Good everyone, Welcome to conversations. My guest today is Natasha Lester, now one of our best selling authors. We say that because she's made it big in America. She's a New York Times best selling author and she's prolific. She writes nearly a book a year, and the beautifully presented books romantic as well. Her latest book is a bit more than a romance. It's a story of a French heroine and the book is called The Mademoiselle Alliance. Natasha Lester
joins us from Perth. Natasha, welcome to the program. How are you.
I'm very well. Thank you so much for having me.
I want to say the Mademoiselle Alliance.
French accents working this morning, won't wait.
Tell us about the Mademoiselle Alliance. The hero, the heroine of this story.
So she was the only female leader of a French resistant network during the Second World War, which you would think would be a pretty remarkable achievement, and that would mean that she would become someone whose name would be quite well known after the war. But it hasn't turned
out to be that way. I mean, as often happens with women in history, they can get a little bit lost in the subsequent years, but possibly also because after the war, Chale de Gaulle created this Companion de la Libera film, which was an award for the people he considered to be the most instrumental in helping to bite for France's freedom throughout the war years. And there are one thousand and thirty eight people he put onto that list. Two and thirty two of them were men. Unsurprisingly, so
only six were women. Marie Madeline for Card, despite the fact that she led the largest resistance network in France throughout the war, was not on that list, but two of her subordinates were, so that's possibly why she was a little forgotten for quite a while. But I'm hoping to change that with this book.
Now you write fictional history, I think that's the term, and I mean I love it. Frederic Forsyth is one of my favorite author, and he wrote fictional history basically. So tell us about Marie Madline for carm and how did you come across her and what inspired you to write about her.
I mean, I read a lot about the war because my books often tend to be set around that time period. So I considered myself to be reasonably cognizant of the people and events that had happened during that time, and I'd come across her name only once in that whole time.
I'd been kind of reading about the Second World War, and that, I guess was what drew me to look into her history a bit more, because I thought, well, maybe she's one of these women that I like to write about who have been forgotten by history, and maybe there's a bit more to her story than there's one mention. I mean, when you're and you're kind of reading about resistance heroes, you know, Jean Mullin obviously is the name
you come across time and time again. But no, Madeline for Card was one I'd only come across this one time. So I went and scoured the internet to buy a copy of her memoir, which is out of print now. It was published decades ago. Got my hands on a copy of that, started to read, and I wouldn't believe the things that she had done during the war, when you know, she was just an ordinary woman. She wasn't
a military person. She had no training an espionage or anything that she did, but she just took it on because she had to. I thought, Okay, there's so much here. I want to try my hardest to bring this together into a story that will be a novel but draws as much as possible on the true events that happened to her.
So her biography was written in French. Lash to denoy.
Sorry. As soon as one start talking French, I dub it to French.
Translation. Is is that right?
Correct? That's right? Yes?
You You obviously speak fluent French, almost not quite.
I wouldn't ever say I spoke fluent French. No, A French person wouldn't say I spoke fluent French. But I speak good enough French, yes, to be able to read her memory in French.
Well, look, we'll come to you in time. Okay. Well let's talk about Marie Madeline for cards. So her life was extremely interesting. I mean she seemed to she seemed to be an adventurous when yes, didn't when women would adventurous.
Yeah, And I think that's because of her childhood and her parents. Largely. Her father worked for the for the A Marie a Merchant Marine Service and he was posted to Shanghai, so they lived in the French concession of Shanghai. That's where Marie Madeleine grew up, so you can imagine what kind of childhood you might have in such an at that time, you know, exotic kind of place. She was kind of left to roam the streets for Shanghai with her nanny and her brother and her sister. They
had quite an unfettered childhood. Her parents were quite liberal in their outlook in terms of who their children mixed with and the kinds of adventures their children were able to have. And then he went back to Paris because their father sadly died. And while she was in Paris, she fell in love. At age seven, she was going to be a concert pianist of all things, and she
ends up being a spy. But so she practiced the piano for eight hours every day, was on track to become a concert pianist, and fell in love at age seventeen with a military man who was about ten years older than her, and she, I mean, she loved him, but she was also quite attracted by the fact that his next posting was to Morocco, and because she'd always lived in exotic places, Morocco seemed like a fabulous place
to go and live as well. So then she went and lived in Morocco for a few years with her husband, had two children, learnt the Arabic language. She was a bit of a polyglot. She could speak numerous languages. She helped her husband with a little bit of espionage work in Morocco. In fact, he worked with the French intelligence service there, and she also helped out at a clinic, women's clinic, and she ended up delivering babies and things like that in Morocco in the late nineteen twenties, early
nineteen thirties. So this is Marie Madeleine in her sort of early twenties, and I think those experiences formed the woman she became later on. When she returned to Paris in the nineteen thirties, did.
She have much to do with it because there was the old Jeering uprise, was the French had trouble with civil wars And was her husband involved in any event.
Yes, so he was part of the intelligence service sent to Morocco to really report on what the tribes as they were called at the time, were doing and whether there was going to be any more uprising or any more unrest after the Riff War, which had obviously being problematic for France. So that's where she became useful to him because she could speak Arabic. She was this beautiful woman who people liked to converse with, so she was able to gather information for her husband in his role.
You really like this lady, don't you read? I read in the author's notes that you had to overcome your hero worship before you can write the book.
Yeah, I did. I mean, can you imagine she was for her time? Was she loved car rallying? She was a pilot, which women just weren't pilots in the nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties, it was unheard of. She's lived in all these amazing places, She's learned the language, absorbed herself into the culture, and then she suddenly answers her country's call when she needs to. So yeah, I'm pretty much in awe of her.
What was she doing when war breakout? And when I say war breakout, when the Germans occupied Paris, I suppose that's when it really hit home. Were you able to get a picture of what her life was like then?
Yes? So when she returned to Paris, she separated from her husband, took her two children back to Paris in the sort of mid nineteen thirties, and became a journalist for Radio sid Day. A job there was to interview women who were doing remarkable things in the art in all the different fields, you know, women like her, basically women who were ignored by the other more traditional conservative
French newspapers. And at a party in nineteen thirty six, she met a man called Jeorge Lustano Lacal and he went by the codename Navar, so we'll use that because that's much easier to say. And he was really he admired her intellect and her journalistic skills, and he knew something of the fact that she had learned a little bit of intelligence work when she was living in Morocco, and so he invited her to join him in setting
up his newspaper. And his intention with that newspaper was to bring to life, bring to the eyes and ears of the French government and the French people that Hitler was preparing for war, because at this time in nineteen thirty six, nobody believed that he was doing that. So her first job that he gave her was to drive to Belgium to collect some secret dossias that had been smuggled out of Germany by a friend that exposed the
true intentions of the German high command. So she drove up to Belgium, collected those documents, came back to Paris, thaw them published in the newspaper, and realized that that was what she wanted to do. She wanted to be a part of trying as much as possible to help her country to avoid this looming threat of Hitler.
As you just saying, it's it's hard to imagine that there's elements of fiction in them, because, as you say, you're telling me what she did. So how much of the book is fictional and does it lose any of the reality of what actually happened.
So the main things that you have to do when you're an author dealing with and a resistance network that number three thousand people and pretty much every second person's name was Onrea or Jan and they also had real names and code names, is you've got to reduce the cart of characters. So that's the main part where things get a bit fictional, where you start to combine people.
You might take the things that two or three people did and give them just to one person, just to simplify things, because three thousand people is a lot for anyone to keep their mind around when you're reading a novel. But everything that Murray Madeline did is basically in the novel. Obviously, I've had to take out a few of the different intelligence projects that she worked on because there was simply too many her What she did was so vast it's
impossible to encompass in a book. And the thing that I probably have fictionalized the most is to really drill down into what her motivations were for doing what she did. I can only guess that that really she doesn't. Her memoir is very detailed, but she doesn't like to get very personal in her memoir, and when she was interviewed while she was alive, once again, she didn't like to get very personal and talk about her children and her loves and that kind of thing. So you've got to
imagine your way into those aspects of her life. That that's the part that I would say, is I hope trueish to the person she was based on everything that I've read, But nobody can ever know really what was going on in her mind.
We need to take a break. I want to find out more about Marie Madline Fucard. We speaking to Natasha Lesta, who's our New York Times bestselling author, very prolific, so much want to talk about back shortly. My guest on Conversations today is Natasha Lesta. Natasha's become one of our best selling authors, recognized in America by New York Times even has her books have separate covers when they go
to they're published in America. I don't know why, but her latest book is called The Mademoiselle Alliance, about a lady who worked with the French resistance called Marie Madeline for Card. Now, Natasha, there must be something about in the way my mind thinks, but this is a lady who was French, and she had lovers and five different children. In the end, my mind is saying that she was promiscuous. Am I am I way of being there or just thinking like a true male?
Yeah, it's interesting. I actually read an article that talked about this, that was written in contemporary times about why is it that you Marie Madeline for Card might be so to be like that simply because she was a woman. And look, I don't all the research that I've done, I don't think she was at all. I think she was absolutely faithful to her first husband and he was just a different kind of person to her. He was much more formal, much stricter. She was an adventurous woman
who loved to talk to people. She was very social, and she had this charithma that I think you could probably mistake for something other than what it was. I think it was just, you know, some people walk in to room and they command the room, and some people find that compelling, and other people are jealous of that, and so a lot of the different accounts come from whether you were drawn to that or you wanted to
have that yourself, I think. And so she certainly fell in love during the war with her second in command, and they were deeply, deeply in love. That's the one thing you can glean from her memoir. She doesn't mention him tenderly often, but when she does, the adjectives she uses to describe him, you know, he's magnificent and he's hers, and you just know you can feel that yefuent feeling.
And he obviously, tragically did not survive the war. So after the war, she then married again, and she stayed with her second husband for the rest of her life. So I don't think you could call her promiscuous at all. I think you could just say that she lived a normal life.
Well, she died in nine, in eighty nine. Were you able to I mean a children would have survived her, I'm sure did. Are we able to interview any of the children?
No, I haven't interviewed any of her children, although I have recently heard from her god son, which is very interesting. So there was a man called Kenneth Crane who was her sixter liaison during the war. And this gentleman that I've heard from is Kenneth Crane's son. And so Marry Madeleine and Kenneth Crane became very close during the war, as you would because he was the one who was fighting for her with the British and fighting for alliance
with the British. She met him when she went to London. She stayed in London for several months during the war. So it's interesting to be able to talk to people who've actually spoken to Marie Madeline when she was alive and who knew her. Yeah, and I had done that before with previous books, and it's really quite a lovely experience actually.
So he remembered it obviously, because he's oh, yes, absolutely with me. Yeah, he was her godson? Correct, that's right, Yes, and he contacted you.
Yes, that's right.
What sort of a thrill was that?
Oh, it's fabulous. I love it when people do that. So yeah, just like I say, just to be in contact with someone who knew her when she was alive is remarkable.
Do we have to read the book to find out what she did later in life when the war rendered?
So I don't cover that part of her life because it was already quite a long book and I wanted to just take that one part of her life and focus on that. So I think that there's very little about her on the internet. Really. Lynn Olsen wrote a fantastic biography about her, which is probably the most accessible source for most people. That's called Madame Foucard's Secret War. But once again she summarizes Marie Madeline's life after the war,
but there's not that much about it. She does talk about a reunion ceremony that Marie Malon organized with the families her remaining agents that had an aeroplane fly in just like it would have during the war when they were landing planes by moonlight to bring them supplies and agents from London, etc. And that's quite a lovely and moving anecdote to read about in Lynn Olson's biography.
Well, we have to buy the book The Mademoiselle Alliance. I don't know why I want to say all.
In French, it would be that's correct.
So let's talk about you. Why are so many of your books based in France?
So I learned the language in high school just because I enjoyed it and I was resonably good at it, and I continued my French language studies after high school and I ended up working for Laurel Paris, which is a French company. Obviously, so I had French lescense there, met a lot of French people, learned a lot about the French culture, and I think that that's part of why I've become very interested in French history. It's come
through a love of the language. And obviously that does make it easier when you are researching French history to be able to read documents in French, because everything you look at in the archives in France is in French. And I just I love the culture, I love the history, I love the country. I've traveled there a lot. My family loved country. To my fourteen year old son has just spent eight weeks there on a student exchange program and we're having a French student come and stay with
us in May. So we just we just all love it.
Your sons speak French? Did he speak that? Did he pick the language up?
Yeah, so he was studying it before he went, but he's become much better since he returned. We now have a weekly dinner conversation in French. Everyone has to speak French. My husband speaks no French, so he doesn't participate much in that. My daughter's learning and my son is now really good. So it's quite fun exciting.
That you didn't set out to be a writer, and maybe that's what you thought you could become, but when you left school there there was no passway for you. So explain a bit more about you, your career pathway. You speak that you talked about working for Laurel.
And yeah, so I always wanted to be a writer. My mum has kept all these books and poems and stories that I wrote when I was a kid. But here in Perth, when I left high school there were no brand writing degrees at university. So you know, if you wanted to be a doctor, you went and did a medical degree and then you became a doctor, or if you wanted to be a teacher, you did the education degree and you became a teacher. But it was like, well, how do I become a writer? I had no idea.
So my dad, who's an accountant, I went to him for career advice, which I don't know why I did that, but so he suggested I do a bat for a commerce I think he was secretly hoping I'd become an accountant and take over his accounting practice. So sorry, dad, that didn't quite work out. But in commerce, I noticed there was a stream for marketing and public relations and that involved writing to some extent. So I thought, okay, well I'll give that a try because I don't know
what else to do. So I studied that. Then I did work in marketing for about ten or twelve years for companies like Laurel. I worked for Big M flavored Milk in their marketing department for a number of years. I don't know whether you have that in South Australia. Yeah, So all kinds of random, fast moving consumer goods kind of marketing role. And then I decided to finally do something about the writing dream. Once we've gone to Melbourne for my work. We came back to Perth with my
husband's work. I went back to university then and studied creative writing because now there was a creative writing degree, and was lucky enough to get my first book that I wrote as my master's thesis, that one that Take Hunger for Award and was published by Fremantle Press, who are a wonderful local West Australian publisher.
We'll come to that. You mentioned you write poetry. There's a little story about you. One of your poems was published and you've got one hundred dollars for it. I wonder whether you can recite that poem for us as we go to the break.
But I really don't think I could. I know it was called from this Day Forward. That's about the only thing I remember about, and it was it was free verse, so I didn't even rhyme.
Well, set you on the path, there's no doubt about that. Natasha Lester is my guest, folks. The book is called The Mademoiselle Alliance about an heroic French resistance fighter you would call it or agent back shortly, Welcome back to conversations, everybody. If you just turned in we're speaking to Natasha Lester. And Natasha is a Western Australian lady who's made it big in the international world of writing and her books
have been published in America. Her latest one is called The Mademoiselle Alliance and about this heroic French lady called Marie Madeline Foucart. We spoke about that. We're talking a bit more about you, Natasha, and some of the other books that you've written. So you always dreamed of being a writer when you left school, there was no pathway for it, so you go I was intrigued for working for Laurel, a French company. When you sort of skipped over that part, how glamorous was it?
Like everything, it sounds much more glamorous than it really was, although there were definite moments of glamours. So one of our py jobs was every time we had a new product to come out, a new lipstick or a new muscara, we would So we were based in Melbourne, we would go to Sydney and present it to the beauty editors in Sydney. And it wasn't just you didn't just stand up and say, oh, here's a new lipstick. There was
a whole event organized around it. So, for example, we were promoting an anti wrinkle cream one time, and so we hired a whole lot of those wrinkly sharp hay puppies and we had the beauty editors playing with these wrinkly puppies while we were talking about this anti wrinkle creame. And another time we were promoting this like high shine now polish, So we hired this beautiful harbourside mansion in Sydney which was all high gloss marble throughout to kind
of reflect the high Shine sort of theme. And so we did all these very glamorous fun events and that part of it was glamorous. The rest of it was you know, number crunching and presenting to the French when they came out, which was very rigorous, very hard work. You know, in French they were very exacting. That was a lot of midnight kind of finishes around that time, but we did get a lot of free product in return.
I literally had more lipsticks than any woman could ever use in an entire lifetime, so that was also very fun.
So whilst you're working for Laureol, do you still have this burning ambition to be a writer? Yeah?
I did, And in fact, I was doing a little bit of dabbling, I guess you could call it. On the side, I enrolled in a very early formation of an online course that was just a very casual sort of thing. But what that did was that just got me to start writing again because I had, like I say, I had always written, but then once I began working full time, I'd gotten out of the habit of that. So it got me back into the habit of that, and that reminded me of how much I enjoyed doing that.
So that, I guess was the impetus behind giving it an actual go rather than just dabbling at it on the side I'm working full time. Was saying okay, when
we had to move back to Perth. Was rather than go out and look for another marketing job, which I knew was never going to be quite the same as what I've had at Loureal because head officers at that time just weren't located in Perth, was to say, okay, why don't I take a year off working full time and go to university, try the writing thing out, find out a if I'm any good at it. Because it's all very well to think you want to be a writer,
but what if I was terrible at it? I could easily have been, And also whether I would really enjoy it if I devoted myself to it full time, because that's another thing, you know, It's the idea of being a writer is very different to the actuality of being a writer. So I did my year. I discovered that I loved it, and my poem was published, So I must have had some talent hidden somewhere in there. So I continued on after that.
You had three babies in five years. Now, most women, maybe I'm being too general here, but but they'd been. I mean, it's so hard having kids, and particularly when they're young. I mean, how did you navigate that process?
Yes, I think I blocked part about out of my mind because it was just so hard. But I also think that you know, when you really want to do something, you do make yourself do it.
And I remember the one moment I do remember very vividly from that time is about six months after my first child been born, and I realized I hadn'tritten a
single word in that whole six months. My whole six months have been devoted to trying to get her to sleep, and you know, trying to sleep myself and all the usual things that mums go through, and I thought, okay, well, the rest of time will unfold in this exact same way unless I do something about it right now, And so that day I made about that every time she went to sleep, I would write something. Even if it was only for ten minutes. It didn't matter, because ten
minutes are right now. Was better than no writing, wasn't it. If I took enough ten minute blocks and wrote in enough of those, then at some point in the future I would have a book, whereas if I didn't write at all, I would never have a book. So from that moment on, that's what I did. Luckily, she did turn out to be in the end a very good sleeper, and I could get a good hour and a half at most days of writing after she was sort of
about eight months old. And that was just the practice I got into then, and it has been and I look back on that, trying to squeeze writing into those small chunks of time, and at the time it felt, you know, terrible and counterproductive, But now I look back and think it was the best thing I ever did, because it taught me disciplined and in fact, writing is so much about the discipline of sitting down and getting
the words out. You can have all the ideas about scenes and dialogue and characters when you're out running, when you're washing the dishes, when you're in the shower, when you're driving, but those ideas don't mean anything unless you take the time to sit down and write them into sentences and paragraphs and chapters. So that's that's what I learned from that time.
I heard you say in an interview that you're writing Thrives in Chaos. Can you explain that for me, please?
Yes. So I'm a very organized person. I think with three children, you have to be. When you've got three kids and working full time. If you're not organized, your life becomes chaos. Then I can't tolerate that. I'm a bit of a control forak. I have to say. I love a good list. So when I sat down to write my first book, I just assumed that my writing would be like that. I'd read about all these writers who planned out their books before they started to write them.
They had a chapter by chapter outline, and then they took that outline and they sat down and they just kind of filled in those chapters and every time I sat down to write an outline or a plan, nothing would happen. I didn't know what to write. And luckily, because I was writing my first book as part of my university degree, I had this lovely supervisor who just said,
just write anything, any scene that comes to you. Doesn't matter if it isn't the start of the book, it doesn't matter if you don't know where the scene goes. You just got to write aho lot of scenes and eventually you'll start to get a feel for the shape of the book. So I was a bit skeptical, i've got to say, because that seemed like a weird thing to do, just write a scene that could go at the end of the book first, like, that's not what
an orderly person would do. But I took her advice, and it turns out she was very wise and she absolutely knew what she was talking about. So it is it's this chaos of just writing down scenes out of order, not knowing whether you'll ever use them, whether they'll ever go into the book, really where the book is going, but just learning to be comfortable with that very chaotic creative writing process. So that's what I have learnt to do over the course of you know, nine or so books.
Now, so where do you store these random tracks of prose?
A lot of them are in little notebooks, so on my desk, I have, you know, a million and one note books lying around. But then I also use a writing program called Scrivener, which lets you just kind of record them into little blocks of scenes. So that is really helpful. I think that was designed for chaotic writers. And I'm thankful that I discovered that, you know, quite a few years ago now.
So you never sit down and write the book from start to finish.
Never, never. Yeah, And I was really fascinated. I was lucky enough to interview Michael Robotham a few years ago, and because he writes, you know, crime stories which have clues and so you'd think you'd plan those out right. And I was very heartened when he said to me that no, he did exactly the same thing that I did. I was like, Okay, well, if it was good enough for Michael Robotham, then it's good enough for me then.
But you have another two more children. I mean, I cannot get my head arount this. Like, I know how busy it is for mothers with the kids and a husband. Probably not a demand. He doesn't have to be a demanding husband, but he's got needs. I mean, I just can't. I just can't work out how you can still maintain a writing career throughout that.
Well. I think it's one of those cases that you learn to let some things go. So I will never win an award for housewife of the Year because looking after the house is not something that I will. I realized I was never going to get to my deathbed and think I wish i'd back into the health more so I have. There are some things that you let go. I will never be the kind of mum who turns up at school with a plate of freshly baked ape
or anything like that. But there are other mums who are really good at that, and thank God for them because I am not that person. So you learn to just let God the things that you can't do and look after the things that you can, which for me priorities are you kids and writing, and so long as they survive into adulthood, which they are getting there so that's good, almost a tick for that one, and so long as the book gets written, then I'm pretty happy with that those outcomes.
Natasha Lestra's my guest folks were speaking to her in Perth the lad This book is called them Mademoiselle Alliance, one of there must be ten or eleven books so far. We're talking a little bit more about a couple of those after the break. Thank Shorty, Welcome back to conversations. We're speaking with Natasha Lester, who's joined us from Perth. Natasha, I've seen photos of you in your garden promotional it you wear the most beautiful dresses in the most beautiful setting.
Is it true you have a collection of vintage gowns? Is that true?
Yes, I do. I've become a bit of very conscious of sustainability over the last few years. Australians are the second largest consumers of textiles in the world, would you believe? And I'd like to do whenever I can to not contribute to that statistic. And also I'm obsessed with fashion history, so if I can combine sustainability and my love of
fashion history, then I think that's wonderful. So I do spend a bit of time scouring the internet for beautiful vintage pieces of clothing, and I collect a little bit of it. I wear as much of it as I can because I find it really beautiful. And yeah, those
they're just a bit unique and a bit special. And again, being very interested in history and stories, I always feel like every piece that you buy comes with its own kind of story, and I like to think about who might have owned that gown, on what their life was like when I'm wearing it.
Well, who did own some of those gowns?
Yeah, I don't know. I will never know because I was by them from sort of third party sellers. So I'd love to buy one one day that came with a secret cash of letters or something like that. That's the thing. Only a novel that's a dream of.
Right, Which leads me to a question about a book you're owd in or published in twenty twenty three, The Three Lives of Alex and Pierre. Now, having watched that, I was captivated by the Was it netflix the Christian to your many? Yes? Many?
Oh?
Yes? The new look You tapped into that of course with that book, the Three Lives of Alex san Pierre? What was it about? Tell us a little bit about that book.
So I was drawn to fat that book because there's a very iconic photo of Christian Dure taken just after his first collection, and he's sitting on the grand staircase that the meson Christian Dure and the grand staircase of this beautiful, well known, lovely staircase. And he's sitting there surrounded by his senior management team. And if you look at that photo, almost all of them are women. There's
only like two men in that photo. And I thought, wow, that's so unusual for nineteen forty seven for a man to be surrounded by so many women in senior management positions. And I want to want to find out more about those women. How did that work? Who were they, what did they do? And I realized that he's, in fact, he's four of his most senior positions, so the director of his of sales, the director of his aelier, the director of his studios, and he is assistant designer. They
were all women. And I wanted to write about this man who had found these incredible women who are sadly unknown. You know, everybody knows the name Christian Dull, but nobody knows the names of the women who surrounded him and who I kind of argue in the book as much as you can present an argument in a novel. You know, he wouldn't have been as successful as he became without
those women around him. So again it was a case of trying to bring to light some women that perhaps have been left out of the pages of the history books, and perhaps who shouldn't have been left out of the pages, whose names maybe should have been on the awning.
Besides Christian Duws, he seemed I don't know what you engage from a mini series, but he seemed a really nice guy.
Yeah, he was. His staff loved him, he would He's very kind, very generous, the very quiet, unassuming kind of man, not at all the kind of person you would think of when you look at sort of contemporary fashion designers who are all kind of ego and mania and you know, crazy temperament.
Amongst that collection of dresses that you have, is there, Christian, Yes, I do.
I've got two do your pieces? One is actually more contemporary. It's from raf Simon's was one of the creative directors of the House of Due around twenty twelve, and I thought his work for Duel was beautiful and I had long dreamed of owning one of his pieces, and I was lucky enough to pick that up a couple of years ago. In fact, when the three Lass of Alexanpierre came out and I wore it for my book launch, which I thought was a perfect kind of moment. It
was meant to be. And I've got another beautiful nineteen sixties red door mini dress from the East Saint Laurent years which is pretty fabulous.
Where did you get that? How did you pick that up?
So there's a lot of vintage selling happening on the internet right now. So I follow a lot of people on Instagram who do that. One of them, her shop is called Timeless Vixen. She's a woman based in the US, and she actually dresses a lot of celebrity four things like the Oscars, but she also sells pieces to just you know, nobody's like me. And as soon as I saw it on her website, I was like, right, that is mine.
Well what sort of money do you pay? Do you pay a premium price for it compared to what they would have sold initially?
No? Not really, And depends on how iconic the piece is. How like, if it's been photographed on someone famous like Nicole Kidman, for example, then you would absolutely pay a premium and I wouldn't be able to afford those kinds of pieces. They go for tens of thousands of dollars, but just you know your average kind of do your you know, you could probably get for a couple of thousand, which you know it's not cheap obviously, and you wouldn't
buy a lot of those. But if it's something that you really love, then I don't mind having a bit of a splurge every now and again.
I did read to research the Three Lives of alex san Pierre. You had to do the Swiss train trip. Was that absolutely necessary?
My gosh, absolutely necessary. My husband has this joke that I choose the places to set my books in based on I want to travel to next And I always say, well, you know, why wouldn't you if you had the choice.
So I did go over to Europe with my husband, so he got to come along as well and my three children, who I call my intrepid researcher system, and we did the beautiful train ride in the snow in winter through Switzerland and into Italy, which was just spectacular, one of the best experiences of my life in fact.
And you obviously speak the language makes it easy.
Well, it certainly helps.
Yes, Do you have writers who have been your inspiration.
Definitely, so Margaret Atwood, the Canadian writer, who I think it was a bit of a goddess. There's definitely been a huge inspiration for me throughout my lifetime. I mean, I'll never write a book anywhere near as good as a book like hers. Like a Blind Assassin, which won the Book of Prize, one of my favorites of hers. But I always think that if you have writers whose sentences and story and techniques that you was buyed to try to achieve, that can only help to make you
a better writer. So she's one of them. Joan Didion, the American essayist, is another favorite of mine. She just writes these perfect sentences, so for prose style, she's someone I absolutely admire, and closer to home, Australian Kate Morton. She's made it an amazing career out of writing these epic, sweeping kind of novels. So I really admire the way that she writes and the way that she's been up at a Ford cheer career in Australia.
You did give a big plug to Barbara Kinsolvers. Tell us why Demon Copperhead. It's the name of a person I thought it must have been a snake.
Or yeah, it sounds a bit like that, doesn't it. But what she's done is she's taken David Copperfield, so Dickens's book and written a contemporary kind of version of that with this who starts out as the boy and becomes a man called Demon Copperhead, and she uses it to explore the opioid Cristis in America, which sounds quite brim and certainly there are places of the book that are quite dark and quite heavy going, but it's very detailed, moving portrait of this one man's life and these moments
when someone could have stepped in and changed things and made his life very different. And though everyone's life is full of those moments where you make a choice and it might be the wrong choice and because of that your life goes down a certain path. So definitely will quite recommend. And I love the fact that because the book's done so well, she used the money to open a rehab center in America to help people going through
drug treatment programs. So an amazing woman who's you know, out there making a difference in the world, which you know, given that those are the kinds of women I write about. That's the kind of personalized as well.
Now, Natasha, I'm reading all these places which you're appearing doing talks and bookshops and all these all over Australia, but none in South Australia. I know, what can you explain that?
So we wrote hate dates in and out for each tour. So last tour I came to South Australia and I loved that because it was the first time I'd been to South Australia on tour and we didn't go to Queensland on the last tour. So this time Queensland is in and South Australia is out. But next book I will definitely be in South Australia.
Paul, great chat, Natasha. I hope the book goes really well for you. I mean it's obviously you're big in America. That must that must be pleasing for you as well, so it's hard selling books these days. I hope it goes extremely well for you.
Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's really lovely to chat to you.
Natasha. Lester was my guest. Folks. The book is called The Mademoiselle Alliance the Paris Code. You'll be absorbed in there's no doubt about it. So Natasha, thanks so much, thank you, and thank you for joining us folks.