Kathryn Ryan interviews Mia Farlane on Radio New Zealand

Mia Farlane’s radio interview for her UK-NZ novel And How Are Things With You (Mākaro Press) — with Kathryn Ryan on Nine To Noon, RNZ ❤️ 30 mins listening time 🎧

Here is RNZ’s intro text to this interview:

"And how are things with you?", can be polite question that's often a perfunctory response to someone asking the very same thing.

It's also the title of New Zealand writer and translator Mia Farlane's new book.

Her first novel Footnotes to Sex came out in 2009, and she won the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival's Fiction Prize in 2022 with an adapted excerpt from And How Are Things with You.

The novel follows Franny, an introverted Kiwi based in London, who's become obsessed with researching suicide.

Despite the subject matter, it's a darkly funny book, thanks to Franny's wry observations of the people and situations around her. Mia is from a distinguished literary family: her mother is novelist Marilyn Duckworth, one of New Zealand's most important writers, and her aunt was poet Fleur Adcock.

Mia joins Kathryn to talk about forging her own path as a writer.