7PM INTERVIEW: Monica McInerney on writing, family, and the joys of a middle childhood

by |December 17, 2014

Warm, witty, fun and clever, author Monica McInerney would be a great best friend to have. How nice to be able to turn to Monica for advice about family, love, life and friendship whenever we needed it! She is so heart smart!

Alas, we can’t all have Monica in our life. Thank goodness we have her novels. They are the next best thing to having a 24hr on call Monica… and they have sold hundreds of thousands of copies here and in the UK.

On her recent Australian tour, Monica sat down with John Purcell to talk about her new novel, Hello from the Gillespies…

Click here for more details or to buy Hello from the GillespiesHello from the Gillespies

By Monica McInerney

For more than thirty years, Angela Gillespie has sent friends and family around the world an end-of-the-year letter titled ‘Hello from the Gillespies’. It’s always been cheery and full of good news. This year, Angela surprises herself – she tells the truth.

The Gillespies are far from the perfect family that Angela has made them out to be. Her husband is coping poorly with retirement. Her 32-year-old twins are having career meltdowns. Her third daughter, badly in debt, can’t stop crying. And her ten-year-old son spends more time talking to his imaginary friend than to real ones.

Without Angela, the family would fall apart. But when Angela is taken from them in a most unexpected manner, the Gillespies pull together – and pull themselves together – in wonderfully surprising ways.

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About the Contributor

While still in his twenties, John Purcell opened a second-hand bookshop in Mosman, Sydney, in which he sat for ten years reading, ranting and writing. Since then he has written, under a pseudonym, a series of very successful novels, interviewed hundreds of writers about their work, appeared at writers’ festivals, on TV (most bizarrely in comedian Luke McGregor’s documentary Luke Warm Sex) and has been featured in prominent newspapers and magazines. ​Now, as the Director of Books at booktopia.com.au, Australia’s largest online bookseller, he supports Australian writing in all its forms. He lives in Sydney with his wife, two children, three dogs, five cats, unnumbered gold fish and his overlarge book collection. His novel, The Girl on the Page, was published by HarperCollins Australia in October, 2018.

Follow John: Twitter Website

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