The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.

Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast. This week I'm very pleased to be joined by Susanna Moore,

who's the American novelist probably best known for her erotic thriller in the cut,

but she's joined me this week as a memoirist, the author of a new book called Miss, well, in the UK

we'd call it Miss Aluminium. I imagine Susanna calls it Miss Aluminum, which is an account of a sort

of period in her life from her young womanhood to, I guess, her late 20s or early 30s.

It's probably where it ends, isn't it?

Can you start by telling me a bit about, or the listeners at least, a bit about the sort of frame of the book, this chunk?

Is it just a sequence of time or was there a kind of structuring principle

that made you think that is why you're making this one section of your life part of the book?

For years, people had been telling me that I should write about the time that I spent in Los Angeles

and Hollywood. And I was always a bit resistant

and had already written about some of that time

in my first three novels,

which were about growing up,

which were very autobiographical.

And I felt I had done it and didn't really want to write about famous people

of whom I, with whom I had spent a lot of time in part because of the work that I did

and then later the man that I married.

I thought it was a little vulgar I was very

hesitant to do it and of course there has been some criticism of course some some people have said

oh do you only write about famous people and of course the answer is no and when I so I thought, okay, I will take those 10 years and

...