139. Gerard Reve - The Evenings

Joining John and Andy for this episode are novelist Marie Phillips and novelist, screenwriter and poet Joe Dunthorne. The book we are discussing is Gerard Reve's debut novel De Avonden aka The Evenings: A Winter’s Tale, which caused a sensation when published in the Netherlands in 1947 and is now considered a classic. In the words of Herman Koch, it may be 'the funniest, most exhilarating novel about boredom ever written'. Reve was only 24; he went on to have a long, successful and frequently scandalous career but only a handful of his books have been translated into English.

Joe Dunthorne is novelist and poet and was born and brought up in Swansea. His debut novel, Submarine, was translated into twenty languages and made into an award-winning film. His second novel, Wild Abandon, won the Society of Authors’ Encore Award. His latest is The Adulterants. His first collection of poems, O Positive, was published by Faber in 2019, and his tremendous short story All the Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything to Everyone, appeared in the same year as Rough Trade pamphlet..

 Marie Phillips is an author whose works include the international bestseller Gods Behaving Badly, a first novel that was also translated into twenty languages. The Table of Less Valued Knights was longlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2015 and Oh, I Do Like to Be..., a seaside reworking of Shakespeare’s play The Comedy of Errors, was published by Unbound by 2019. Reviewing the book in the Spectator, Andy called it ‘fast, clever and significantly funnier than the original’. Marie is the co-writer of the BBC Radio Four series Warhorses of Letters. She recently spent several years living in Amsterdam, where she trained as a professional storyteller.

Also in this episode John digs Bella Bathurst's new book Field Work: What Land Does to People & What People Do to Land and Andy surveys Landscapes of Detectorists and finds some prose to treasure.

Books mentioned:

Gerard Reve - The Evenings; Childhood: Two Novellas; Parent’s Worry
Joe Dunthorne - Submarine; Wild Abandon; The Adulterants; O Positive; All the Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything to Everyone
Marie Phillips - Gods Behaving Badly; The Table of Less Valued Knights; Oh, I Do Like to Be…
Innes M. Keighren & Joanna Northcup (eds) - Landscapes of the Detectorists
Bella Bathurst - Field Work: What Land Does to People & What People Do to Land
Peter Blevgad - Imagine, Observe, Remember
Tessa Norton & Bob Stanley - Excavate! The Wonderful & Frightening Word of the Fall
J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
Thomas Bernhard - Concrete

Other links:

'Midwinters Horn' and 'Riepe Garste' from Folk Songs and Dances of the Netherlands (Folkways)
'Des Winters Als Het Regent' from Dutch Folk Songs by Jantina Noorman (Folkways)
Hancock's Half Hour: A Sunday Afternoon At Home
Gerard Reve reads the audiobook of De Avonden
A Windmill in Old Amsterdam’ by David Bowie and Stevie Ricks
The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983) on Prime

138. Betty MacDonald - The Plague and I

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Joining John and Andy for this episode are Natasha McEnroe, the Keeper of Medicine at the Science Museum in London, and novelist Lissa Evans, Backlisted's old friend and the show's Original Guest, both of whom are Betty MacDonald superfans.

Natasha is the Keeper of Medicine at the Science Museum in South Kensington, London. Her previous post was Director of the Florence Nightingale Museum, and prior to this she was Museum Manager of the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy and Curator of the Galton Collection at University College London. Before that she was Curator of Dr Johnson’s House in London’s Fleet Street and has also worked for the National Trust and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Natasha was editor of Medicine: An Imperfect Science (Scala, 2019), co-editor of The Medicine Cabinet (Carlton, 2019) and co-editor of The Hospital in the Oatfield – The Art of Nursing in the First World War (Strange Attractor, 2014). Her research interests focus on 19th-century public health and the history of nursing. She is a Trustee of Dr Johnson’s House in London and of the Erasmus Darwin Museum in Lichfield and is a Freeman of The Worshipful Company of Barbers. 

 Lissa Evans writes for both adults and children when she's not guesting on Backlisted Pod.Her recent novel,V for Victory - which is out in paperback from Black Swan in June - is set in London at the end of the Second World War and completes a loose historical trilogy which began with Old Baggage andCrooked Heart. This is her seven-and-a-halfth Backlisted – for as well as appearing on the very first episode (on J.L. Carr’s A Month in the Country), Lissa has been a guest on episodes 36, 78, 90, 108, and 125 discussing variously the work of Patrick Hamilton, Edith Wharton, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust and Geoffrey Willans & Ronald Searle, as well as the one-off mini-cast on George Saunders’sLincoln in the Bardo.

The Plague and I (1948) is the author's unflinching and hilarious memoir of the nine months she spent as a patient at a TB sanatorium in the Pacific North West of America. We discuss this book and the eventful life of its million-selling author (The Egg and I, Anybody Can Do Anything, Onions in the Stew), are exposed to a selection of TB-related public information films and music, and there is even a 'communicable disease in literature' quiz.

Also in this episode Andy is grabbed by Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper (1943) by Donald Henderson, reputedly Raymond Chandler's favourite crime novel; while John has been enjoying Olivette Otele's recently published history African Europeans, which traces a long African European heritage via the lives of individuals both ordinary and extraordinary.

Books mentioned:

Beetyy MacDonald - The Plague and I; The Plague and I (audiobook); The Egg and I; Onions in the Stew: Anyone Can Do Anything
Donald Henderson - Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper
Olivette Otele - African Europeans: An Untold History
Lissa Evans - Crooked Heart; Old Baggage; V for Victory
Natasha McEnroe - Medicine: An Imperfect Science; The Medicine Cabinet; The Hospital in the Oatfield
Sathnam Sangera - Empireland
David Olusoga - Black and British
Paula Becker-Brown - Looking for Betty MacDonald
Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain

Othe links:

Victoria Spivey - TB Blues
Defeat Tuberculosis (1950)
Rodney (1950)
Galton and Simpson interview
The Egg and I film trailer
Claire Dederer’s ‘Her Great Depression’ in Columbia Journalism Review
Jimmie Rodgers - TB Blues

137. Laurence Sterne - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

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Published in nine volumes between 1759 and 1767, and usually abbreviated to Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne's cock and bull story - has entertained, baffled, enchanted, infuriated and inspired readers ever since; needless to say, at Backlisted we love it.

Joining John and Andy to celebrate this great, hilarious, digressive novel - or is it a series of great, hilarious, digressive novels? - are award-winning children's author Katherine Rundell and our friend Frank Cottrell-Boyce, who adapted Tristram Shandy for the big screen in 2005 as A Cock and Bull Story. As a bonus, you'll hear Steve Coogan, the star of that film, read from the book(s) - exclusively for Backlisted listeners.

Also in this episode, Andy enjoys a "relentless excursion into style" with Fun in a Chinese Laundry (1965), the autobiography of film director Josef von Sternberg; while John takes a sounding of Jennifer Lucy Allan's fascinating new book The Foghorn's Lament: The Disappearing Music of the Coast

Books metnioned:

Laurence Sterne - The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; A Sentimental Journey & Other Writings
Martin Rowson - The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Ian Campbell Ross - Laurence Sterne: A Life
Katherine Rundell - Rooftoppers; The Explorer; The Wolf Wilder
Frank Cottrell Boyce - Millions; The Astounding Broccoli Boy; Sputnik’s Guide to Life on Earth; Runaway Robot
Josef von Sternberg - Fun in a Chinese Laundry
Jennifer Lucy Allan - The Foghorn’s Lament
T. Coraghessen Boyle - Stories
Sue Townsend - The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾

Other links:

The Laurence Sterne Trust at Shandy Hall
BBC World Service idents over the years aka ’Lillibulero’
Dexys Midnight Runners, ‘Dance Stance’
Desert Island Discs archive
Wesley Stace sings C18th ballad of ‘Tristram Shandy’
A Cock and Bull Story (Michael Winterbottom, 2005)
Martin Rowson interview re: his graphic novel adaptation of Tristram Shandy
Hunky Funky Woman by Tristram Shandy (1973)

136. Clarice Lispector - Água Viva

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Like several of Lispector's remarkable novels, this slim book caused a sensation when first published in her native Brazil in 1973. Exquisitely written and daringly abstract, Água Viva stands as one of its author's masterpieces with Near to the Wild Heart (1943), Family Ties (1960), The Passion According to G.H. (1964) and The Hour of the Star (1977). Joining John and Andy to explore this truly iconic author's life and work are writers Wendy Erskine and David Keenan.

Wendy Erskine's first short story collection, Sweet Home, was published by Stinging Fly in 2018 and Picador in 2019.  Her next one, Dance Move will be out in early 2022.  David Keenan is the author of four novels: the cult classic This Is Memorial DeviceFor the Good Times (which won the Gordon Burn Prize), The Towers The Fields The Transmitters and Xstabeth. His fifth novel, Monument Maker, will be published by White Rabbit Books in August this year.

Also in this episode, John has been reading Peter Blegvad's recent book Imagine, Observe, Remember, ‘a way to look at different ways of looking and seeing’ from the wonderful Uniform Books; Andy, meanwhile, digs Excavate! The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall, a new anthology of essays, artwork and ephemera edited by Tessa Norton and Bob Stanley.

Books mentioned:

Clarice Lispector - Água Viva; Near to the Wild Heart; The Passion According to G.H.; The Hour of the Star; Collected Stories
Benjamin Moser - Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
Wendy Erskine - Sweet Home
David Keenan - This Is Memorial DeviceFor the Good Times;The Towers The Fields The TransmittersXstabeth; Monument Maker
Peter Blegvad - Imagine, Observe, Remember
Tessa Norton and Bob Stanley - Excavate! The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall
Sylvia Plath - Ariel
Fernando Pessoa - The Book of Disquiet
Samuel Beckett - Company / Ill Seen Ill Said / Worstward Ho / Stirrings Still
John Keats - Selected Letters

Other links:

Django Reinhardt - Brazil
Maria Bethânia ler trechos do livro “Água Viva” Homenagem a Clarice Lispector, Panorama (1979). Direitos autorais: Fundação Padre Anchieta (TV Cultura).
Benjamin Moser on translating Clarice Lispector, comments edited from this interview
TV interview with Clarice Lispector - São Paulo, 1977 (English subtitles)
The Fall, Totale's Turns (1980)
Gregorian chant in Portuguese
João Gilberto - Águas de Março (1973)

135. Halldór Laxness - The Fish Can Sing

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This episode focusses, The Fish Can Sing, a novel by the great Icelandic Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness, first published in 1957 as Brekkukotsannáll (which roughly translates as ‘the annals of Brekkukot’). Joining Andy and John to discuss this book and the remarkable eighty-year career of Laxness, is the novelist and poet, Derek Owusu, winner of the 2020 Desmond Elliott Prize for That Reminds Me. The episode also covers Andy’s exploration of the Blitz through Frances Faviel’s memoir Chelsea Concerto while John gets granular with language in his reading of Brian Dillon’s audacious Suppose a Sentence.

134. Penelope Mortimer - Daddy's Gone A-Hunting

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Joining John and Andy to discuss Penelops Mortimer's fearless and pioneering autobiographical novel, Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958) along with Saturday Lunch With The Brownings (1960) and The Pumpkin Eater (1962), plus the latter's subsequent film adaptation, are critic and broadcaster Lucy Scholes and New York Times daily books editor John Williams.

Lucy Scholes writes about books, film and art for a variety of publications including The Financial Times, the DailyTelegraphNYR Daily and Granta. She is the Managing Editor of the literary magazine The Second Shelf: Rare Books and Words by Women, and hosts Ourshelves, a podcast from the legendary feminist publishing house Virago. She also writes ‘Re-Covered’, a monthly column for the Paris Review about out-of-print and forgotten books that shouldn't be. She previously appeared on Backlisted  episode no. 14 to discuss The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns; Backlisted no. 49 on Look at Me by Anita Brookner and most recently, episode no 88 on Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald.

 John Williams is the daily books editor and a staff writer at the New York Times, where he has worked since 2011. Before that, he spent several years on the editorial side of book publishing and founded and ran the literary website The Second Pass. John’s previous appearance on Backlisted was on episode no 117 on William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Also in this episode John is moved by Brown Baby, the new memoir by Nikesh Shukla; and Andy takes a break with Always A Welcome: The Glove Compartment History Of The Motorway Service Area by David Lawrence.

Books mentioned:

Penelope Mortimer - Daddy's Gone A-HuntingI; Saturday Lunch With The Brownings; The Pumpkin Eater; About Time;: An Aspect of Autobiography; About Time Too: 1948 - 1979
Nikesh Shukla - Brown Baby: A Memoir of Race, Family & Home; The Good Immigrant
David Lawrence - Always a Welcome: The Glove Compartment History of the Motorway Service Area
Elizabeth Jenkins - The Tortoise and the Hare
Margaret Drabble - The Millstone

Other links:

James Mason reads the menu at the Regent's Park Zoo cafeteria, from The Pumpkin Eater:
Yootha Joyce invents Twitter at the hairdressing salon, from The Pumpkin Eater:
The Pumpkin Easter (Jack Clayton, 1964)
Bunny Lake is Missing (Otto Preminger, 1965)
Gustav Mahler: ‘Ich bin die welt abhanden gekommen’ Soprano Janet Baker, conductor Sir John Barbirolli.

133. Josephine Tey - Miss Pym Disposes

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This episode focusses on Josephine Tey's classic mystery Miss Pym Disposes (1946), recorded as part of Aberdeen's Granite Noir festival on February 19th 2021. Joining John and Andy to explore the life and career of Josephine Tey AKA Gordon Daviot AKA Elizabeth MacKintosh (her real name) is Val McDermid, bestselling author and Tey's fellow Queen of Crime.

Val has sold over 17 million books, is translated into more than 40 languages and had her work made into a string of hit TV series. She’s won the CWA Gold Dagger, the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger, the Grand Prix des Romans D’Aventure, the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award, the Stonewall Writer of the Year, the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year Award and – uniquely – has been shortlisted in four different categories in the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Awards. In 2016 she received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction award at the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Harrogate Crime Festival and in 2017 she was elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Her best-known crime novels are the Wire in the Blood series, featuring clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan, but Val has also created three other series including one featuring cold case detective Karen Pirie.  Her latest Karen Pirie novel Still Life was published in paperback by Sphere in February 2021 and there’s new hardback novel, due in August, which will launch a brand-new series. 

Her online video series, Cooking The Books: Recipes from the Fiction Kitchen has been a lockdown hit; she’s a lifelong Raith Rovers Football Club supporter; and – last but not least – Val McDermid is the lead singer in a band – the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, possibly the only band made up of crime writers ever to play at Glastonbury.

Tey was the author of a series of highly successful novels, and film and TV adaptations, including Brat Farrar, The Franchise Affair and The Daughter of Time, yet she remains something of an enigma. As you'll hear, we thoroughly enjoyed immersing ourselves in her work and learning more about her from Val. Please note: this audio version of the podcast is longer and contains more material than the Granite Noir video webcast. If you would like to watch the original, it's currently available via the Granite Noir website.

Books mentioned

Josephine Tey - Miss Pym Disposes; Brat Farrar; The Daughter of Time; The Franchise Affair; To Love & Be Wise; The Singing Sands
Jennifer Morag Henderson - A Life of Josephine Tey
Val McDermid - Still Life; Resistance (graphic novel); Resistance (audiobook)
Ali Smith - Summer
Mick Heron - The Slough House; Down Cemetery Road
Mavis Doriel - Death on the Cherwell
Dorothey L. Sayers - Gaudy Night
Gladys Mitchell - Laurels are Poison
P.D. James - Shroud for a Nightingale

Other links:

This episode on video at Granite Noir
Granite Noir website
Republic of Consciousness Prize
Val McDermid’s Cooking the Books on YouTube
Pathe News - Now For A Couple of Minutes in Inverness (1935)
Paranoiac trailer (Hammer Films, 1962)
The Franchise Affair, BBC1 serial, 1988

132. Joseph Roth - Job

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Joining John and Andy to explore this austere and powerful novel, first published in German in 1930 as Hiob: Roman eines einfachen Mannes (‘the story of a simple man’) are Keiron Pim, whose much-anticipated biography of Joseph Roth will be published in 2022, and a returning Backlisted guest, bibliomemoirist and playwright Samantha Ellis. Roth was a prolific yet enigmatic writer - his other books include The Radetzky March and The Legend of the Holy Drinker - and this episode takes a long, considered look at his (often chaotic) life and work, and where Job fits into both.

Keiron Pim is an author, freelance journalist and creative writing tutor, whose last book was Jumpin’ Jack Flash: David Litvinoff and the Rock’n’Roll Underworld, the first biography of one of the most extraordinary characters in Sixties London, published by Jonathan Cape in 2016. Previously he wrote a popular science book about dinosaurs, and edited and introduced Into the Light: the Medieval Hebrew Poetry of Meir of Norwich, the first translated edition of  poems by a 13th century writer from the city where Keiron lives.

Samantha is the author of a reading memoir, How to be a Heroine, or what I’ve Learned from Reading Too Much and  a biography of Anne Brontë called Take Courage. She also writes plays including How to Date a Feminist, which has been produced in London, Gdansk, Mexico City, Istanbul and in several theatres in Germany—in one of which it was staged in a boxing ring.

Also in this episode, Andy shares a reading by Salena Godden from her acclaimed new novel Mrs Death Misses Death, while John is beguiled by the fragmented visions of Max Porter's The Death of Francis Bacon.

Books mentioned:

Jospeh Roth - Job: The Story of a Simple Man; The Radetsky March; The Legend of the Holy Drinker; What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-33
Kieron Pim - Jumpin’ Jack Flash: David Litvinoff and the Rock’n’Roll Underworld'; The Bumper Book of Dinosaurs; Into the Light: The Medieval Hebrew Poetry of Meir of Norwich
Samantha Ellis -  How to be a Heroine, or what I’ve Learned from Reading Too Much: Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life; How to Date a Feminist
Max Porter - The Death of Francis Bacon; The Death of Francis Bacon (audio); Lanny
Salena Godden - Mrs Death Misses Death; Mrs Death Misses Death (audio)

Other links:

Radetzky-Marsch, Op.228 by Johann Strauss Sr by USSR State Orchesta
Phil Kelsall MBE plays the Radetzky March on the Wurlitzer Organ at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool
MIke Oldfield plays the Radetzky March live at the Stadthalle, Vienna, Austria, April 20th 1980
Radetzky March 303
’A Dudele’ sung by Mordechay Hershman, 1921

131. Locklisted - Teenage Books Special

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This Locklisted special is the companion piece to the previous episode on books we read as children. It was recorded in August 2020 and was previously available exclusively to supporters of our Patreon.

Here we cover our teenage years and the tricky transition into ‘adult’ readers. Much of the conversation is dominated by of our re-reading of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, but you also get John falling for James Joyce at seventeen (via Wilbur Smith), Nicky moving from Puffin Plus to Douglas Coupland, a digression on the horror novels of Stephen King and and a haunting reading by Andy from a story by Graham Greene. 

Backlisted is entirely funded by the contributions of our Patreons. If you would like to hear all past episodes of Locklisted and support Backlisted in the process, please sign up as a Locklistener or Master Storyteller at patreon.com/backlisted.

As far as possible, all the books listed below are supplied via the Backlisted shop on bookshop.org and a proportion of the price helps support the podcast.

Books mentioned:

J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye; Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter & Seymour: An Introduction
Wilbur Smith - The Sunbird
Jack Higgins - Luciano’s Luck
Stephen King - It; Misery
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings
Erich von Daniken - Chariots of the Gods
Liz Berry - Mel
P.C. Wren - Beau Geste
Shaun Hutson - Slugs
Graham Greene - The Portable Graham Greene
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Colin MacInnes - Absolute Beginners
Douglas Coupland - Generation X
Ian McEwan - The Cement Garden
Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory
James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Sam Selvon - The Lonely Londoners
Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea
Victor Bockris - Up Tight

Other links:

Stand by Me (Rob Reiner, 1986)
The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
The Velvet Underground - ‘I’m Not a Young Man Anymore’

130. Steve Tesich - Karoo

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Karoo is a posthumously-published cult novel by screenwriter and playwright Steve Tesich. Joining John and Andy to analyse this dark and hilarious tale of a Hollywood script doctor's apocalyptic decline and fall are journalist and podcaster Sali Hughes and novelist John Niven (who previously guested on Backlisted episode 9 discussing Martin Amis's The Information).

Sali Hughes is a journalist, presenter and broadcaster, specialising in beauty, women’s issues and film. She has written for more or less every quality magazine and newspaper from Vogue and the Daily Telegraph to Cosmopolitan and Empire and has been Beauty Editor on the Guardian since 2011. She has published three bestselling books, the latest of which, Our Rainbow Queen, published by Square Peg in 2019, was a colourful and witty journey through eight decades of royal style and her new book Everything is Washable & Other Life Lessons is published in September by Fourth Estate. Sali is also a podcaster- The Beauty Podcast With Sali Hughes debuted at number one across all categories.

John Niven was born in Irvine, Ayrshire and worked in the music industry for a decade before leaving to write fiction.  His bestselling debut novel Kill Your Friends was published in 2008 and later made into a feature film, scripted by Niven and starring Nicholas Hoult and James Corden. He has gone on to publish ten novels including The Second ComingStraight White Male and his most recent, The F**k It List. He continues to work as a screenwriter and his latest film The Trip starring Noomi Rapace and Aksel Hennie arrives on Netflix this autumn.

Also in this episode, John enjoys This Sporting Life: Sport and Liberty in England, 1760-1960 by Robert Colls, a social history of the English and their relationship to sport, while Andy recommends Unquiet Landscape, Christopher Neve's recently-republished study of the English imagination in 20th-century landscape painting.

As far as possible, all the books listed below are supplied via the Backlisted shop on bookshop.org and a proportion of the price helps support the podcast.

Books mentioned:

Steve Tesich - Karoo; Summer Crossing
Sali Hughes - Our Rainbow Queen; Pretty Honest; Pretty Iconic; Everything is Washable & Other Life Lessons
John Niven - Kill Your Friends; Straight White Male; The Second Coming; The F**k It List
Robert Colls - This Sporting Life: Sport and Liberty in England, 1760-1960; George Orwell: English Rebel
Christopher Neve - Unquiet Landscape
Joseph Heller - Something Happened
John Updike - Rabbit, Run
Saul Bellow - Herzog
John Irving - The World According to Garp
Michael Tolkin - The Player
Elmore Leonard - Get Shorty
Brett Easton Ellis - American Psycho
Nora Ephron - Heartburn
Richard Ford - The Sportswriter

Other links:

Film director Jean-Pierre Berckmans discusses Karoo, 2013
Steve Tesich's acceptance speech for Best Original Screenplay at the 1980 Oscars
Steve Tesich on Letterman, 1982
Breaking Away (1979, screenplay by Steve Tesich)
The World According to Garp (1982, screenplay by Steve Tesich)

129. Rosemary Tonks - The Bloater

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For this discussion of Rosemary Tonks fascinating third novel,The Bloater - first published by the Bodley Head in 1968 - Andy and John are joined by two enthusiastic fans of Tonks’s writing: the author and critic Jennifer Hodgson (who appeared on episode 61 to discuss Berg by Ann Quin) and the comedian, Stewart Lee.

The Bloater is long out of print, unfortunately, but the discussion also covers Tonks’s remarkable poetry, her friendship with Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, her eccentric career in fiction, radio and theatre, and her gradual retreat from the world.

Also in this episode Andy replenishes his enthusiasm for Elizabeth Taylor with her (bizarrely underrated) novel The Wedding Group (1968), while John extols the virtues of Andy Charman's Crow Court, a debut novel of rare quality, set in Wimbourne Minster in Dorset in the mid-19th century and published by Unbound.

Backlisted is entirely funded by the contributions of our Patreons - if you would like to join them, you can do so at patreon.com/backlisted.

As far as possible, all the books listed below are supplied via the Backlisted shop on bookshop.org and a proportion of the price helps support the podcast.

Books mentioned:

Rosemary Tonks - The Bloater; Emir; Opium Fogs; Businessmen as Lovers; Love Among the Operators; Way Out of Berkeley Square; The Halt During the Chase; Bedouin of the London Evening: The Collected Poems
Andy Charman - Crow Court
Elizabeth Taylor - The Wedding Group; In a Summer Season; Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont
Ann Quin - The Unmapped Country; Berg
Stewart Lee - March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019
Adam Thorpe - Ulverton
Graham Macrae Burnet - His Bloody Project
Benjamin Myers - The Gallows Pole
Sarah Perry - The Essex Serpent
Paul Kingsnorth - The Wake
Alice Jolly - Mary-Ann Sate, Imbecile
B.S. Johnson - Christy Malry’s Own Double Entry
Brigid Brophy - The Snow Ball
Penelope Gilliat - Mortal Matters
Nathalie Sarraute - Tropisms

Other links:

Rosemary Tonks on the Bloodaxe Books website
Neil Astley's 2014 Guardian article on Tonks's life
The Woman Who Quit, Michael Hofmann's 2015 easy on Tonk’s work
The Rosemary Tonks page at neglected books..com
Rosemary Tonks interview with Peter Orr (1963)
Rosemary Tonks reads ‘Badly Chosen Lover,’ 1963
Radiophonic workshop sounds via WikiDelia, a comprehensive Delia Derbyshire resource
The Borodin Quartet plays Borodin, String Quartet No 2, 1973
Rosemary Tonks: The Poet Who Vanished, 2009 BBC R4 documentary (currently unavailable)
Stewart Lee’s website
Trailer for King Rocker by Stewart Lee & Michael Cumming (Sky Arts 6th February, 9pm)
Obituary for the poet Val Warner in the Guardian (2020)

128. Locklisted - Children's Books Special

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This Locklisted special on children's books was recorded in August 2020 and was previously available exclusively to supporters of our Patreon at patreon.com/backlisted.

Join us on a journey through time and space as John, Andy and Nicky discuss the books they loved as children (so actually no pubs were involved or even mentioned on this occasion). The discussion covers the importance of libraries, the Proustian aroma of parquet flooring, the challenges of the display spinner, the significance of the Puffin Club, the utility of book tokens and the joys of early audio books. The books mentioned make for an eclectic mix and include Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner, The Eighteenth Emergency by Betsy Byars, the Hitchhikers series by Douglas Adams, I-Spy books, the epic sweep of Sweet Valley High, Great Northern by Arthur Ransome, The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne, the audiobook of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (as read by Glenda Jackson), the audiobook of Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, comics such as Mandy and Look-in, the sublime Peanuts collections by Charles M. Schulz and last but definitely not least, Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters by Malcolm Hulke.

We so enjoyed making this episode that we recorded a sequel on our favourite teenage reading, which will be shared here soon. Backlisted is entirely funded by the contributions of our Patreons - many thanks to them! If you would like to hear all past episodes of Locklisted and support Backlisted in the process, please sign up as a Locklistener or Master Storyteller at patreon.com/backlisted.

As far as possible, all the books listed below are supplied via the Backlisted shop on bookshop.org and a proportion of the price helps support the podcast.

Books mentioned:

Erich Kästner - Emil and the Detectives
Betsy Byars - The Eighteenth Emergency
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (boxset)
I-Spy Books
Sweet Valley High
Arthur Ransome - Great Northern
A.A. Milne - The House at Pooh Corner
Frances Hodgson Burnett - The Secret Garden (read by Glenda Jackson)
Noel Streatfeild - Ballet Shoes (BBC Classics Audiobook)
Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising
Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts
Malcolm Hulke - Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters

127. Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising

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Susan Cooper's magical novel The Dark Is Rising is the subject of a bumper Christmas special episode of Backlisted. Joining John and Andy to discuss this classic winter solstice read, and the four other books that make up the Dark Is Rising sequence, are writer Robert Macfarlane and writer and illustrator Jackie Morris, co-authors of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells and fellow Susan Cooper devotees.

Robert is the author of books about landscape, people and nature including Underland, The Old Ways, The Wild Places. His books and writing have been widely adapted for film, theatre, radio, tv. He's a Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he's lucky enough to spend his days talking about ideas with brilliant young people. He loves collaborating with musicians including Johnny Flynn, Cosmo Sheldrake, Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, and the band Underworld.

Jackie is a multi-award-winning author and illustrator. She began her career in publishing illustrating for magazines and newspapers before moving into book illustration and then writing. She has illustrated more books than she can be bothered to count and written many too, including most recently, The Unwinding, published by Unbound. Her work with Robert Macfarlane has been described as a ‘cultural phenomenon’. She is currently working on The Book of Birds, written by Robert, The Space Between, a curious creature, part book, part leaf (funding via Unbound) and Mrs Noah’s Song, to be illustrated by James Mayhew. She lives and works in a small cottage in Pembrokeshire..

The Dark is Rising was first published in the UK by Chatto & Windus in 1973, and as a Puffin in 1976 and is the second book in the sequence, also called ‘The Dark is Rising’ which began with Over Sea, Under Stone in 1965 and then continued on with Greenwitch, The Grey King and finally in 1977, Silver on the Tree.

In this episode, John also talks about a beautiful ice-and-snow bound story from the Chuckchi people of the Bering Sea, When the Whales Leave by Yuri Rytkheu, and Andy reads ‘The Tree Room’, a poem from Caroline Bird's new collection The Air Year that seems to sum up the spirit of Christmas 2020. Wherever this podcast finds you in the world, Merry Christmas from us all. When the dark comes rising, six shall turn it back...

As far as possible, all the books listed below are supplied via the Backlisted shop on bookshop.org and a proportion of the price helps support the podcast.

Books mentioned:

Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising; Over Sea, Under Stone; Greenwitch; The Grey King; Silver on the Tree; Dreams & Wishes: Essays on Writing for Children; The Shortest Day
Jackie Morris - The Unwinding; The Space Between
Robert Macfarlane - Underland, The Old Ways, The Wild Places
Jackie Morris & Robert Macfarlane - The Lost Words; The Lost Spells
Yuri Rytkheu - When the Whales Leave
Caroline Bird - The Air Year
Martha Sprackland - Citadel
Susannah Clarke - Piranesi
Alan Garner - The Weirdstone of Brisingamen; The Moon of Gomrath
Henry Williamson - Tarka the Otter
Jack London - The Call of the Wild
Robert Holdstock - Mythago Wood
Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials
Penelope Lively - The Ghost of Thomas Kempe
Diana Wynne-Jones - Charmed Life
John Masefield - The Box of Delights
Susan Price - Ghost Drum
Katherine Arden - The Bear & the Nightingale

Other links:

The Lost Land of Susan Cooper (official website)
The Dark is Rising by Handspan
Susan Cooper, 'A Catch of the Breath', Tolkien Lecture 2017
Theme from The Box of Delights by Roger Limb and the Pro Arte Orchestra
’Hard Road’ by Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit, live at the Roundhouse, Camden (2017)

126. Marghanita Laski - The Victorian Chaise-longue

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The Victorian Chaise-longue is a terrifying short novel by the writer, broadcaster and lexicographer, Marghanita Laski. First published by The Cresset Press in 1953, it was reissued as Persephone Books’ sixth title in 1999 (followed by re-issues of four more novels by Laski). Joining Andy and John is the novelist Eley Williams. Eley’s debut novel, The Liar’s Dictionary,  was published this year by William Heinemann. Her short story collection Attrib. and Other Stories (Influx Press) won the James Tait Black Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. Frit, a chapbook of poems, is published by Sad Press. This year she was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award for a short story ‘Scrimshaw’, concerning walruses, miscommunications and ellipses. She lectures at Royal Holloway, University of London. 

The episode also features Andy’s report back from the summit of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and John excavates an old Puffin anthology called Authors’ Choice which contains ‘The Tower’ (1955), another deeply unsettling story by Marghanita Laski story, chosen and introduced by Alan Garner.

Books mentioned:

Marghanita Laski - The Victorian Chaise-longue; Little Boy Lost; Tory Heaven; Ecstasy: A Study of Some Secular & Religious Experiences
Eley Williams - The Liar’s Dictionary; Attrib. & Other Stories; Frit
Douglas Adams & John Lloyd - The Meaning of Liff
Tim Brooke Taylor & Graeme Garden - The Uxbridge English Dictionary
Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain; Death in Venice
Puffin Books - Authors’ Choice: Favourite Stories Chosen by Seventeen Distinguished Authors
Frank O’Connor - Collected Stories
Arthur Ransome - Old Peter’s Russian Tales
Saki - The Collected Stories
Arthur Machen - The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories
Algernon Blackwood - Ghost Stories
John Buchan - The Watcher by the Threshold
Simon Winchester - The Surgeon of Crowthorne

Other links:

Marghanita Laski on the return of the supernatural story (BBC - Meridian, 1983)
‘The Tower ‘ - Marghanita Laski (PDF)
’The Tower’ - read on Classic Ghost Stories Podcast
’The Foghorn’ - Ray Bradbury
Shirley Jackson ‘The Lottery’ in The New Yorker
Marghanita Laski on whether books do us good (LRB, 1981)
Bing Crosby - ’The Magic WIndow’ from Little Boy Lost

125. Geoffrey Willans & Ronald Searle - The Compleet Molesworth

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The Compleet Molesworth (1958) by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle is the beloved book we're celebrating in this special fifth birthday episode of Backlisted, cheers cheers.

Joining John and Andy to discuss some of the funniest and most influential fictional creations of the 20th century - Nigel Molesworth, Basil Fotherington-Thomas ect ect ect - are satirical cartoonist and writer Martin Rowson and the novelist Lissa Evans, who as any fule kno was our guest on the very first episode of Backlisted in 2015.

Also in this episode John contemplates the huge and genuinely remarkable The Sea View Has Me Again: Uwe Johnson in Sheerness by Patrick Wright (published by the excellent independent Repeater Books) and Andy is enchanted by Piranesi, Susanna Clarke's long-delayed second novel, her first being the bestselling Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (both published by Bloomsbury).

Please note that all the links to in-pront books below now connect to the Backlisted bookshop on bookshop.org.

Books mentioned:

Geoffrey Willans & Ronald Searle - The Compleet Molesworth (Penguin Classics)
Martin Rowson - Stuff: A Memoir of Life & Death; The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; Gulliver’s Travels; The Communist Manifesto; The Dance of Death
Lissa Evans - V for Victory; Old Baggage; Crooked Heart; Wed Wabbitt; Wed Wabbitt (audiobook)
Patrick Wright - The Sea View Has Me Again: Uwe Johnson in Sheerness; On Living in an Old Country
Uwe Johnson & Damion Searls - Anniversaries
Susanna Clarke - Piranesi; Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Ronald Searle - The Terror of St Trinian’s; To Kwai & Back: War Drawings 1939-1945
Rohan O’Grady - Let’s Kill Uncle
Ralph Steadman - The Joke's Over: Memories of Hunter S. Thompson
George Orwell - 1984
Laurence Sterne - Tristram Shandy
Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker
James Joyce - Finnegans Wake

Other links:

Backlisted Proustmas episode
’Fairy Bells’ (Henry Cowell) - The Playground Ensemble
Ronald Searle on Desert Island Discs, 2005
Ronald Searle on Channel 4 News, 2010
’Fairy Bells’ 2020 Grime remix feat. Peason and Ronald Searle (arr. Miller)

124. Terrance Dicks - Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius

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Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius (1977) by Terrance Dicks is the much-loved book featured in this episode. Joining John and Andy to discuss the life and career of a hugely influential and prolific author - and the history of the Target novelisations of Doctor Who stories, which between them are estimated to have sold over 13m copies - are two writers who are both enthusiastic fans and bona fide experts: broadcaster Matthew Sweet, a writer, broadcaster, cultural historian and presenter of the BBC radio programmes, Sound of Cinema, Free Thinking and The Philosopher’s Arms; and returning guest Una McCormack, the bestselling science fiction writer who specializes in TV tie-in fiction, particularly Star Trek and Doctor Who. We also take a look at The Gifts of Reading, the recently-published anthology (to which Andy has contributed a memoir on Terrance Dicks), alongside new essays from Philip Pullman, Robert Macfarlane, Candice Carty-Williams, S.F. Said and more, proceeds from which go to the international literacy charity, Room To Read.

Books mentioned:

Robert Mcfarlane et al - The Gifts of Reading
Terrance Dicks - Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius; Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius (audiobook read by Tom Baker); Doctor Who and Genesis of the Daleks; Doctor Who: The Three Doctors; Doctor Who and the Web of Fear.
Una McCormack - Doctor Who: All Flesh is Grass
Matthew Sweet - Inventing the Victorians; Shepperton Babylon; Operation Chaos
Dicks, Sweet, McCormack et al - Doctor Who: The Target Story Book
David J Howe - The Target Book: The History of the Target Doctor Who Books (foreword by Terrance Dicks)
Tom Baker - Who on Earth is Tom Baker?; Who on Earth is Tom Baker? (audiobook)
Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White (ed. Matthew Sweet)

Other links:

Room to Read charity
Doctor Who - The Brain of Morbius (DVD)
Doctor Who - Series 13 (Britbox)
Dudley Simpson - Pyramids of Mars: Classic Music from the Tom Baker Era
Tom Baker reading from Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius
Gareth Roberts & Terrance Dicks discussing the novelisation of the original scripts for The Brain of Morbius from ‘On Target: Terrance Dicks’ on Doctor Who - The Monster of Peladon DVD
On The Outside It Looked Like an Old Fashioned Police Box - BBC R4 documentary (2009)
Doctor Who publishing at BBC Books

123. Beowulf

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For this year’s Hallowe’en episode our subject is the Old English poem, Beowulf, composed somewhere in England more than a thousand years ago. The atmospheric tale of supernatural monsters and human heroes has inspired scores of translations over the centuries and we will discuss several, including versions by Seamus Heaney, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Morpurgo, Edwin Morgan and the powerful new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley (the 2007 computer-animated film adaptation by Robert Zemeckis and Neil Gaiman also makes an appearance). Andy and John are joined by regular Backlisted Hallowe’en guest Andrew Male, the senior associate editor of MOJO magazine, and Dr Laura Varnam, who first appeared on our last Hallowe’en episode to discuss Daphne Du Maurier’s collection, The Breaking Point. As well as being a Du Maurier expert, Laura is also the Lecturer in Old and Middle English Literature at University College, Oxford and teaches Beowulf to undergraduates. Before that, to put everyone in a suitably spooky mood, we all discuss stories taken from Robert Shearman’s remarkable experiment in storytelling, We All Hear Stories in the Dark.

Books mentioned:

Robert Shearman - We All Hear Stories in the Dark
Robert Aickman - Cold Hand in Mine
George Jack (ed) - Beowulf: A Student Edition
Howell D. Chickering (ed) - Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition
Seamus Heaney - Beowulf
Seamus Heaney - Beowulf (Audible version read by Seamus Heaney)
Michael Morpurgo - Beowulf (Illustrated by Michael Foreman)
Rosemary Sutcliff - Beowulf, Dragonslayer
John Gardner - Grendel
J.R.R. Tolkien - Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Monsters and the Critics
Edwin Morgan - Beowulf: A Verse Translation into Modern English
Maria Dahvana Headley - Beowulf: A New Translation
Maria Dahvana Headley - Beowulf: A New Translation (Audio CD read by J.D. Jackson)
Toni Morrison - The Source of Self Regard

Other links:

Now That’s Hwæt I Call Music! - Andy & Andrew’s Beowulf Playlist
Seamus Heaney reading Beowulf Part 1
Seamus Heaney reading Beowulf Part 2
Beowulf (read in Old English by Trevor Eaton parts 1-11)
Beowulf (Robert Zemeckis, 2007)
Grendel, Grendel, Grendel (Alexander Stitt, 1981 animated film)
The Chills - ‘The Male Monster from the Id’

122. Shūsaku Endō - Silence

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Joining Andy and John for this episode is the novelist, Sarah Perry. Sarah first appeared on Backlisted episode 43 in which she talked about Edmund Gosse’s Victorian memoir, Father & Son. Sarah is the author of the novels: After Me Comes the FloodThe Essex Serpent, and Melmoth. Her most recent book is Essex Girls: For Profane and Opinionated Women Everywhere, a defence and celebration of the Essex girl stereotype (described by the Guardian as ‘a polemic that makes room for both Kim Kardashian and Harriet Martineau’). She was born in Essex, and now lives in Norwich, where she is working on her fourth novel. 

The book she has chosen to discuss is Silence by Shūsaku Endō’s masterpiece, a novel following two Jesuits posted to 17th century Japan in search of their former teacher, now feared to have apostatised. Silence was first published in Japan as Chinmoku in 1966 and was translated into English by William Johnston in 1969 (Sophia University Prees, Tokyo) but didn't appear in the UK (from Peter Owen) until 1976. It won Japan’s most prestigious award for original fiction, the Tanizaki Prize, in 1966 and is generally considered to be Endo’s masterpiece and has been adapted for stage and screen several times, most recently by Martin Scorcese in 2016.

Also in this episode John enjoys The Appointment, a mordantly funny debut novel by literary agent, Katharina Volckmer and Andy wallows in the profound comedic achievement that is From the Oasthouse:  The Alan Partridge Podcast.

Books mentioned:

Shūsako Endō - Silence; Foreign Studies; The Samurai; Scandal
Sarah Perry - Essex Girls; Melmoth; The Essex Serpent; After Me Comes the Flood
Katharaina Volckmer - The Appointment
Thomas Bernhard - Woodcutter
Alan Partridge - I, Partridge; Nomad
Graham Greene - The Power & The Glory; The End of the Affair
Caryl Philips - Cambridge
Feodor Dostoevsky - Crime & Punishment

Other links:

Sarah Perry on Essex Girls in the Guardian
From the Oasthouse: The Alan Partridge Podcast
Alpha Pappa (Alan Partridge movie, 2013)
17th century Japanese shepherds song (Ushikata-bushi)
Excerpt from Silence (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2016)
John Updike’s review of Silence in the New Yorker (1980)
Flower Travellin' Band - ‘Satori I’

121. George Gissing - The Odd Women

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For this episode, John and Andy are joined by the novelist and scholar Janet Todd, known especially for her biographies and editions of early women writers. She has published books on Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Samuel Richardson and Aphra Behn. Her most recent novel, published by the Fentum Press earlier in 2020, is Don't You Know There's a War On?  In 2018, Fentum also published her memoir Radiation Diaries, described by Hilary Mantel as ‘frank, wry and unexpectedly heartening’.

The second guest is Simon James, Professor of Victorian Literature at the Department of English Studies, Durham University. He has published and edited work on H. G. Wells, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and the Victorian bestsellers Trilby and The Sorrows of Satan. He regularly contributes to the Durham Book Festival was the Principal Investigator on the Durham Commission on Creativity and Education for Arts Council England. Simon's PhD was mostly on George Gissing.

The book under discussion is The Odd Women by George Gissing, first published in three volumes by Lawrence & Bullen in 1893, and along with New Grub Street and Demos, accounted by Gissing himself as one of his three best books. Before that Andy explores insomnia through The Shapeless Unease by Samantha Harvey (published by Vintage) and John is excited by Luis Sagasti’s short but profound novel, A Musical Offering published by Charco Press.

Books mentioned:

George Gissing - The Odd Women; New Grub Street; In the Year of Jubilee; The Whirlpool
Janet Todd - Radiation Diaries; Don’t You Know There’s a War On?; Aphra Benn: A Secret Life
Simon James - Unsettled Accounts: Money & Narrative in the Novels of George Gissing
Samantha Harvey - The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping; Dear Thief; The Western Wind
Philip Larkin - High Windows
Luis Sagasti - A Musical Offering; Fireflies
Thomas Bernhard - The Loser
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park

Other links:

‘After the Ball’ - George J. Gaskin 
Karen Chase - ‘The Literal Heroine: A Study of Gissing's "The Odd Women"‘
Gissing’s account of identifying his wife’s body
Edward Elgar, Serenade for Strings Op. 20 (conducted by Elgar in 1933)
George Orwell on Gissing
Jean Sibelius, Six Piano Impromptus Op. 5, No 2 in G minor
Amy Beach, Romance for violin and piano Op. 23

120. Émile Zola - Thérèse Raquin

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Joining John & Andy for this episode are the novelists Andrew O’Hagan and Rachel Joyce. Born in Glasgow, Andrew has been nominated for the Booker Prize, was voted one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003 and won the E.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is Editor-at-Large of the London Review of Books and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His fifth and latest novel, Mayflies has just been published by Faber.

Rachel is the author of the international best sellers, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold FryPerfectThe Love Song of Miss Queenie HennessyThe Music Shop and Miss Benson’s Beetle. Her books have apeared in thirty-six languages. She has been longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and was awarded ‘New Writer of the Year in the 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards. 

The book under discussion is Thérèse Raquin, the third published novel by the great French master of naturalism, Émile Zola. Originally serialised in the literary journal L’Artiste under the title A Love Story, it was first released in volume form as Thérèse Raquin by Albert Lacroix in 1868 and despite some famously disparaging reviews became an immediate bestseller and established Zola’s literary reputation. Bepfre that, Andy expresses his enthusiasm for Robin Muir’s exhibition catalogue for the National Portrait Gallery show Cecil Beaton’s ‘Bright Young Things’ and, after thirty years, John finally finishes his reading of Eduardo Galeano’s epic history of the Americas, Memory of Fire.

Books mentioned:

Émile Zola - Thérèse Raquin; (translated by Adam Thorpe); Germinal; L’Assomoir; Nana; La Bête Humaine; The Masterpiece; The Experimental Novel & Other Essays
Andrew O’Hagan - Mayflies; The Illuminations; Our Fathers; Be Near Me
Rachel Joyce - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry; Perfect; The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy; The Music Shop; Miss Benson’s Beetle
Robin Muir - Cecil Beaton’s ‘Bright Young Things’
Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies
Radclyffe Hall - The Well of Loneliness
Eduardo Galeano - Memory of Fire: I: Genesis: II: Faces & Masks; III: Century of the Wind
Michael Rosen - The Disapperance of Émile Zola
Adam Thorpe - Ulverton
Angus Wilson - Zola
Feodor Dostoevsky - Crime & Punishment

Other links:

Thérèse Raquin - Tobias Picker’s opera
Thérèse Raquin (1979 BBC adaptation)
’Oh My Dear: Something’s Gone Wrong’ from Thou Shalt Not - Harry Connick Jr
Thirst (2009) - Park Chan-wook trailer
Thérèse Raquin: The Musical
The Big Gun - ‘Let’s Hear it For Love’
John on Zola’s Dreyfus letter ‘J’Accuse!’ in Byline Times