child. So she battled with the pain. That led her to a dependence on painkillers and then to a fatal overdose. So grief weaves this together and. But so does addiction. All of them have got addiction issues in different ways. Nikki, clearly Lucky is battling addiction. You know, cocaine, alcohol, you name it. Everything, Everything. We get an insight into her partying lifestyle where almost any substance you want to take is available.
- [10:16]
Cathy Lett
She's a sex addict too, I would say. Yes. Yeah.
- [10:19]
Julia Gillard
And I think that's woven in. And then Avery's overcome the heroin addiction.
- [10:23]
Cathy Lett
And she's a workaholic now.
- [10:25]
Julia Gillard
And she's a workaholic. And Bonnie the boxer is the clean liver. She's never drunk, never taken drugs. Obviously her body has to be in the right shape to do the boxing, but she's effectively addicted to that lifestyle and in some ways addicted to the pain that it brings.
- [10:40]
Cathy Lett
Yes.
- [10:41]
Julia Gillard
And they're the product of parents with issues, particularly their father's dependence on alcohol. So I thought, you know, that theme was an interesting one as well as the theme of dealing with grief. And we did get some insights into through these individual stories, but I'm not sure in total, it actually took us anywhere particularly new.
- [11:06]
Cathy Lett
Well, luckily, you and I are only addicted to reading A Happy Addiction, but, yes, I feel the same. It didn't tell me anything particularly new about that. And also, you know, if I lost one of my sisters, I should have been crying my whole way through this book. But I didn't feel that at all. I just felt it was very. It was somehow cold and a bit removed. It didn't ever move me emotionally. I don't know about you. I mean, I should be. I should have been going through boxes of Kleenex on a daily basis, but it felt to me a little bit contrived, all of that.
- [11:39]
Julia Gillard
Yeah, I wasn't emotionally moved either. We don't want to do spoilers, but I think we can safely say without having to go spoiler alert, spoiler alert, that there is some uplift and reconciliation towards the end of the novel.
- [11:55]
Cathy Lett
And.
- [11:56]
Julia Gillard
But even that didn't sort of take me to a new place.
- [12:00]
Cathy Lett
Too little, too late, I feel.
- [12:01]
Julia Gillard
Yeah, but I feel, you know, kind of ambivalent in the sense that there are some great individual lines. One line that really caught my attention was talking about their father, and he's a sort of absent figure in the backstory, yet we know that his violent, drunken outbursts were a feature of the lives that they lived. And she writes this beautiful line. He was the only man in the house, but he also was the house they lived inside. His moods.
- [12:37]
Cathy Lett
Yeah, and that is actually a beautifully phrased emotion, isn't it? And that stood out for me as well, and how many women and girls live with that emotion every day. And I would have liked actually more. A little bit more about how they survived that abuse in their childhood. But it's just hinted at, isn't it? It's just like a kind of motif in the background that never really resonates.
- [13:01]
Julia Gillard
It's an explanation for Avery having to jump into the mother role, because apart from the father's dysfunction as an alcoholic with violent moods, the novel is also very critical of the mother. Of the four sisters in the book, she's described in the following terms. Their mother wasn't really a mother, and Avery, who is the eldest, covered for her. Their father wasn't really a father, and their mother covered for him. Trying to change them now would be needlessly painful for everyone. And, you know, Bonnie, one of the sisters, reflects that. Their mother always fed them and she never hit them, but she was overwhelmed by them. It was like she was on a solo mission because she was the only Parent who was functioning she regretted starting, but had resigned herself to completing. Now, that sentence is actually about preparing the evening meal for these four hungry sisters. Growing girls, obviously, while eating their food.
- [14:05]
Cathy Lett
That's a line I also pulled out to talk about. Cause that rang true to me.
- [14:10]
Julia Gillard
Yes. And I think we're supposed to take from that, that whilst that's a line about the evening meal, it's really a line about motherhood and having the sisters overall.
- [14:20]
Cathy Lett
And that, to me, was the most interesting aspect of the book because it does capture the ambival many young women are feeling about motherhood now. You know, we know that the birth rate has plummeted in the west. And young women, young people are embracing celibacy. They, instead of having sex, they're having. They call it Netflix and chill. And the cost of living crisis is making parenthood unattractive. And I also think it's the career sabotage for women. Because our generation, you know, we thought we could have it all, but we just ended up doing it all. And I now think, yes, women can have it all, but not all at once. And it's women whose careers usually suffer when the children come along. And a lot of young women are just thinking, they're just not buying into that. And I wrote a book in God in 1999 called Mad Cows, which took the idea that motherhood was the ultimate fulfillment for a female. I took that big sacred cow and I whacked it on the barbie. And I remember when I wrote that book, I thought, maybe I'm the only mother who's not coping. Cause I was in England at the time. I kept meeting these English women, and I'd say, oh, my God, this is so hard, this whole motherhood thing. And they'd just say, oh, have you thought about therapy? So I thought, well, I'm. I'm the only mom, you know. And when I wrote that book, I thought this might be the end of my literary career. Well, of course, it so resonated with women that someone was telling the truth. And it was all about the idea that everyone, when you're pregnant, everyone has so much advice for you, but nobody prepares you for what comes next. Cracked nipples, constipation, mountains of haemorrhoids. I mean, Edmund Hillary couldn't scale those rat bags. You know, Then there's the sleep deprivation, the sex deprivation, because kids are a contraceptive. Every time you go to make love, the baby wakes up or the toddler toddles in. I was in Manchester once and booked here, and this woman there gave me a Fantastic sex tip for new parents. Vaseline on the doorknobs. It sounds painful, but they can't get in. And then I used to think, does any new mother really want to have a sex.
- [16:18]
Julia Gillard
No.
- [16:18]
Cathy Lett
I think a new mother's favorite position is the doggy position where he begs and you just roll over and play dead. But, you know, nobody really writes or talks about that very much. So in this book, I thought it was an interesting area to explore the ambivalence all the sisters feel about becoming a mother because they haven't had a good role model in their own mothers. And also they're pretty self engrossed, all three of them. I can't imagine them, you know, giving up any of their precious time to put themselves second and, you know, and motherhood. Yes, it's time we talked about all of this more that it is very boring. I mean, sometimes I was so bored doing creative things with play doh. I could see my plants engaging in photosynthesis once I grew a yeast infection as a change of pace. So I suppose when women are waking up to that fact. So that to me was the most interesting aspect of the book. Although I'm very against blaming mothers for everything, I think, you know, I think if you can get your kids to 16 and they're not collecting Nazi memorabilia or voting for Donald Trump, you deserve a mothering medal. You can't keep blaming your mum for everything. You and I are lucky enough to have wonderful mothers, but even my friends who had and have difficult relationships with their mothers, they. They're not blaming them for everything now that they're adults. You know, you have to stand on your own too. Psychological feat at some point. So I was a bit down on that, that all the mothers, the two mothers in the book are painted with so much derision and hostility. Did you, did you feel that?
- [17:53]
Julia Gillard
Yes, I did. I mean, I. On this motherhood theme in the book, I liked that the book interrogates one of the characters thinking through and ultimately making a decision not to become a mother.
- [18:10]
Cathy Lett
Yeah.
- [18:10]
Julia Gillard
And you know, we won't spoil, we won't do any spoiler alerts about which character it is. I thought to convey that was a really interesting potential theme.
- [18:23]
Cathy Lett
Yeah.
- [18:23]
Julia Gillard
And so this is a character who originally has said to her partner, I don't want to have children. Then as her partner over the years becomes more insistent, it becomes a huge issue as to whether or not she's going to have children. And she says yes, and then effectively retracts it with all of the consequences for the relationship that you would imagine. I thought that was a really interesting theme and often not done in books, but not delved into in the depth that I would have liked to have seen.
- [18:57]
Cathy Lett
Me too.
- [18:57]
Julia Gillard
You know, I think there was more to go on that theme. Who chooses to have children? Who doesn't? Why? How? All of these choices are legitimate choices and women make them for different reasons. And as a woman who hasn't had children and has talked about that publicly, you know, I think it is good for to have open discussions about all of the reasons that women choose or don't choose to become mothers.
- [19:22]
Cathy Lett
Especially now with Vance saying, blaming, saying all the Democrats are childless cat ladies.
- [19:27]
Julia Gillard
Cat ladies.
- [19:28]
Cathy Lett
And what I loved about that, that whole awful thing that he said was that all the women who responded with great humour and sort of kneecapped him with comedy to show that we, you know, childless cat ladies are a formidable force and very, very funny. Only Boost Mobile.
- [19:48]
Julia Gillard
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- [19:51]
Cathy Lett
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- [19:53]
Cathy Lett
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- [19:54]
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- [20:08]
Cathy Lett
But I would have liked to have delved more into that as well because it's something women don't want to really talk. And there's actually now anonymous websites where mothers can write in and say that they regret their decision to have children. And it's something they couldn't say in public. But I would also say I adore my progeny with a primal passion. I think, you know, children can be the greatest love affair of your life. Just to be give. Just to be upbeat about motherhood for a second. I think the secret is to never try to be a perfect mother. I think perfect mothers only exist in American sitcoms.
- [20:43]
Julia Gillard
Yes.
- [20:43]
Cathy Lett
So a good enough mother is absolutely fine. But you know, your life will change. As the mother says in the book. Having children, I suddenly felt I'd landed on Mars because nobody prepares you.
- [20:55]
Julia Gillard
Mothers do not get an easy time in this book though.
- [20:58]
Commercial Announcer
No.
- [20:58]
Julia Gillard
So there's the mother of the four girls alcoholic husband. She is portrayed as someone who really met their needs. You know, they were never gonna die of hunger or thirst or not have medical attention, but never showed love or warmth or inclusion towards them.
- [21:20]
Cathy Lett
No emotional nourishment.
- [21:21]
Julia Gillard
No emotional nourishment. And there's a pivotal scene where she is confronted by Avery, the oldest daughter, about how addiction is a theme in their family. And her initial reaction is to dissemble in the face of that, to not grip it. Avery says to her, d dad's in rehab. I can't drink. Bonnie wisely never started. Lucky is. Well, it's a miracle she's alive. And Nicky overdosed. Mum, our family has a problem, Mum. A really serious problem. Her mother crossed her arms and paused. Avery could practically see the cogs of her brain whirring as she decided which tack to take between denial, delusion and defensiveness. So she comes off as, you know, cold and unable to deal with issues. And then the. The only other mother really portrayed in the family is the mother of Avery's partner. Avery is married to a woman called Chitty and Chitty's mother. You only see her on tv. There's a scene where Avery and Chitty and Chitty's brother are grouped around a television watching Chitty's mother on tv. And she is a sort of cold academic who is known for. Anybody in the audience who poses a question based basically gets ripped up, gets a swipe across the face, and somehow they kind of love at the audience. They all are in this conspiracy together where they're gonna ask her questions and she's gonna put them down. But she certainly does not come across as a nice person.
- [22:58]
Cathy Lett
Well, the line did you write. I wrote this line down when Avery's talking about her partner's mother. She said Chitty's desire to love her mother breached the surface of her disdain like a seal club peeking its head above the ocean. The problem with. With ganishka. That's the mother. The problem with ganishka was that you never know if you were going to get cuddled or clubbed.
- [23:21]
Julia Gillard
Cuddled or clubbed, Not a good idea. It's not the image of a seal cub. No, that is not good. Not good. And so you think too hard, too harsh, or to not have, you know, more nuance in the role modelling of mothers.
- [23:38]
Cathy Lett
Well, as I am a mother and I am sort of 65, I felt that the mothers were very badly served in this book, because what about all the millions of unsung kindnesses they'd done? You know, mothers just get such a bad rap. Where are the statues going? You know, oh, single mother, you know, a toddler and a day job, you know, where are the statues to these mothers? You never see them. And when they worked out, the American Bureau of Statistics worked out how much it would cost to replace a mother. And it's something like, you know, £150,000 a year. You're the chauffeur, you're the cook, you're the, you know, you're the schlepper, you're the laundress, you're the, you know, you do all the homework, you go to the parent teacher nights. Like there's a lot of unpaid labor and there must have been times where she. The mothers were emotionally kind because the girls are not. They're not actually. They do know how to love each other eventually. So I just felt that it was so unfair to the mums that I wanted to stick up for mums. Just for a moment.
- [24:41]
Julia Gillard
Yeah, I thought that the sister's mum got a much harder bad rap compared with the alcoholic, violent father.
- [24:51]
Cathy Lett
Exactly. And we never even hear about Chitty's father where he is. I mean, it's all Freud's fault. He's the one who blamed mothers for everything. Paging Dr. Freud to reception. So I do kick back against that a bit. I think the trouble with parentals is that you don't get an owner's manual. You know, you're just suddenly a parent and, you know, then you become like a runner up in the human race and you have to make it up as you go along. Kids are like Ikea flat pack furniture. Like you get it and you have no idea how to assemble them. So, you know, my sympathy, my heart always goes out to the mothers who are trying to make the best of a bad situation. So that did irk me about the book as well. I wanted to say to the author, have a baby and then we'll talk.
- [25:32]
Julia Gillard
And the author actually was pregnant when she was writing this, so she's having that baby. She needs to be ringing Kathy Cocomelas. If you're listening to this, ring Kathy Le.
- [25:43]
Cathy Lett
Oh, my God. What I'll say to her is, if only there was a creative epidural, because when you're writing a book, it is like giving birth, giving birth to a book. And it's like. But there's no pain relief, so at least she can get pain relief.
- [25:55]
Julia Gillard
I can imagine book clubs doing this book, that motherhood is going to be a big theme of the discussion. And so sisterhood, addiction, motherhood, there are these grief, of course, there are these big themes in the book. And I think both of us are saying that it deals with them, but we were left wanting bit more depth, bit more nuance. But there are some wonderful, wonderful lines in it. So, you know, it's not. It's light and shade in that sense. I thought the description of Chitty and Avery's marriage was beautifully done. The words are. Harmony was the best word that Avery could think of to describe their life together. They had their arguments like any couple, but their daily life was harmonious. Avery had previously thought love was built on large, visible gestures. But her marriage turned out to be the accrual of ordinary, almost inconsequential acts of daily devotion. Washing the mugs left in the sink before bed, taking the time to run up or downstairs to kiss each other quickly before one left the house, cutting up an extra piece of fruit to share. Acts easy to miss, but if ever gone, deeply missed. I thought that was lovely.
- [27:12]
Cathy Lett
I also marked that. That was a very tender, tender passage, but that's with her wife. With the sisters, I just felt they had enough chips on their shoulder to kind of open a casino. And they were all so angry with each other that I didn't ever feel that great sense of love and sisterly camaraderie between them. And, you know, you were talking earlier about, we said how wonderful it is to have sisters, but. And for women listening who don't have sisters, we do have the sisterhood. And I must say, my Australian women friends, I treat almost like extra sisters because Australian women are, I think, the world's best kept secret. Funny, fiercely loyal, you know, fabulous, feisty, you know, for example, there's a. For example, two women who've slept with the same man in Australia are called stick sisters. It's a sense of camaraderie rather than rivalry. It's like you slept with him too, wasn't he, Terry? I have never found that same sense of love and loyalty with my other women friends all around the world as we do with Australians. So if you're not lucky enough to have sisters, you do have a wonderful sisterhood which you can lean into as well.
- [28:20]
Julia Gillard
And this novel is about sisters and their sisterhood, but it's not about the broader sisterhood. Other than the explanation of Nikki being let down by the medical profession, which was uncaring about her endometriosis, it's really not. Put in a broader social context, there's not much delving into how the individual experiences of these sisters.
- [28:49]
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- [29:46]
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- [30:20]
Julia Gillard
Is located within a broader societal take on women's roles and women's lives. And presumably that was deliberate by the author, by Coco Mellors, that she wanted to tell this intimate story and let you reflect more broadly on how it links to patriarchy and the way in which women are judged and viewed. But she doesn't tease that out for her.
- [30:45]
Cathy Lett
No, she doesn't. And you know, maybe you and I are just lucky that we've got such sensational sisters, because the only other person I know who had a lot of sisters was Jessica Mitchell. Did you ever meet Jessica Mitford?
- [30:56]
Julia Gillard
No, I didn't.
- [30:57]
Cathy Lett
Well, you know all the Mitford girls. So one of her siblings was Nancy, the author, and she had a famous line where she said, sisters are a defense against life's cruel circumstances. And Jessica Mitford retorted, sisters are life's cruel circumstances because she had Jessica was a communist. She had to deal with Diana, who was a fascist, and Unity, who adored Hitler and Death, who became a duchess. So, you know, I sometimes think in that family it would have been safer to fly an American jet into Iranian airspace than kind of attend a Mitford family reunion. So maybe there are women listening who don't have get on with their sisters and have a fractious and difficult time. And we've just been blessed. I don't know, but it'll be interesting to see what our listeners say when they report back to us on the website. So we might just be the lucky ones.
- [31:45]
Julia Gillard
We might just be the lucky ones. And now you've reminded us of the Mitford sisters. Maybe we do need to apologise for the initial analysis of Koko's characters. Really? Her characters aren't that ridiculous when you compare with the Mitford sisters. I mean, all she's trying to tell us is that there's a model, a boxer, a lawyer and a teacher. And look at the Mitford sisters.
- [32:05]
Cathy Lett
It's so true.
- [32:06]
Julia Gillard
Yeah. I completely withdraw that original analysis. Apologies to Coco. So, any final takeaways? We're very keen to hear about reflections from listeners.
- [32:20]
Cathy Lett
There were a couple of funny bits in the book I liked. When they were talking about the worst things she can say on a first date. I just wrote them down. One is, I forgot my wallet. I just got out. Is your nose real? I think we're cousins. And then the best things you can say on a first date. I'm over nine inches. Daddy owns this place, the Chateau Lafitte, please. And you know, I could have done with a bit more of that.
- [32:45]
Julia Gillard
Yeah, a bit more of that. I agree. I'm onto a very different Jag at the moment. I am reading a book by the Goddess by Hilary Mantel. I of course, have talked in the past about how much I loved her Cromwell books, but I'd never read A Place of Greater Safety, which is her book about the French Revolution. So I'm all, you know, liberty, equality, fraternity. In the wake of the Paris Olympics, it felt like the right time and there'd been a big dive into that on a podcast I listen to. The rest is history. So I learned about the history and now I'm reading Hilary Mantel's book. What are you onto at the moment?
- [33:24]
Cathy Lett
She's a literary lioness, isn't she? I mean, just hear her roar. I actually. I'm about to actually read something just for escapism. I'm going to read those wonderful books by Mick Heron, you know, who wrote the Slow Horses. They made a TV series about it. Just cause it's summer and I just want to have a kind of cackle and I'm just going to lie and lie and wrap myself around a cocktail with a little kind of umbrella in it and just read some frivolous fiction.
- [33:51]
Julia Gillard
Absolutely. And Slow Horses is one of those book genres because there are many books, one of them that has come to tv, to Netflix or whatever it is, whichever streaming service. And you can love both. I mean, often when you've read the book, you want to cover your eyes when you see it on screen, but courtesy of Gary Oldman as the central character. They're a beautiful comedic, hilarious watch as well.
- [34:19]
Cathy Lett
As great books and then I've got to start a new novel myself. So yeah, pen is poised.
- [34:24]
Julia Gillard
Pen is poised. Well, we will wait for that. Thank you Kathy.
- [34:27]
Cathy Lett
It's such a pleasure. So lovely to see you. So let's go and have some Chateau Lafitte. Some Chateau Lafitte.
- [34:36]
Julia Gillard
Thank you to Cathy and thank you to everybody listening and engaging with our book club. We really love reading your comments and book suggestions, so please head to our Instagram page and let us know what you thought of Blue Sisters. Until next time.
- [34:52]
Podcast Narrator
A Podcast of One's Own is created by the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the Australian National University, Canberra, with support from our sister Institute at King's College, London. Earnings from the podcast go back into to funding for the Institute, which was founded by our host Julia Gillard, and brings together rigorous research, practice and advocacy as a powerful force to advance gender equality and promote fair and equal access to leadership. Research and production for this podcast is by Becca Shepherd, Alice Higgins and Alina Ecot with editing by Liz Keen from Headline Productions and recording support by Nick Hilton. If you have feedback or ideas, please email us@giwlnu.eduau. to stay up to date with the Institute's work, go to giwl. Anu Edu Au and sign up to our updates or follow us on social media Oolanu. You can also find A Podcast of One's Own on Instagram. The team at A Podcast of One's Own acknowledges the traditional traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today. Thanks for listening and we hope you'll join us next time.
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Julia Gillard
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