Podcast Transcript
Hannah Bent “When Things Are Alive They Hum”
SPEAKERS
Hannah Bent, Nicole Abadee
Nicole Abadee 00:05
Hello, I'm Nicole Abadee and I write about books for good weekend. Welcome to the Books, Books, Books podcast in which I interview the best writers from Australia and overseas about their latest book. Thank you for joining me. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge the country where I live and work and from where I'm joining this conversation, the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. I pay my respects to their elders past and present to the elders of all communities and cultures across Australia, and to leaders of the future. You can listen to this podcast all of the episodes at nicoleabadee.com.au or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Today, I'm delighted to welcome Young Australian writer Hannah Bent to Books, Books, Books, to talk about her fantastic debut novel "When Things Are Alive They Hum" which was published by ultimo press in August this year, and is causing quite a buzz in literary circles. Hannah is a young writer and director who grew up in Hong Kong where she's back living now. And that's where her novel is largely set. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art, Film and Photography from Central Saint Martin's School of Art and Design in London. She did further postgraduate study in Directing and Screenwriting at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, and she has a master's in Creative Writing from the University of Technology Sydney. In 2013, Hannah received the Ray Koppe award for an emerging writer, for this novel when it was a work in progress. It's been getting some fantastic reviews including my favourite one so far from The Australian which described it as a wise, wondrous celebration of life. Hello, welcome to Books, Books, Books.
Hannah Bent 01:51
Thank you so much. And thank you for that generous introduction.
Nicole Abadee 01:55
Would you like to start by reading an extract from your beautiful book?
Hannah Bent 01:58
Absolutely. Harper. A post it note is a bright and colourful square of paper useful for saying things that are hard to say when someone is face to face with the person they love. In my desk I have a drawer full of post it notes in lots of different colours. yellow, pink, orange, blue, and green. Even though I feel a bit breathless, I get out of bed because I have an important message to write. I decided to choose blue because this is Marlowe's favourite colour but when I go to take the square of paper out of the drawer, I have a messy feeling in my brain. My thoughts are tangled in knots. Pink is the colour for love. Orange is the colour for happiness. And yellow is my favourite colour because it is the colour of Whypor's egg tarts delicious and sweet. Blue and green are the sadder colours. Blue like the clothes that Whypor has never stopped wearing since my mum died and green like the velvet chair that my dad sits in when he has his serious face on and wants to be alone. My fingers touch all the post it notes. Making decisions is hard. Especially when I have the nerves in my body. I practice deep breathing like Whypor taught me, with my eyes closed. I see Marlowe the very first moment she arrived home from London in the United Kingdom. Her hair was messy and her face look tired because of swollen eye bags. She took my hand inside hers and I noticed that her touch was empty and loose. Sometimes the body can be present without the spirit. That's what Whypor says, I think this is true. Eyes open, my thoughts are clear now and I choose a pink post it note. I write my message. "We have such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with asleep" by William Shakespeare from The Tempest said by Prosperer the magician. First read to me by our dad James Eve who explained these words has something to do with the dream of life. Love from your sister Harper Minghua Eve. I wiggle all my toes and all my fingers, for the first time in a long time they feel warm. This is because I'm getting better. I always knew in my heart that I would. Hannah thank you. Could you tell us what your beautiful book is about please. My book is about two sisters Harper and Marlowe. Harper has a congenital heart disorder and she lives with down syndrome and when it's discovered that she needs a heart transplant but is denied one by the medical establishment. Her sister Marlowe comes from overseas to be by her side and together they go on a journey in search of a heart. And ultimately Marlowe has to confront how how far she'll go to save her sister.
Nicole Abadee 08:23
Tell me a little bit about Harper's and Marlowe's background, about their childhood.
Hannah Bent 08:29
Harper and Marlowe, both grew up in Hong Kong. Their father was a businessman who ran a leather shoe factory. They live with the grandmother Whypor, and they had a mother who died when they were young. And she was a well known pianist. And that that was really a huge incident in their lives and affected them both very differently and it's something that throughout the novel is a huge part of their journey and why they made certain decisions that they do.
Nicole Abadee 09:06
And they were both very young when she died weren't they? It was 17 years ago in the book. So I think Marlowe was eight and I think little Harper was only about three and a half. Is that right?
Hannah Bent 09:18
Yes. There's five years difference, so yes three,
Nicole Abadee 09:19
And when we meet them in the book now I think that Marlowe is 25 and Harper is 20.
Hannah Bent 09:25
Absolutely.
Nicole Abadee 09:26
And as you say they they grew up after their mother died. They grew up in Hong Kong with their dad and with their maternal grandmother, Whypor. And another of the characters in the book who is a bit of a side character but interesting is Irene whose dad's current girlfriend. Let's set the scene a little bit more. The novel opened with Marlowe in London. What's she doing there?
Hannah Bent 09:48
She's studying a PhD in entomology and her specialty is Lepidoptery. So that's the study of butterflies and she is studying a rare butterfly, an endangered butterfly which now is known as the Phengaris Arion but back then was known as Maculinea Arion. And she's, her work is based a lot on two scientists in real life actually the work of Simcox and Thomas, who discovered that the reason why the Maculinea Arion was not thriving was because of the mica ant and its symbiotic relationship to the butterfly. And I found this very fascinating while I was writing,
Nicole Abadee 10:32
Where did you get the idea to write about somebody who's who's doing a PhD in the study of butterflies?
Hannah Bent 10:37
Look it that didn't come to me first, the very first thing I wrote was a scene in childhood where a mother tries to catch a butterfly and I didn't understand where this was going or what it meant. And I just, I write in a very intuitive way, and I just kept following the scenes that kept coming to me, and I noticed a thread. The butterflies just kept showing up. And I love butterflies anyway. I mean, I just I love insects. My dad had a big garden when I was growing up as well. So I was quite happy to follow that tangent. And eventually I studied, I didn't study, I shadowed a entomologist at the University of Sydney, who was doing his master's and I just spent heaps of time annoying him. I hung out with him.
Nicole Abadee 11:24
Was that for the purposes of writing this book, or that was something that happened earlier?
Hannah Bent 11:28
No, it was for the purposes of this book and I I hung out with him in his lab, I went with him to his bug meetings. I just annoyed him, pestered him. I had great fun and learned a lot from him.
Nicole Abadee 11:42
So when we meet Marlowe, she's 25. She's been in London for three years. She's doing her PhD and she's in she's right at the end of the PhD. In one month's time, she's going to be defending her thesis. She's also in a lovely relationship with a man called Oliver. They've been together for about three years. Tell us a bit about Oliver and about their relationship.
Hannah Bent 12:01
Ollie, Ollie's lovely. Ollie is a real steady kind of, I think at one point, she describes him as a tree and he gives her roots when she feels like she's going up into the air he brings her back down, and he's a real love of hers. But of course Marlowe has, she's very rational and she has because of the death of her mother, issues with letting herself feel certain emotions, she likes to stay in control of them and it's gets of wary of deep feeling. So as much as he expresses his love for her, she struggles with doing the same for him, although she loves them dearly.
Nicole Abadee 12:43
And she does describe him quite early on as being my perfect match.
Hannah Bent 12:46
Yes, he studies the reproductive cycle of butterflies. So they have a lot in common. They're, it's very much a marriage of minds and and, you know, they share a lab and they, they love the work that they do together as well.
Nicole Abadee 13:00
When we meet her she's just received a call from her father, and also a letter from Harper. What do they tell her?
Hannah Bent 13:07
Harper tells Marlowe that she's sick, and that she, her heart is sore. And it's not because she's she's not in love. She loves her boyfriend Lewis very much, but that she's very, very sick and she wants Marlowe to come home. And her father subsequently calls her and tells her that this time it's it's quite bad and and she needs to come back.
Nicole Abadee 13:35
This is relating to her, her congenital heart problems.
Hannah Bent 13:38
Absolutely. It is.
Nicole Abadee 13:40
Let's talk now for a moment about Harper so I should mention one of the really beautiful things about this book is the way that each alternate chapter is written by one or other of the sisters. So we read a chapter by Marlowe then a chapter by Harper. Tell us a little bit about Harper. What's she like?
Hannah Bent 13:55
Oh, I loved writing her. She's a real joy to be with. She lives from her heart and she's so intuitive and she's a writer. I think she believes that she's kind of got a little bit of Shakespeare's magic in her and I quite agree. She's, she's writing a story which is which is autobiographical and based on her life, but it's also about a girl in quest of a plum heart as she likes to call it. Harper is magical and she sees the world with a sense of wonder. And she's she loves the arts. She's very vocal, and she's not afraid to say what she feels. There's this quality to her I think that is captivating and and that her sister Marlowe finds hard to understand.
Nicole Abadee 14:46
She describes her as magic at times doesn't she. And there's another line. I think we learn a lot about Harper through, through what we see and through reading the chapters that are written in Harper's voice, but also from Marlowe's descriptions of her, at one point Marlowe says "she was the embodiment of happiness" and we get lovely descriptions of how much Harper loved music when she was a little three year old. She loved twirling around to music. We talked about how she looks up at the clouds and she she sees shapes. We look through Marlowe's eyes, she's she's looking through her window in London thinking, "well, this is a pretty view, but Harper would appreciate it a lot more." One thing that comes through very, very strongly is Harper's great capacity for joy. Let's talk a little bit now about the relationship between Marlowe and Harper. So there's a five year age difference. Marlowe is the oldest by five years. And at one point, in one of Marlowe's chapters, she talks about how close they are. And she says, "if she was seated next to me, I wouldn't know where she began and where I ended." One other thing I think we should mention, and that is that when their mother was dying, Marlowe who was then only eight and a half, little sister was three and a half, Harper. Marlowe promised her mother on her deathbed that she would always look after Harper. So with that background, could you tell us a little bit about the relationship between Marlowe and Harper?
Hannah Bent 16:10
Absolutely. And when Harper was first born, I think Marlowe was a little afraid of her, not because necessarily of her disability, but because of the way that everyone was reacting to her.
Nicole Abadee 16:26
How did their mother react to Harper's birth?
Hannah Bent 16:29
I don't think she could accept it. It was a great shock. She didn't know she was pregnant with a child that had down syndrome. And culturally, I think that period, time period in Hong Kong, having a disability is not something that was openly spoken of. It's it wasn't something that people, I mean, you wouldn't see very many, I mean, I grew up in Hong Kong, so I can say this from my point of view, but you wouldn't really see a disabled person or person with a disability walking around on the street. So it's very much something that was kept in secret. And often, if a child had a disability, and was born into the family, they were sent to an orphanage. Their mother had a lot of difficulty accepting Harper when she was born and she, because I think the mother was this award winning pianist who really valued her status and really wanted Marlowe to follow in her footsteps and of course, Marlowe is much more rational and went the other way, I think her plan was for Harper to follow. And when she realised Harper had down syndrome, in her mind, she didn't think that Harper would be able to achieve anything. So when she died, I think Marlowe really took her place. She did, she did say to Marlowe take care of your sister before she died and Marlowe was doing this anyway, I think because of the family dynamics. And so Marlowe felt a strong sense of responsibility to Harper but also very deep appreciation of her sister and fascination with her sister and sometimes jealousy. I mean, she would look at the way her sister would engage with her mother playing the piano, something that to her was very abstract and she couldn't understand, and she could see the way that Harper would move to the music and and want to be like that, but couldn't. So and you know, I think Harper's the yin to Marlowe's Yang, that they're like two sides of the same coin.
Nicole Abadee 18:43
How does Harper feel about Marlowe, what do we, what do we see of the relationship from her perspective?
Hannah Bent 18:49
Oh, she she loves Marlowe, I think the most out of everyone, although she adores Louis, and she's madly in love with him, the love is different. It's very close. And she sees Marlowe as a good friend, or sometimes as a mother figure. She sees in Marlowe maybe what mother can't see in herself. She does see the depth Marlowe has that Marlowe's too afraid to access and she sees Marlowe's beauty and her sisters her greatest confidante and someone who makes her feel safe.
Nicole Abadee 19:24
You mentioned Louis, who of course is the other extremely important relationship in Harper's life. Tell us about Louis and about the relationship between him and Harper which I have to say is one of my favourite parts of the book.
Hannah Bent 19:37
I enjoyed them too, they're they're a great pair. So Harper's much further, I think on the spectrum, she's much more high functioning. She has a lot more skills, perhaps that you can use in the in the real world. Louis has down syndrome. He is a similar age to Harper. He grew up in New York and and he loves to be on time, he was many watches and he has a tight schedule that he likes to stick to. He's also incredibly charming, and deeply, madly in love with Harper. And as Harper is with him, and they share a very beautiful relationship.
Nicole Abadee 20:24
So we, we start the book with Marlowe returning to be with Harper and her family because Harper is so unwell. She attends a medical appointment early in the piece with the family. It's the first, they've been many before, but this is the first one she attends. And the professor tells them all that Harper has irreversible damage to her heart, and that she needs a heart lung and a heart transplant if she is to survive, but they won't give it to her. Why is that?
Hannah Bent 20:56
This is something that happens a lot in real life, they won't give it to her because there is a lack of supply to meet demand, first of all, I have to say this, and that's not something that's changed very much, in the last few years in real life.
Nicole Abadee 21:13
Are you speaking just in Hong Kong, Hannah or generally?
Hannah Bent 21:16
Generally all over. And they also won't give it to her, their reason is that she can't follow a complex post operative drug regime because she's compromised intellectually. You know, she might have a shorter lifespan because of her disability. They have several reasons that they're giving. But ultimately, one of the main reasons is because she has down syndrome, and she can't contribute to life in their eyes in the same way that someone who doesn't have a disability could.
Nicole Abadee 21:47
How does the father respond to being told that?
Hannah Bent 21:51
Furious, absolutely furious, can't contain his anger, is just just bursting to, like, explain the injustice that he sees. And he wants to do something about it, but feels powerless.
Nicole Abadee 22:09
I noticed Hannah you said that this is something that happens a lot in real life. And that was something I was wondering about you mentioned in your acknowledgments, the various doctors that you spoke to and the advice you got from them. Did you do much research into this issue of the discrimination against people with disabilities in terms of organ transplants?
Hannah Bent 22:29
Look, I did. I have to preface this by saying I'm not a lawyer and I, everything that I know is done, been done, through my research. But it was one of, I remember the first time I read an article, I was sitting on top of the number 19 in London reading about a young girl who's denied a heart transplant because of a disability. And I just thought, well, that raises such an interesting ethical dilemma and while I was writing however, I didn't, I had spoken to a lot of doctors, and I don't want to be saying that, you know they're bad and they're wrong and they they you know, don't know what they're talking about. It's It's terrible but you know, there is prejudice. And to say that somebody can't contribute to life because of their disability is quite ignorant.
Nicole Abadee 23:25
And that that's what one of the doctors says, isn't it? To to Harper's father? What about Marlowe what's her response to this news? What does she do when she hears this?
Hannah Bent 23:35
I think initially she is, she goes into a state of shock, because she hasn't dealt with the grief she felt when her mother died. And it's bringing up a lot for her. And she doesn't want to accept that her sister is going to die. And the way she deals with that is by saying to herself that she's going to do everything she can to fix the situation just like she has done before. And ultimately, that gets her in trouble.
Nicole Abadee 24:03
So she does some research. And she reads about a woman in the US with down syndrome who won a legal battle to get a heart and lung transplant. So she initially starts by thinking that she'll continue to fight and that this is discriminatory and that she'll she'll fight a legal battle. But then she realises and I want to come back to something that you said earlier, we have in the book Marlowe realises that Hong Kong is different, that there are deeply entrenched views there about people with disabilities. And I wondered, you've touched on this already a little bit, but I wondered if that was right? If there really are particular views or attitudes in Hong Kong towards people with disabilities, and if there are, why do you think that is the case?
Hannah Bent 24:46
I'm talking from personal experience and talking from what I have lived.
Nicole Abadee 24:51
Your lived experience is that that you live with a sister who was raised in Hong Kong with you who has down syndrome?
Hannah Bent 24:57
Yes, my sister Camilla has down syndrome. And we both grew up in Hong Kong, a resounding comment that kept coming up was "your sister has done something terrible in a past life and she's paying back her karmic debts." You know, there's a scene in the book without giving too much away, where Louis, Louis stands up, and his seat is wiped, that really happened to my sister. There's so many things that have happened that I haven't included in the book and I do feel it is a an entrenched view, I think it's changing, I have to say that I think it's changing since I was since I was small. I think people are becoming more aware, you do see adults who have a disability in public more working like in a cafe, for example, that that there was none of that when I was growing up. And my mom had several experiences, medically my sister was born with a small trachea and the doctors told my mother, she got very serious bronchitis at one point, and the doctors told my mum to, don't bother treating her, just let her go. So things like this, you know, it's, it was very much a lived experience of mine.
Nicole Abadee 26:13
Now, we're not going to go into too much detail because we don't want any spoilers but a nurse gives Marlowe the possibility of hope, she tells her that there are doctors in Shanghai, who would be prepared to do the transplant for a large sum of money. I think it's $60 or $65,000. And Marlowe wonders about this and asks why there are so many organs available for transplant in China and and what is the answer to that?
Hannah Bent 26:41
Ultimately, that they come from executed prisoners.
Nicole Abadee 26:45
What about, so Marlowe, gets quite enthusiastic about this idea. She sees this as a way to save Harper. How does Harper herself feel about having a transplant?
Hannah Bent 26:57
Harper doesn't want to transplant. She believes that her heart is her heart and that if you take her heart out, you're going to remove a part of her that loves what it loves and loves Louis, loves. Marlowe, loves her family. She wants to keep her heart and because of her views about death and the way that she's processed her grief with her mother dying, she believes that when you die, you're in everything and you don't go, you're still present somehow. And she she converses with her mum in her mind and she she believes you know she's, although she doesn't want to accept her death initially, she comes to a point where she becomes okay with it. And she she believes she'll be in everything and she wants to keep her heart.
Nicole Abadee 27:46
She's very emphatic about that isn't that she, isn't she? She says lovely things like "I like my own heart. I don't need someone else's, I want to keep my own. And I want to get well with my own heart." She tells her father and she's particularly worried, she has this great love for Louis, that she's particularly concerned that if somebody else's heart is put in, that she won't feel the same love for him. Hannah, there are two complex ethical issues that arise at this point. The first is the issue about the source of the donor organs that they come from executed prisoners. And the second is an issue about personal autonomy. I'm going to focus more on the latter. So at one point, Marlowe says to herself, was I really right? So when she puts in chain, actions to try to get a transplant for Harper in China, at one point, she says to herself, "was I really right to go against Harper's wishes and save her life, possibly at the expense of another life?" I'm interested in looking at this issue of personal autonomy and I think what you clearly are raising here is whether Marlowe because Harper has down syndrome, she should lose the right to make decisions about her own health? And that seems to be to be a very significant ethical issue. Would you like to talk a little bit about that?
Hannah Bent 29:08
This is a very passionate subject or theme in the book for me because when my sister was younger, she had a very strong voice, she was very able to say how she felt and and want to be heard and she often wasn't heard. And I wanted to hear her and I wanted to give her space to be heard when there wasn't that available. So I think subconsciously that was one of the drivers behind looking at this ethical issue. But also when my sister was around 16 she got encephalitis and so she lost her ability to speak and she at one point couldn't move. And although she has some of her speech back now, I think I was processing while writing, my inability to give her her voice back. So I was thinking a lot about voice and I am very aware of voices and I wanted to be very careful of this and be very respectful of this. And I wanted Harper to have agency. I wanted her to be able to say what she wanted and I ultimately wanted Marlowe, to listen and show how hard that can be sometimes. Particularly if they have such a strong bond and Marlowe didn't want to let her go.
Nicole Abadee 30:29
And it really, it is really kind of the pointy end of that ethical issue, isn't it? Because Marlowe believes rightly that she'll die. Harper will die if she doesn't have the transplant. And it just really raises that issue even in those circumstances. Does that, even if you say that maybe Harper didn't completely understand this herself, that she would actually die if she didn't have the transplant, does that give Marlowe, her sister, the right to make these life and death decisions for her, overriding her own wishes?
Hannah Bent 30:59
Absolutely.
Nicole Abadee 31:01
And, and the significance of it, then looking at it from Marlowe's point of view, of course, there was also the other point that you have, which is that Marlowe promised her mother on her deathbed that she would always look after Harper.
Hannah Bent 31:14
And more so to that, that Marlowe, she, because she couldn't process her mother's passing and her grief, I think she felt she couldn't deal with another death in the family. And she was so close to Harper as well. So I think that felt too much for her to bear. And, and so I think that, that overrode her logic, I mean, she's a very logical person and very rational and you know, she did think this through, but I think her heart took over in the end.
Nicole Abadee 31:48
Let's talk a little bit more about your sister, Camilla. You've dedicated the book to her. She was three years, she's three years older than you, she has down syndrome and you describe her in your acknowledgments as your "muse and one of my greatest loves." There was a lovely piece that you wrote recently, for the Sydney Morning Herald about your relationship with Camilla. I just want to read you just a little extract and ask you to talk about it a little bit. You said "I have written a novel inspired by Camilla. While I was writing this novel, I had Camilla's Gypsy heart painting above my head, that colour and bright light kept reminding me to write deeper and deeper, until I found meaning and sometimes solace in the words that worked themselves onto my page. Camilla has given me the gift of vision, and of courage." Could you tell us about that Gypsy heart painting, and the significance of it for you?
Hannah Bent 32:41
Yes, I have it right in front of me. When she gave it to me, I didn't think initially I was conscious of its meaning. And as I wrote, I think I went deeper and deeper into that. Camilla, as I said, lost her voice but then she found that again, in her paintings, her paintings are intricate and beautiful, and she's quiet when she's doing them and she's thoughtful and she's brave because I mean, she's you know, she's lost a lot of her motor skills and you know, to pick up a paintbrush and and teach her hands how to use that was wonderful to just witness. She's got a resilience I think, that inspires me a lot, and really informed my writing. And there's so much each day. I mean, I don't want to say that it's not been difficult, it's been incredibly difficult living with my sister. For the majority of writing this book, I lived with her and you know, the person that she's become now is so different from who she was,
Nicole Abadee 33:57
That was a result of their encephalitis at the age of 16?
Hannah Bent 34:00
Yep she's 38 now, so it's it's kind of deteriorating for her lots of, you know, there was a daily struggle that I was witnessing, and that I was kind of being with, alongside with her, and it's very hard to hold space for someone who is going through that. Yet, when she sat and she painted, just such colour and beauty would come out of her and it would remind me that that's not gone. And I think it really did inform my writing.
Nicole Abadee 34:37
So my sense is that there's a lot of Camila in Harper, a lot of what you write about about the twirling with joy and the love of music, and the ability to look at clouds and to see shapes. Is that right? Is there a lot of Camilla in Harper?
Hannah Bent 34:53
There is a huge amount of Camilla in Harper. My sister used to be a wonderful performer and and she did Romeo and Juliet, she loves Shakespeare. So it was really nice to bring that aspect of her to life. And my sister was very funny and very outgoing and I would often write plays for her when I was smaller, and she would act in them, but she would tell me what she wanted to do and what she didn't. So she was very clear, and I wanted Harper to have that same strength as well.
Nicole Abadee 35:22
So in Harper, are you in a sense giving Camilla back her voice? Is Harper saying what you know, Camilla would say?
Hannah Bent 35:29
I think so. I think, I think initially, without realizing it, that's what I was trying to do.
Nicole Abadee 35:34
I wonder if Camilla has read your book?
Hannah Bent 35:37
I've read it to her. She can't totally read it anymore. I've read bits to her and she, she, she laughs and she's quiet at times. So I know there's a lot going on. But it's been a really beautiful process to sit with her in that way.
Nicole Abadee 35:53
You said that you realised a few years into writing the novel that you're at some level, you said, "exploring the grief I had for the sister I knew before she became ill. In many ways this novel was important to me as a deep exploration of love, grief, and also hope." Has it helped you to deal with or to manage the grief that you feel about the losses that Camilla has suffered? Writing this book?
Hannah Bent 36:19
Absolutely. I mean, I didn't, I desperately didn't want to kind of base my first novel on something so heavily drawn on an autobiographical element to my life, but it it happened and it was a really, it took me over 10 years to write. And it was a really powerful journey. And I think I was, the last month where I wrote the ending, really finessed the ending, I was heavily pregnant and I that was really what made me stop. I, I feel that it was really important for me to write something that wasn't dense in in darkness, and just grief because that's not what my sister was and that's not what I've learned from her. I think love and grief are very much linked and the deeper you go into grief, sometimes the deeper you go into love and vice versa. And so it was really important for me to honour that, and to honour the hope that my sister still has and that Harper has and that I carry as a result as well.
Nicole Abadee 37:29
Hannah, thank you so much for speaking to me today. I think this is an exceptional book. It's one of the best debuts I've ever read, and one of the most moving novels so I really wish you all the very best with it. It's not easy releasing a book into the current COVID circumstances but my sense is that your book is going to do extremely well. And I wish you all the very best with it and with your writing generally.
Hannah Bent 37:53
Thank you so much. That means so much to me. Thank you.
Nicole Abadee 38:00
Thank you for listening to Books, Books, Books. If you liked what you heard in this episode, please go to my website, nicoleabadee.com.au. To listen to all the episodes and find out more about the podcast you can also find me Nicole Abadee on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and look for my reviews in Good Weekend. You can subscribe to Books, Books, Books at Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google and all the usual places. It would be lovely if you could go to any of these platforms and give a rating or review. Thank you. I look forward to talking books with you again soon.