Hello, I'm Dr. Louise Newsome and welcome to my podcast. I'm a GP and menopause specialist and I run the Newsome Health Menopause and Wellbeing Centre here in Stratford-Bron-Avon. I'm also the founder of the Menopause charity and the Menopause support app called Balance.

On the podcast, I will be joined each week by an exciting guest to help provide evidence-based

information and advice about both the perimenopause and the

menopause.

Today on the podcast, I've got someone who actually I've respected for many years since I read a

novel that she wrote called Chocol long time ago, and it really

resonated with me, a very powerful, beautiful actual novel. So the author Joanne Harris is now in front

of me, so I'm a fangirling her, actually, but she doesn't realise. So thanks ever so much

for coming to talk today, Joanne. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Ah, so your publisher's got in touch with me, and you've written this book, which is now out, called Broken Light.

Amazing book.

I finished it last night, actually, and I used to read a lot, but now all I seem to do is

work and don't have as much time to read, which is one of my biggest regrets.

So actually, I had to read this book and I had to finish it by today.

And it was great because last night I sat on the sofa and I was just in my own world.

And how wonderful was that?

So I'm very grateful that you've given me some time to rekindle my joy of reading.

So tell me about the book, Geram. Well, it's a book about growing older

and feeling invisible and women's rage, actually. It's a bit of a metaphor and it's, there is a nod

in there to Stephen King's Carrie because Carrie, of course, achieves her supernatural awakening at

puberty and my heroine, Bernie Moon,

finds her supernatural powers at menopause instead. And so the whole thing is a kind of metaphor

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