Content Warning: This recording contains discussion relating to mental illness and suicide.

‘Most of us have had a chaotic relationship or two…the experience of loving someone is rarely not dramatic.’

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For February that debut is Laura McPhee-Browne’s Cherry Beach, out now from Text Publishing.

Hetty and Ness, best friends since childhood, have left suburban Melbourne for the first time to live in Toronto. Hetty is charming and captivating, the life of the party. Ness is a wallflower, hopelessly in love with her. As winter freezes the lakeside city, the dark undercurrents of Hetty’s character become ever stronger, and Ness may lose the person she loves more than anyone else in the world. Laura discussed the novel with our First Book Club host Ellen Cregan at our event at Bargoonga Nganjin, North Fitzroy Library on 13 February.

This is an edited recording. Thanks to Laura McPhee-Browne, Text and  Yarra Libraries.

Our theme song is Broke for Free’s ‘Something Elated’.

Further reading:

Read Ellen Cregan’s review of Cherry Beach in our February Books Roundup.

Read Laura McPhee-Browne’s Shelf Reflection on her reading habits and the writing that inspires her.

 

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