{"id":104336,"date":"2019-07-22T15:35:11","date_gmt":"2019-07-22T04:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=104336"},"modified":"2019-07-22T15:35:12","modified_gmt":"2019-07-22T04:35:12","slug":"listen-sophie-green-on-the-shelly-bay-ladies-swimming-circle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2019\/07\/22\/listen-sophie-green-on-the-shelly-bay-ladies-swimming-circle\/","title":{"rendered":"LISTEN: Sophie Green on The Shelly Bay Ladies Swimming Circle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In need of a new pick for your next book club meeting? Aussie author Sophie Green has just the thing – she’s back with a brand new novel called The Shelly Bay Ladies Swimming Circle<\/a><\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her previous novel The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club<\/a><\/em> was well and truly a breakout hit. Set in the remote Northern Territory during the \u201870s, it was the story of five women who found strength and solace in the book club they formed together. It was cosy, genuinely heartwarming, and empathetic (in other words: perfect book club material<\/em>), and Sophie’s latest novel promises to be just as good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shelly Bay<\/em> follows the same sort of structure that made Fairvale Ladies<\/em> so beloved: four women find friendship and common ground through their love of swimming. It\u2019s a definite change of scenery for this author, but one that hits a note much closer to home – Sophie practically grew up in the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShelly Bay<\/em> has been inspired more by my lived experience, because I\u2019ve grown up in Sydney near the water and so I\u2019m fortunate that I did grow up near the water and swim from day dot basically,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result is a novel that\u2019s quintessentially Australian, filled with moments and places that readers everywhere are bound to recognise in their own memories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI love to write about our natural world, I think that Australians respond to stories about the natural world and I also think it\u2019s important to put that in stories (at least for me),\u201d Sophie says. \u201cAs a writer, it\u2019s a good challenge to try and capture that and capture that feeling of being in the natural world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Author Sophie Green (left) with Ben Hunter.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

With The Shelly Bay Ladies Swimming Circle<\/em>, it\u2019s not just a place that Sophie is evoking – it\u2019s also a time. The book is set in 1982, when Paul Hogan dominated our TV screens and The Man From Snowy River<\/em> dominated our box office. We\u2019re experiencing a bit of an \u201880s and \u201890s resurgence in Aussie fiction of late (Felicity McLean\u2019s dreamy The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone<\/a><\/em> comes to mind), and nostalgia can be a powerful tool for any writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat movie (The Man From Snowy River<\/em>) had such a huge impact. So it\u2019s just fun for me, really, to go looking for those things as well and just have little moments that readers might respond to,\u201d says Sophie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophie came in to Booktopia\u2019s offices to sign some copies of The Shelly Bay Ladies Swimming Circle<\/em> and to sit down for a podcast with Ben Hunter and myself. We talked all things Shelly Bay<\/em>, as well as Sophie’s life in publishing and her ardent love of country music (she runs a blog about it<\/a> on the side!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listen to our podcast with Sophie Green below and grab yourself a signed copy of The Shelly Bay Ladies Swimming Circle<\/a><\/em> before they run out!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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