Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features part one of Claire Thomas discussing her new novel The Performance

Today on the show...

Three women attend a staging of Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days. Inside the theatre is air conditioned to a chill, while outside bushfires rage outside the city.

On the stage a woman is trapped to her waist inside an expanding mound, happily exploring her past through items in her bag.

Within the audience the women’s minds drift out across time. Margot considers her family, expanded to include a new grandson, even as her husband slowly moves into his old age. Ivy thinks about her world and how far she’s come from the person she was at uni. Summer wishes she could pay closer attention to the stage. Her job is to usher guests to their seats but her mind is miles away as the fires circling the city move closer to her girlfriends family home.

Join me as we discover Claire Thomas’s The Performance...