Bronia Flett: 'This is obviously all fiction'

Fríða Ísberg got this Spring series of podcasts started, with a dialogue on monologues and a reading from her short story Fingers, translated by Larissa Kyzer. We'll be welcoming Susanna Clarke, Jeremy Wikeley and PR Woods on to the podcast over the next few weeks, but right here and right now we're talking transformation with Bronia Flett.

Flett tells us how her short story Leopard, Spots fell into her lap, and explains why she wanted to put female friendship under the lens.

"We do form these close bonds," she says, "and more often than not they're our defining relationships in our lives."

Women who are very close to each other may tell each other a lot, Flett continues, but "it might not necessarily be positive conversation all the time. And we are still keeping things from each other, and we are still inventing ourselves in the presence of other people."

This constant negotiation of the self with others begins at a very early age, she argues, confessing that the argument between two children in Leopard, Spots was plucked from life.

"We're always telling other people who we think they are and should be," Flett says, "and insisting on who we are and being told, 'No, you're not'."

Maybe some of us are predisposed to "brooding on these issues", she admits, but – for the writer – "looking back for those moments where you think 'Oh, why did I behave like that? Who was that person who behaved like that?' That's where you start to get these universal truths."

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