Mm

... because it's so, it's such a powerless feeling.

Um, and it's, it's, it's a feeling which feels very inherently malign, even though it's neutral in a moral sense.

Um, and I think that that's, it's, it's very interesting to me as something to write about and to watch because I think that there is always, I think it's something that actually exists in The Exorcist quite a lot, is there's always this sense that there is a perfect behavior that a person who is grieving or a person that is anticipating grief can somehow hit.

Um, and that if they do that, everything will somehow be okay, whereas actually there is no script for anything that's happening [laughs] in The Exorcist, obviously.

But anything that actually happens within grief or the anticipation of grief most of the time because everybody is going through something that is entirely kind of personal to them, even if anybody else has ever, say, seen a parent go through dementia or seen a partner get ill or all of those things.

And I think that that's, it's a feeling that I think the movie evokes incredibly effectively.

Mm

I would love to hear from the prologue to kind of give everyone a taster of what's in store.

Yeah, of course.

So just for background, the majority of this novel is told from three perspectives of three sisters, Isla, Irene and Agnes.

But there are intermittent little bits largely told from the perspective of the city in which they live.

And then there is also the prologue, which is just sort of a floating perspective.

You're not quite sure who it is.

So I'm just going to read from that before.

Why was it important for you to write about that dynamic?