What do we inherit from the world and the people in it, and what do we do with it? In this episode, Leanne and Chelle talk with Ellena Savage about her debut novel, The Ruiners.

Pip is a university dropout working at a Melbourne lobster shack. When her long-absent father dies and leaves her $50,000, she and her boyfriend Sasha, an ambitious young scholar, buy a run-down house on a struggling Greek island. The island doesn’t turn out to be the dream they imagined.

"I wanted it to feel like a dinner party with too many people talking and too much food." — Ellena Savage

Ellena explains why the book was almost called Mummy, and why “the ruiners” covers everyone from her hapless late-twenties characters to the corporations and politicians who shape our lives. We talk about Pip’s quiet refusal to chase ambition, Sasha’s defences against his own feelings, and why Ellena wanted the novel to be loud and maximalist instead of quiet and minimal. We also get into what she saw on real Greek islands: landfills, seasonal work, and the gap between holiday fantasy and local life. She shares why recycling is a bigger political issue than our own good habits, and why small local action still matters.

Plus: why there’s a lobster on the cover. (Read the book to find out!)

About Ellena Savage

Ellena Savage is an Australian writer and the author of the critically acclaimed essay collection Blueberries. Her stories and essays have been widely published and supported by grants and residential fellowships. The Ruiners is her first novel, published in Australia, the US and the UK.

* Website: https://ellenasavage.com/

* Instagram: @rarrsavage

* Buy the book: Simon & Schuster

Love talking books with authors like Ellena? Join the Between The Lines Book Club to read along with us, meet authors at live events, and connect with a community of readers who see reading as self-care. BOOK MY SPOT

How do friendships survive when the people we love are experiencing the very thing we're desperately longing for, avoiding, grieving or questioning?

In this episode of Between The Lines, we're joined by New Zealand actor, journalist, playwright and author Elisabeth Easther to discuss her novel Seed.

The story follows four women navigating very different experiences of fertility, pregnancy and motherhood. Hilary desperately wants a baby. Maggie is happily navigating life as a single mother. Shelley is returning to work after having two children. And Virginia, who has spent her career caring for other people's babies, suddenly decides she wants one of her own.

Their lives may look very different, but their experiences collide in ways that are funny, messy, uncomfortable and deeply human.

Elisabeth shares how Seed grew from her own experiences of pregnancy loss and fertility treatment, alongside the very different reproductive experiences of women around her. While she was trying desperately to become pregnant, friends were experiencing unexpected pregnancies, miscarriage and abortion. Some felt unable to tell her what was happening in their own lives because they wanted to protect her.

That experience planted one of the most compelling ideas in the novel: even among close friends, the things we don't say to protect one another can sometimes create distance instead.

We talk about how fertility can completely change the dynamics of friendship, the strange transition from spending years trying not to become pregnant to suddenly desperately wanting pregnancy to happen, and the enormous variety of experiences hidden behind the seemingly simple question of whether someone wants children.

And despite the subject matter, Seed is also very funny. Elisabeth brings warmth and humour to experiences that are complicated, painful and sometimes absurd.

• The personal fertility experiences that inspired Seed

• Pregnancy loss and Elisabeth's experience of fertility treatment

• The many different ways women experience pregnancy and motherhood

• Why friends sometimes hide difficult news in an attempt to protect each other

• How fertility and parenting can change friendships

• Comparing ourselves with friends whose lives have taken different paths

• The complicated politics of parenting and even playdates

• Why humour belongs alongside grief and difficult experiences

• Writing four women whose lives and choices are very different

• Why the characters don't need identical happy endings

• How Seed travelled from novel to award-winning play and back to novel again

• Elisabeth's experience narrating the audiobook herself

• The value of editorial feedback and allowing a story to change

• Why authentic characters need flaws, uncertainty and hope

Seed is a funny, compassionate and refreshingly honest exploration of friendship, fertility and the enormous gap between how we imagine our lives will unfold and how they actually do.

Is it ever too late to discover a different version of yourself?

In this episode of Between The Lines, we're joined by Australian author Mikki Brammer to discuss her wonderful new novel, Good Joy, Bad Joy.

For more than eighty years, Joy and Hazel have been best friends. But while Hazel has lived boldly and adventurously, Joy has spent her life doing what was expected of her: being a devoted wife, loving mother and good neighbour.

When Hazel is given only months to live, Joy begins to wonder whether playing it safe has meant missing out. What starts with a determination to live a little more boldly soon involves mischief, petty crime and a very late coming of age.

But underneath all the fun is a deeply thoughtful story about friendship, ageing, identity and the ways we can continue to change throughout our lives.

Mikki describes the novel as an ode to lifelong friendship, very late bloomers and the thrill of dabbling in a little mischief. We talk about the great romance of platonic love and the friends who don't just complement us, but show us parts of ourselves we haven't yet discovered.

We also explore Joy's relationships with her husband and daughter, and the realisation that a lifetime spent avoiding conflict hasn't necessarily protected her relationships. Instead, saying the difficult things may be exactly what allows those relationships to deepen.

• Joy and Hazel's extraordinary eighty-year friendship
• Why Mikki wanted to write about the great romance of platonic love
• Being a late bloomer and having more than one "coming of age"
• The difference between living through someone else's adventures and discovering what you're capable of yourself
• How our experiences with our own parents can shape the way we parent
• Conflict avoidance and why keeping the peace doesn't always create closeness
• Joy's unlikely friendship with her neighbour Rowan
• Ageing, invisibility and the boxes society places people in
• Challenging our assumptions about other people
• Regret as an invitation to change rather than something simply negative
• Why small, everyday regrets can matter more than the grand ones
• The idea of being "cautiously reckless"
• Why a quiet life can be every bit as meaningful as one lived loudly
• Mikki's first novel, The Collected Regrets of Clover, and the themes connecting the two books

This is a conversation about friendship and ageing, but ultimately it's about possibility: remaining curious about ourselves, other people and the lives we might still choose to live.