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Hello and welcome to the Penguin podcast where we talk to writers about writing.

I'm Izzy Suttie and today I'm going to be talking to the wonderful Sally Vickers.

Sally is a novelist whose works include Miss Garnet's Angel, The Other Side of You,

the cleaner of Chartre, and the Sunday Times top ten bestseller, The Librarian.

Her latest novel, The Gardner, was released in July,

and has been described by the observer as a peon to green-fingered regeneration that is both rigorous and charming and by the Mail on Sunday as a quiet and intelligent hymn to the restorative power of nature.

We're really delighted she could join us today.

Sally, welcome to the Penguin podcast. Hi, I'm really glad to be here. Good, good. We're both glad. Well, in the book, we meet Hassee, the same age as me as I've just told you before we started recording. She's the protagonist. Hasse's the protagonist and her sister Margot. They've just moved to this big old house in the Welsh marches, which I haven't heard of, despite having a Welsh partner, following the death of their father, and it's got this big, unkempt garden.

I've just moved to house, I'm surrounded by boxes.

So at the beginning, they get there, they've got all these boxes, they've got all these

belongings.

It's so difficult to go through some of them because they've got such emotional resonance.

I really identified with Hassee in a lot of ways.

And I know you wrote this book mostly in lockdown, if not all, in lockdown.

Is that right?

Well, I'd started it just before lockdown, actually.

And I was one of those people I always feel a bit bad saying this because I really

benefited from lockdown. I had rented a cottage in the country in order to write a book,

a cottage which had a very unkempt and wild and neglected garden. And I didn't choose it entirely

for that reason, but serendipitously, it was

rather helpful. And then, of course, lockdown happened. And there I was imprisoned in my leafy

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