Next Friday, the 25th of Feb, at 3pm Western Australian time, will be a very special time for me! I’ll be welcoming Monica McInerney to our book club. What makes this so very special, it that I’ve loved and admired Monica’s work from the moment I opened The Alphabet Sisters. Since then I’ve read every single one of her books and they’ve given me many, many hours of reading pleasure.
Another reason this is book club is so exciting, is that Monica was born in Clare, in the mid-north of SA, only about an hour and a half from where I was born. She knows the area that I grew up in and told me, in one of our emails, that she’d been to my home town, of Orroroo, only a couple of years ago, to watch her nephew play footy. Just imagine if I’d known!
Don’t forget FRIDAY 25TH FEB AT 3pm WA TIME!
Anyway, Monica is saying ‘hello’ and here she is:
Hello from Dublin and my big thanks to Fleur for inviting me to her book club to discuss my latest novel At Home with the Templetons. I’m looking forward to answering your questions about it on Friday Feb 25th. It’s my eighth novel, and like my others, is a story about the dramas and dynamics, light and dark sides of family life. Families fascinate me – they’re where we learn about the world, and about love, loyalty and forgiveness too. At Home with the Templetons is the story of two very different families, the seven unruly Templetons and the much smaller unit of Nina Donovan and her son Tom. They come into each other’s orbit when the Templetons take over a stately home in the goldfields of Victoria and open it as a tourist attraction. The story takes place over twenty years, is set in many different countries, and I had a lot of fun researching and writing it. I also explore serious issues – the different aspects of marriage and motherhood, sibling rivalry, the lasting effects of grief, and the dilemmas of love versus loyalty. I hope you all enjoy reading it, and I look forward to talking to you on-line about it soon. Until then, all the very best,
Monica
Can’t wait Fleur!