Meet Leslie Bird, the irascible matriarch of a big bonkers Bird family, coming-of-age and to the boil, as the secrets and slights that have shaped her and her hapless husband's lives impact their children in the most profound and complex ways.

'Things She Would Have Said Herself' is a darkly funny, deeply moving novel that documents the lengths and breadths one woman will go to, to ignore her own and others' pain and what happens when she's confronted by it one sweltering Christmas day.

In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Catherine Therese about the things that have shaped her main character Leslie Bird – a life full of regret, the habit of her Catholic faith, and now menopause, along with the words that cannot be spoken in the Bird household and how humour maintains this author's sanity.