Chris considers Kala with the help of YA author, creative writing academic and former fiction editor Dr Penni Russon. Walsh's novel has potent ingredients: homecoming, teen nostalgia, the dead girl trope, and a mystery to be solved. There are also supernatural elements. As such, Walsh spins many plates and Chris suggests it's necessary for him to shed some ideas to help Kala move along. Penni and Chris debate to which of these ideas the novel is most committed: does it intrigue us with devices (such as ghosts) only to leave them aside? The novel begins as literary fiction, but does it end as crime fiction, and could it also have been a YA novel? Contains spoilers.

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The Irish Books Podcast is supported by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Monash University. Produced by East Coast Studio.