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Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work. 

In this episode we’re talking to Erin Hortle about her novel, The Octopus and I. 

The Octopus and I is a stunning debut novel set on the Tasmanian coast that lays bare the wild, beating heart at the intersection of human and animal, love and loss, and fear and hope.

‘The Octopus and I is a novel about a breast cancer survivor called Lucy, who becomes intensely fascinated with some female octopuses that live down at Eaglehawk Neck on the Tasman Peninsula. There's a particular element of them that she's fascinated by, [a] really bizarre localised phenomenon (which isn't necessarily normal octopus behaviour) where these female egg-carrying octopuses try to drag themselves across an isthmus to try to get to the open ocean. [Here] there are sea caves for them to be able to extrude their thousands of eggs, which they then fan water on for up to a couple of weeks until the eggs hatch, and then the female octopus dies.’

The Octopus and I is out now through Allen Unwin.

Transcript

Download a PDF transcript of this episode here.