Hello everyone, I'm Gilbert Cruz and this is the Book Review Podcast. Joining me this

week is the novelist and screenwriter Eleanor Kent. In 2013 she released her second book,

The Luminaries, a sprawling story set in 1866 New Zealand during that nation's gold rush

period. Critically claimed it would go on to win the Book of Christ, making her the youngest

ever winner of that award, which is something that she'll have to hear or read about herself

until the end of time. Her latest is Burnham Wood, a literary thriller set in present-day New Zealand

about a group of eco-activists, an American tech billionaire, and the plot of land that they

come both to share and clash over. Eleanor, thank you for being here today to talk about the book.

Thanks for having me. So I'll start not talk about the book, but very quickly, is it weird to have a

phrase like the youngest ever winner of the Booker Prize attached you so early in your career,

it really is going to be the thing in every article and every, it's just it has to be there.

Until somebody younger wins it, I always mentally add on so far to the end of this sentence.

A fair point. How has that made you think about your career, if at all?

It's a funny kind of thing to have to contend with in a way because nobody can help how old they are

at any time. It's one of the things we don't have any control over. One of the biggest literary

influences in my life has been Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, actually. It was a huge influence on

the luminaries in lots of ways, which Mary Shelley wrote when she was 19 years old. So I kind of think

that I'm pretty much over the hill compared with that example. It's something that I have thought

about a lot, especially with writing Burnhamwood, how my generational placement or positioning

has kind of conditioned me. The book is designed generationally. There are three generations that

are represented in terms of the points of view. And I wanted to really explore the generational

differences in terms of how we deal with certain contemporary problems that were all kind of

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