Best-selling author Monica McInerney is a fan of Canberra. She has family here. And she also has an inkling to get to Floriade at some point. She's been to the nation's capital "loads of times" on book tours but has never been able to schedule a tour around the long-standing flower festival.
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Such is her desire that she's even slipped a reference to the event into her latest book The Trip of a Lifetime.
"Two of the characters in the book come to Floriade, they're planning a driving trip around Australia and they want to come here especially for that."
McInerney was in Canberra on Monday, with events at the Civic Library and Harry Hartog bookstore in Woden. She loves touring, meeting fans, meeting readers and people who love books as much as she does.
"I'm really social by nature and solitary by career so it's like I'm plugging myself into a people charger," she says. "In some ways I take them all back with me to my attic in Dublin."
The Trip of a Lifetime is set in the Clare Valley in South Australia and in the Irish countryside, flamboyant 85-year-old Lola Quinlan is planning her first trip back to her Irish homeland since she emigrated 60 years ago. Joining her on the adventure are her grand-daughter Bett and her great grand daughter 13 year old Ellen.
"Maybe because I'm thinking about it more with this book but I've really noticed, maybe because the book is about three generations of a family, that there's been lots of women at my talks, grandmothers, mothers and daughters who've all read my books.
"They pass them back and forth amongst each other and that means so much to me."
The Trip of a Lifetime will resonate across the generations to anyone who has ever found their family exasperating. With her trademark warmth and humour, McInerney explores themes of migration, ageing, travel, home, secrets, rifts, rivalries and reunions.
When in Canberra she enjoys walking around the lake, "darting between libraries and bookshops".
The Trip of a Lifetime is published by Michael Joseph and is available now.
