Backlisted - Summer Reading 2020

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

It's a summer reading episode of Backlisted. We are showcasing books John, Andy and the show's producer Nicky have been reading during lockdown. These include A Helping Hand by Celia Dale; A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid; A Boy in the Water by Tom Gregory; The Anthill by Julianne Pachico; That Reminds Me by Derek Owusu; The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas; and English Climate: Wartime Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner. This episode features both newly recorded material and also excerpts from Locklisted, the bonus podcast available exclusively to our Patreon supporters.* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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ah hello hello everyone and welcome to the backlisted summer reading special Stay safe. Ah! Hello. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the backlisted summer reading special. We have done these before, but this is a summer reading special for a collection of books that you might like to read while you're on holiday or if you're not going on holiday, if you're just staying at home, much as you have done for the last few months, that's OK too. Taking the controversial staycation, which still in these parts means staying at home

rather than simply taking a holiday in the UK, which is what we used to call when we were children, a holiday. So we're having a few weeks off. To catch up with our reading, obviously. Always. So this episode of Backlisted is a bit different. It's partly some new stuff you won't have heard before and partly some things which our Patreon subscribers will have heard as part of the Patreon podcast Locklisted,

which is like Batlisted, and we talk about books on it, but we also talk about films and music and other things that we've been doing. And I'm on it. And Nicky's on it, more to the point. It's a stool rather than a... Are you calling me a stool? No, I was just saying it's got three legs

as opposed to a hurdle or something. Yeah. Whatever has two legs that you can sit on. You can tell, can't you? A fence, I don't know. All these hanging about and talking about great writing has really affected our work so magically. This is a selection of books that we've read

over the last few months during the lockdown. And it's got some of my choices and it's got a thing by Nora Perkins who appeared with us earlier in the year. It's got some of John's choices. Some of the things Nikki's been reading, she's going to talk you through those as well. And I'm going to effortlessly weave them all together.

It's a miscellany. A miscellany, a medley of literary highlights. Yeah, so if you subscribe to Patreon. Patreon.com forward slash backlisted the reason why we do this we should just clarify this we should patreon pays for backlisted we don't have sponsorship the people who give us a bit of money to do backlisted uh that's why everyone gets to listen to backlisted so we're very grateful to them but as a an extra thing if you subscribe to the patreon we also produce a couple of episodes in a month of lock listed which is us talking about books but other things

that we've been watching or listening to or thinking about and what we found is uh first of all recording them has been great for us during the lockdown. It's just been fun for us to get together and do that. But also the Backlisted episodes and the Locklisted episodes have started to have a bit of a conversation with one another. So some of the books that we've talked about on Locklisted have wound up in Backlisted and vice versa. Maybe I should also clarify that because obviously we, you know, Back it does cost money to

to make and uh unbound had been amazing and had underwritten that for four years but we were getting to the point and covid really meant that uh it was it was impossible for unbound to go on being the sole sponsor of backlisted so the patreon was our was really our way. We will always have a free podcast for people to download. But this just seemed to be the right moment for us to ask the people who we know, love and support what we do to go to the next stage. And we've been amazed by the response. It's been fantastic. And one of the really nice things about being the locklisted listeners is if you're listening on patreon there's a sort of a place that you can comment on the show and that's been really nice because actually there's people have been um for example which you're going to hear in this program people have been sending in their versions of the

backlisted theme tunes and like it's been amazing hasn? The sort of the response that people have given us and we're totally blown away. Yeah. Every patron is like Austrian royalty sponsoring Mozart in his production of fine music that the world can enjoy. So we're very grateful to you princes and princesses who have allowed us to keep making this thing. So we hope you enjoy this special backlisted, locklisted, backlisted. Andy, what have you been reading this week? OK, so I've been reading a book called, a novel called A Helping Hand by Celia Dale, which was published by Macmillan in 1966. It's currently available from Faber-Fiennes. and this is the final choice of our former guests,

Becky Brown and Nora Perkins, who joined us back in April for our episode on Barbara Pym. And long time listeners will recall, we asked them to pitch a couple of books each because when we met them to discuss the episode at the start of the year, they can't help themselves. They just pitch naturally and they recommended us several great books, which we've talked about on this podcast.

And so here's the final one. Before I say anything about Helping Hand by Celia Dale, here is our guest, Nora Perkins. We had to cut this out of the original episode for reasons of time, but here she is now. And I've just asked her to pitch in 30 seconds a Helping Hand by Celia Dale. So Celia Dale actually worked for Curtis Brown briefly a long time ago and was Rumour Garden's secretary for a time.

So there's a lot of different connections with Celia Dale. I know I'm running out of my 20 seconds, but bear with me. And what she wrote, she wrote novels about the isolated, the fragile, the elderly, people who couldn't really cope with the modern world, who were at risk in some way. And they're sort of crime novels, but they're the kind of crime that is deeply malevolent and sends chills to your souls. They're about the really worst kind of people

who unveil their way into people's lives and take advantage of them and steal from them and ultimately kill them and take over of them and steal from them and ultimately kill them and take over their identities and their lives but it's all about people taking advantage of the elderly of the isolated and right now in a world where we have so many people isolated and at risk it feels extra extra horrible yeah a year in provence it ain't so i i must say i think I said this at the time, but so I read this novel back in early February

when we were just in the process of moving my mum into her new home, which is an old people's home. And so it was already quite a delicate book for me to be reading. Plus then we've had the lockdown and my mum is doing OK. Touch wood, which is good. But really, this novel by Celia Dale, it's a thriller. It very much focuses on the worst of human nature, as Celia Dale seemed to like to.

She was very popular. She wrote 13 novels, a collection of short stories. She had many radio and TV adaptations. She lived to nearly 100 years old. She died only in 2011. And what she liked to write about often was vulnerable people in society being preyed upon. upon a 1971 novel a dark corner i haven't read it but i was just reading the synopsis and it sounds incredible it sounds like a cross between a barbara pym novel and entertaining mr sloan this this awful psycho drama where a stranger comes to lodge in a house and seems to destroy everything around him she has something in common as a writer, I would say, with Patrick Hamilton or maybe Celia Fremlin,

if listeners are familiar with Celia Fremlin, and she was known as the queen of the suburban terror story, Celia Dale. And what A Helping Hand is about is about the... I mean, it is a real page- page turner it's extremely gripping but it is fundamentally about the vulnerability of the elderly so every little anxiety or nightmare you might have about an elderly relative and who might be exploiting them and preying on them is laid out in 200 brisk pages. I mean, I found it a tough read, but also, as people say,

I couldn't put it down. And all Becky and Nora's recommendations have been really good and listeners have picked up on them. And I talked last time about Figures in landscape by Barry English terrific book totally different terrain for a helping hand no less gripping you will want to know what happens even though you won't you'll want to look away at the same time so I won't read a bit because I feel even reading a tiny bit is to give a spoiler if you're gonna read it i just want to drop you in this maisonette near heathrow airport where you like the elderly lady who's just been dropped off. That becomes your world.

It's almost like Misery by Stephen King, but it's set in Hounslow. So I can't offer a higher recommendation than that. So that's A Helping Hand by Celia Dale. It's currently in print from Faber-Fiennes or from your usual internet second-hand book dealers. Mitch, what have you been reading this week? I've been reading a very short non-fiction book

by the Antiguan writer, Jamaica Kincaid. First published in 1988, it's called A Small Place. And it's a book about the island, the Caribbean island, Antigua, that she comes from. And it's been republished by Dawn Books in a very attractive, as all their books are, very attractive edition, with a new introduction from Jamaica Kincaid herself. She was born in 1949. And she left Antigua as a teenager and has really been known as a North American writer since then. She has written for the New Yorker for the last 30 years and more.

She's written five novels, a collection of stories. But I just picked this up because somebody had mentioned it to me as being a book about the Caribbean. I've been kind a book about the Caribbean. I've been kind of interested in the Caribbean and how little we know as English people are taught about Caribbean history, I guess, you know, influenced by the roiling protests and discussions of the last month or so. And it does everything you would want.

I think it's Salman Rushdie called it a Jeremiah. It's an angry, brilliantly focused portrait of an island. She goes back and explains the inner logic of what it's like to come from somewhere small, somewhere that was a former colony, somewhere which has been basically run by the same political party for most of the period, post-colonial period. So there's corruption, there is a sort of sinister kind of industrial plants on the island. Really what sets it apart is her prose,

which she tells this story with a directness and a kind of an elegance, which is very, very difficult to describe unless you're reading it. it with a directness and a kind of an elegance which is very very difficult to um very difficult to describe unless you're reading it it has almost kind of a storybook um end of the you know the kind of the kind of story you'd tell a child to send it to sleep at night but it's it's absolutely not going to send anyone to sleep because it is there is an anger in it but somehow the the the precision of her writing uh means that the anger is always qualified. I'm going to read you a really, really tiny bit because one of the reviewers that read it said,

if you want to know anything about Antigua, you'll get more in this 80-page book than a whole shelf of guidebooks to tell you about the reality of living in a small place now. And nothing, I think, has changed. She said she originally wrote it. She said, the tale of beauty and goodness I wanted to write for Mr. Sean, that's William Sean of the New Yorker, I could not find in me. Instead, I found my way at the beginning of a road, a way of understanding my world as it began in 1492. So here's just a little bit about tourism. I also thought this might appeal to you, Andy, because she's not a fan of the tourist.

This is the tourist saying, they do not like me. That thought never actually occurs to you. Still, you feel a little uneasy. Still, you feel a little foolish. Still, you feel a little out of place. But the banality of your own life is very real to you. It drove you to this extreme, spending your days and nights in the company of people who despise you, people you do not really like really, people you would not want to have

as your actual neighbour. And so you must devote yourself to puzzling out how much of what you are told is really, really true. Is ground-up bottle glass and peanut sauce really a delicacy around here, or will it do just what you think ground-up bottle glass will do? Is this rare, multicoloured, snout-mouthed fish really an aphrodisiac, or will it cause you to fall asleep permanently? Oh, the hard work of all this, and is it any wonder then that on your return home you feel the need of a long rest so that you can recover from your life as a tourist? That the native does not like the tourist is not hard to explain. For every native of every place is a potential tourist. And every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and

crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression. And every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this. Every native would like to find a way out. Every native would like a rest. Every native would like a tour. But some natives, most natives in the world, cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives, and they are too poor to live properly in the places where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go. So when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you. They envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom. They envy your

ability to turn their own banality and boredom. They envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself. Oh, that was great. It's a brilliant, brilliant essay. I mean, even if you don't think you're interested in Antigua or, you know, kind of post-colonialism. She should come to Whitstable. Yeah, it scorches off the page

so i was reading about this john so this has been published in the uk it's just been republished by daunt books in the uk when she turned this in at the new yorker the then editor of the new yorker robert gottlieb turned it down right yeah he said it was too hot for them to publish that's right and then so she ended up getting it published as all her books have been by farrah strauss and so and she was banned right in exchange forrah Strauss and Giroux. And she was banned, right? In exchange for writing A Small Place. She says she was effectively banned from Antigua for five years. It was made clear to her that she was not welcome because she had, you know, dug up dirt they didn't want dug up or aired dirty linen they didn't want aired. Yeah.

So this really makes me want to read it actually. It sounds really great. Two guys. I've talked too much already. What have you been reading, Nikki? Oh, go on then. I've been reading two amazing books. I really like them. I don't know if you've read them. Have you read A Boy in the Water by Tom Gregory?

I have not. I have not read A Boy in the Water by Tom Gregory. I have not. I have not read A Boy in the Water by Tom Gregory. You might like this, Andy. You might know the story because it was sort of written about a couple of years ago on the BBC website. Basically, it is the story of a boy called Tom Gregory. It is him. When he was 11 years old, he swam the Channel. And it's his story of how and why he did this aged 11. He lived in Eltham and there was a local swimming club that he sort of, you

know, his cousin said, come down, you know, him and his sister went. And it wasn't just any swimming club. It was just run by one of these absolute maverick kind of legends that, you know, you don't come across these days who just does their own thing, you know, and basically takes kids and makes them swim long distance. Yeah, okay. That's what he does. Competitive dad. What year did he do this then, Nick?

When is this set? In 1988. Yeah, okay. All right, okay. And this dude is not a competitive dad. He's got no kids. This man is like a loner. They don't know anything about this guy apart from the swimming.

And he becomes a sort of like a surrogate parent to Tom. And he joins the club when he's seven or eight. The book starts off with him in swimming the channel, you know, and it sort of comes back to, you know, the whole channel crossing. But then retells the kind of how he got into it. And it's one of those books that you kind of think he obviously can't have this amazing recall, but it doesn't matter because the story is so good. I don't care if he's made it up. He hasn't made it up, but like the detail, you know, is lovely and the characters are lovely.

And basically he swims the channel after having, for example, when they decide he's going to swim the channel he's not allowed to um have a hot shower for six months he has to sleep he has to sleep he has to get his body used to kind of cold he has to sleep throughout winter with the window wide open aged like 10 or 11 you know this is like an 11 year old's dream though it's amazing right and then um and he has to he practices by swimming you know the whole length of Windermere, which is insane. Age 10, very long, 14 miles or something. Anyway, he basically, amazingly, he manages to swim the channel. And there's only a few hundred people at this time who've ever swum the channel. He's 11 years old, which is also bonkers because I have an 11-year-old who barely leaves his room.

You know what I mean? which is also bonkers because I have an 11-year-old who barely leaves his room. You know what I mean? And the other thing that he has to do is he has to get fat. Yeah, so he's put on this diet. Not only is he not allowed to, you know, have any warm showers or sleep with any clothes on, he also has to eat a lot, you know.

So he's sort of put on a diet of like train lots, eat a lot because the fatter you are, the kind of warmer you're going to stay. It's all about keeping you warm so they did they didn't slap him and you were supposed to be covered in goose fat yes he's covered in fat and bits of vaseline and um and uh and he's not allowed to wear a wetsuit it's still worth reading even if you know the whole story because it's sort of he obviously does it but he obviously gets there we've broken the world record but his little kid from elton's broken the world record but his little kid from elton's broken the world record for the youngest person and then they basically ban any kids under 16

from ever swimming the channel again ah so he's got it he's got it forever that's incredible that's a great story it's an amazing book yeah that really reminds me of uh that brilliant little pseudo documentary film one of those pseudo documentary films that she used to do a lot but there's a brilliant one in victoria wood as seen on tv where victoria wood plays a 13 or 14 year old girl who is training to swim the channel and nobody cares about her. That's the joke. She's sort of rubbing goose fat on in her bedroom and her parents aren't really interested and the camera crew aren't terribly interested,

but she's doing it anyway. I wonder if that was inspired by this story because the timing is about right. It's sort of mid to late 80s. Yeah, he got on Blue Peter. You know, he did all this thing. Of course he did. It probably was then.

Gold badge, right? It must have been. I mean, amazing. Yeah, exactly. He got a gold badge. That's right, he did. And what's great is it's all about the relationship between this man and him, you know, about kind of this amazing bond they had.

But the guy was very clear, you know, don't get big headed. Is there a lot of that? You know, no, no, just you've only seen the channel, mate. You know what I mean? Don't get big headed. You're only 11 years old. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's lovely. Anyway, I really recommend it. That sounds great. That sounds great, actually. Boy in the Water, Tom Gregory. It's really, really good.

Tom Gregory. I've been reading a novel called The Ant Hilt by Julianne Pacheco. Who you loved last time. Yeah, her book, which is called The Lucky Ones, which was published in this country as a book of short stories, but in America as a novel, because the stories are linked to one another. She's half Colombian. That book was largely set in Colombia, and this new novel, her first novel, is set in Colombia.

And she is another one of the writers that we vaguely know who've been working for years on either their debut novel or their latest novel who have had the great misfortune to publish it right into the middle of a period where no bookshops are open. So this was supposed to come out two months ago, but I think it got held until... When are we recording this? 3rd of July. So I think it might be out this week, finally.

It's very good there's not a but coming I'm just trying to think, it's quite a difficult book to tell you what it's about, but in a nutshell it's about a character called Lena who grew up in

Colombia, but left when she was still a child she was friends with a boy called Matty. She comes back. She hasn't seen him for 20 years and he's running a youth centre for street kids called the Ant Hill. But as the reunion goes on, both the reunion and the narrative get stranger and stranger. And this was one of those novels that for the first 200 of its 300 pages, I was thinking, okay, well, yeah, this this is good this is well written and I want to know what happens next and um but it seems quite straight and then the last hundred pages if I had time I

would have been immediately going back to the beginning and starting again she takes all sorts of risks and swerves with the theme and the characters and the narrative and i ended up at sort of you know like the book where you might i don't know whether you do this but often it for me it right down to the last page i will mentally upgrade it as soon as i finish it so there'll be the extent to which i've enjoyed it and i've enjoyed actually reading it but I need to get to the end to be able to take an overview of what the writer was trying to do and whether they pulled it off. So this is one of those books. I really recommend this, actually.

I've thought about it a lot since I finished it. Does she write in English? I can't remember. Yes, yes, she writes in English. She lives in the UK. She writes in English. I mean, she's had stories in The New Yorker. Yeah, yeah. She's published by Faber. I imagine, though I don't know,

that this is a highly autobiographical book on one level, but also a novel about the relationship between Colombia and America. I think you can probably read it on an allegorical level. But again, that didn't become, I don't think that's intended to become clear to you immediately. She wants you to connect with the story. And then once the story's got you,

she starts taking you to some much more disturbing and unexpected and, dare I say, thoughtful places. So yeah, The Ant Hill by Julianne Pacheco. So that's, i would recommend that the book chat will continue on the other side of this message i've been listening to a lot of music to be honest i've been i've been also reading i've been trying to educate myself like a lot of people making lists of particularly of contemporary black writers who i feel i ought to be reading and i kind of read i do read pretty broadly anyway but there's been so many fantastic lists of recommendations and interesting toing and froing on on Twitter and various other social

media platforms so the one that I have read in this last week which I really really recommend and like and I'm delighted to see our former guest Priti Tane, who was the chair of the judges for the Desmond Elliot, which is one of the best first novel, debut novel prizes in the UK. They announced the shortlist this week and there were three books on it and they were all by black writers, including this, the one that I've been reading, which is That Reminds Me by Derek Owusu. He's a podcaster and a writer and a sort of a mentor to lots of other black writers. He's written his first novel. And that was, as I say, it's a debut novel and it was shortlisted for this prize.

And it's short. It's, I think, beautifully done. It's a sort of Bildungsroman. It's the novel about the development of a young man, Kay, who is born to Ghanaian parents in London. He's fostered. He ends up in a village. He kind of doesn't like the village at first, but he gets used to it,

and then he comes back into 90s Tottenham. It's about his relationship with his mother his his absent mostly father his um his and and his brother and he struggles uh he falls into depression and um and self-harms all of that might sound very very bleak but it's done beautifully over five sections it's it's a very unbleak book I have to say i thought that the writing in it's beautiful and without giving it away i think he comes to a the character k comes to a place at the end of the book where he's you know kind of transcended much of the of the stuff that he's been through so i don't know i mean it's full of great stuff about contemporary london

i'm going to read a tiny little bit from it because it just gives you the flavour of how he writes and how he does it. As I say, it's five sections, very, very small chapters, very, as I say, beautifully written and kind of memorable. This is about his mum, who is a cleaner in a school. The flat speaks its night voices, and she responds with her own absent-minded murmurings. The kettle bubbles and the rising

boil sounds and brings to mind the waters of Accra, Ghana, a memory of something she never experienced. When will she go back and stand before the tide she imagined as a child, When will she go back and stand before the tides she imagined as a child, waters that ignore boundaries and smother sands that eventually lead back to skyscrapers, distant from her and imagined, the Ghanaian garden city of Kumasi, too traditional for a young mind tuned to Western standards of living. The tea is too hot, but she's acclimatised, feeling feeling only a familiar sensation forgetting to register it as pain it's 4 30 a.m the bus comes in two minutes but she'd rather be late than risk toppling over no one would help her up in the morning mist or the lights of her own home

the school in which she works is quiet you'd never know children ran up and down these corridors. So attentive is she to the floor, like wiping food from her child's face, showing it a gentleness she's always given but never received. Gospel hums in her throat, the words never coming for fear a teacher might pass and think her unfit for work. It's been twenty years and she's weary, think are unfit for work. It's been 20 years and she's weary, the early morning wind feeling like a breeze visiting the edge of a cliff. Her humming is in sync with her thoughts. Cleaning ship from toilets transforms into arms raised to the sky, praising at the feet of an almighty God. Through everything, there sits her saviour. She's finished by 7.30, and as she walks out of the building, a teacher says, hello, on your way?

She smiles, no words. Her gentle hum is enough to think all is okay. That's very good. It's a lovely book, and a very, very good, I mean, a really lovely debut, And I'm, you know, I couldn't recommend it more highly. It's called That Reminds Me. And it's published by Murky Books, which is Stormzy's imprint. One of the first.

Stormzy from Croydon. Exactly. Stormzy from Croydon. And, of course, you know, people cynically saying, are the books, you know, are the books on that list good? Well, if this is anything to go by, that is, I mean, it's a really, really good first novel. It's had great reviews and it's, as I say, on the prize shortlist. And I think, you know, brave of the judges maybe to take that stand, but absolutely right.

It's great because these books, there's no special pleading. These books deserve to be the three books that are shortlisted. I'd be particularly interested in hearing from any harpists. That would be quite good, wouldn't it? Ah, that would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. Unusual instruments would be most welcome. Thank you. Nicky, what you've been reading, speaking of heat, hot things, you've been reading about cold things. Yeah, I have actually.

I've been reading The Ice Palace. I don't actually know how you pronounce the author's name. Tarjay Vesas, do you know, John? Do you know how you pronounce the author's name Tarje Vessas Do you know, John? Do you know how you pronounce his name? I have no idea No But I'm sure there'll be listeners who do Someone will tell us if we've got it wrong

Yeah, exactly Yeah, so he's quite a famous, by all accounts, Norwegian author and poet Yeah, so I mean, I don't really know anything about him But I was recommended by a friend who I just got into listening to Backlisted and she said, oh, you should do The Ice Palace. And she said, oh, there's an amazing film about it as well. So, you know, I like a recommendation. And also, even better, it's super slim, which I also like.

I see you're using a £5 note as a bookmark as well. Yeah, well, it's just because I thought I might read something. And is that edition, is that a Peter Owen? Is that still, Peter Owen was the original publisher in England. No, it's a Penguin Modern Classic. It's a Penguin Modern Classic with a review on the back from our friend Max Porter that says, I'm surprised it isn't the most famous book in the world.

It's quite big, quite a big statement saying that. Doris Lessing says, how simple this novel is, how subtle, how strong, how unlike any other. It's unique, it's unforgettable, it's extraordinary. Sounds amazing, I have to say. Shall I tell you, I'll read the blurb because that might do a better job than me than explaining it. She was close to the edge now, the ice laid its hand upon her.

The schoolchildren call it the Ice Palace, a frozen waterfall in the Norwegian fjords, transformed into a fantastic structure of translucent walls, sparkling towers and secret chambers. It fascinates two young girls, lonely Unn and lively Sis, who strike up an intense friendship. When Unn decides to explore the Ice palace alone and doesn't return, sis must try to cope with the loss of her friend without succumbing to a frozen world of her own making. And basically what it is, is it's about these two friends who only become friends for one day. They've only talked to each other for one day, but it's so moving. They're kind of one day's experience.

When one goes missing, the other one just completely loses everything. And what's really quite intense is as she goes missing, you follow her. She goes to the Ice Palace, which is a frozen waterfall. And the whole thing's set in, obviously, in Norway in winter. So everything's very cold. And she goes to this frozen waterfall and goes exploring. But you follow her in that process. So you effectively watch her die. You know, I'm not giving much away here.

But, you know, she and then it's the other one coming to terms with it. And it's so poetic. Who does it remind you of? Which book or which writer? Oh, I don't think I can say. I'm not clever enough to say. You are. You are. You don't think I can say. I'm not clever enough to say. You are. You are.

You don't get out of it like that. I suppose it's a little bit like, Lanny is a good example, I'd say. There's lots of space there, you know, and it's sort of about the prose rather than necessarily, you know, the story and the intensity of it all. And you sort of, you feel like you're swept along in this beautiful. Yeah, you feel like you're sort of reading not just a story, but a kind of, yeah, a poem as well.

It's beautiful. I can recommend on a similar Max Porter related recommendation because it was Max who recommended it to me and it sounds quite, not similar exactly, but it has certain qualities the same. A very short Icelandic novel by Sjön called The Blue Fox, Nikki, which I will send you a note of because I think you might really like that

from what you just said about the Ice Palace. You talked about that on a very early Backlisted. I did. I seem to remember we were on a kind of weird icy jag because I talked about the winter book by Tuvi Jansson as well. It was when I went to Iceland. That's right. We've been doing this so long.

It feels like decades ago. But, yeah, I asked people for recommendations of books by Icelandic writers or about Iceland. And that was one of the ones that came up. It's a terrific, terrific book. Hey, Nikki, will you read us a bit? Okay. This will be my first time though.

Right. So I'll read a bit from when, so there's Un and Sis, the two friends basically they've they've met the friends have met and they've had this kind of electric meeting and it slightly freaked them out and it's freaked out and out so much because she's never had any friends before then that she decides she can't go into school the next day to meet sis because she's so kind of overwhelmed by it so she decides to skip school on a winter's day in norway um and go and see the ice palace which is the the frozen waterfall and uh so this is her heading there and and so she's going you know she can hear the sounds

of the waterfall um the roar was suddenly stronger. The river began to quicken its speed flowing in yellow channels. Un ran down the slope alongside in a silvered confusion of heather and grass tussocks an occasional tree amongst them. The roar was stronger. Thick whirls of spray rose up abruptly in front of her. She was at the top of the falls. abruptly in front of her. She was at the top of the falls. She stopped short as if about to fall over the edge, so abruptly did it appear. Two waves went through her, first the paralysing cold, then the reviving warmth, as happens on great occasions. Un was there for the first time. No one had asked her to come here with them during the summer. Aunty had mentioned that there was a waterfall, no more. There had been no discussion of it until now, in the late autumn at school,

after the ice palace had come and was worth seeing. And what was this? It must be the ice palace. The sun had disappeared. There was a ravine with steep sides. The sun would perhaps reach into it later. But now it was in ice-cold shadow. Un looked down into an enchanted world of small pinnacles, gables, frosted domes, soft curves and confused tracery. All of it was ice, and the water spurted between, building it up continually. Branches of the waterfall had been diverted and rushed into new channels, creating new forms. Everything shone. The sun had not yet come, but it shone ice blue and green of itself and deathly cold. The waterfall plunged into the middle of it, as if diving into a black cellar. Up on the edge of

the rock, the water spread out in stripes, the colour changing from black to green, from green to yellow and white as the fall became wilder. A booming came from the cellar hole where the water dashed itself into white foam against the stones on the bottom. Huge puffs of mist rose into the air. Unn began to shout for joy. It was drowned in the surge and din, just as her warm clouds of breath were swallowed up by the cold spume. The spume and the spray at each side did not stop for an instant, but went on building minutely and surely, though frenziedly. The water was taken out of its course to build, with the help of the frost, larger, taller alcoves and passages and alleyways and domes of ice above them, far more intricate and splendid than anything Un had ever

seen before. She was looking right down on it. She had to see it from below, and she began to climb down the steep rimmed slope at the side of the waterfall. She was completely absorbed by the palace, so stupendous did it appear to her. Only when she was down at the foot of it did she see it as a little girl on the ground would see it, and every scrap of guilty conscience vanished. She could not help thinking that nothing had been more right to go there. The enormous ice palace proved to be seven times bigger and more extravagant from this angle. From here, the ice walls seemed to touch the sky.

They grew as she thought about them. She was intoxicated. The place was full of wings and turrets, how many it was impossible to say. The water had made it swell in all directions, and the main waterfall plunged down in the middle, keeping a space clear for itself. There were places that the water had abandoned, so they were completed, shining and dry. Others were covered in spume and water drops and trickling moisture that in a flash turned into blue-green ice.

It was an enchanted palace. She must try to find a way in. It was bound to be full of curious passages and doorways and she must get in. It looked so extraordinary that Eun forgot everything else as she stood in front of it but she was aware of nothing but her desire to enter.

Oh, you've got the job. That is wonderful. You've got the job. Thanks. That is both beautifully read, Nicky, but that sounds really right on my street. It is really good. I think you both should like it. That really reminds me of our dear friend Tuvay Jansen, funnily enough. Yeah, that's really right up my street. It is really good. I think you both should like it. That really reminds me of our dear friend Tuvay Janssen, funnily enough.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Actually, that's the child. It's not so much the Scandinavian element as the child's perspective on the beautiful thing as she tries to describe it for us. That was great. I think what's so chilling about it is that you sort of know that she's going to her death, you know, and that makes it all the more, when you're reading it,

I'm not, you know, you kind of know this because it's given away at the back. And so it's quite heartbreaking, you know, because it stays with her, you know, all the way as she enters into the palace deeper and deeper. It's pretty, it's deeper. It's pretty amazing. And that's available in the shops now for £7.99. So I've got a thing here. I'd love to tell you that I've got a clip of Sylvia Townsend Warner

reading her own work, but it's going to have to be me. Oh, great. It's going to have to be me, unfortunately. I'm sorry. So I've been reading a collection called English Climate, Wartime Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Why were you reading these, specifically? We did Lolly Willows on an early episode of Backlisted,

Sylvia Townsend Warner's first novel. And I've recommended The Corner That Held Them Far and Wide as a good book, perfect novel to read during the lockdown. And it had been a while since I'd read something by Sylvia Townsend Warner. and I noted Persephone had just published this volume of stories that Sylvia Townsend Warner wrote. But it's been published and edited by Persephone and by Lydia Felgett at Persephone. So this collection has never been published before and so prolific with Sylvia Townsend Warner

that most of these stories though not all of them were published in the New Yorker and four of them appeared in the New Yorker in 1942 or 1943 and have never been reprinted since. Edited by William Maxwell.

But this is the first time these stories have appeared in print since a magazine you couldn't get in the UK very easily in those years. So some of these stories have never been available in the UK. Sylvia Townsend Warner was extremely good at writing. And it's just been, you asked me, Nicky, why I read it. It's because I needed to read something. I needed to read the opposite of the thing i was talking about earlier you know where i wanted to seek to understand it i needed something that

i didn't need to seek to understand that i just got which went straight to the pleasure center and i love sylvia townsend warner's prose and her facility with a sentence so much that for me, this is like a, if I went to the beach, this would be a beach read, these short stories. But also, it's good to read stuff on the home front in the Second World War. We're doing a book on Batlisted soon by MFK Fisher called How to Cook a Wolf, which was originally published during the Second World War. And one of the reasons we're doing it on Batlisted is because it's about how you make the most out of difficult situations. And so a lot of these home front stories that Sylvia Townsend Warner wrote about and a lot of How to Cook a Wolf by MFK Fisher, they're actually about that. How do you keep going? How do you keep buggering on? So what I thought I'd do is read you one of these stories in its entirety.

A whole story? Oh, great. In its entirety. Did you mean that, Nikki? No, I did. I sounded a little unconvinced. Ah, well, I have this problem. And actually, my son picked this up. I have the same tone of voice when I'm being sarcastic as when I'm not being sarcastic. I've noticed that.

And it's up to you, the listener, to try and work out what I mean. Did any of you find this difficult to read? Yeah. I just don't like it. I just don't like it. You make me seem very negative. I just think you're not understanding what I'm saying. You're the least negative person I know. I was thinking how great it would be to have a whole story read to me.

Well, that's going to happen. Pull up a chair, everyone. Okay. So this story is called My Shirt is in Mexico. Loving it already. And it was written on the 4th of January, 1941, and published in The New Yorker in the same year. So here we go. My shirt is in Mexico.

As soon as the train left London, we went along to the buffet car for a drink. The train was crammed, a wartime train loaded with soldiers and with parties of women and children travelling inland to get away from air raids. It was difficult to move along the corridor. One had to edge one's way past soldiers sitting on their packs, heaps of hand luggage, train-sick children being held out of the window, people queued up sheepishly outside the toilets. But the buffet car was almost empty and looked like something belonging to a different world, with its clean, light-painted walls and red leather upholstery. We sat down at a little table, and presently the attendant came along with the tariff card. He was a middle-aged man with a good face, innocent and humane like a rabbit's.

When I said I'd like a cup of black coffee with rum in it, he made no difficulties, though it was not down on the list. Coming back with our drinks, he looked at us as though we were already friends of his. The rum was in a measuring glass, and as he poured it into my coffee, he said, Excuse me mentioning it, madam, but I see from your bag you've been in Mexico. His voice was full of confidence and excitement. For a moment I wondered if I shouldn't take a chance on it, that I was feeling tired and unsure of my powers, so I said honestly, no such luck. The bag has, but it's only a loan. Now we all looked at the label, which was

printed with a gay view of flowers and white-clothed tourists riding on festooned mules. And thinking how hard it must be for a man who apparently wanted to go to Mexico to spend his life travelling in a buffet car from Plymouth to London and back again, I said that the friend who owned the bag had liked Mexico very much. Oh yes, it must be a wonderful country, he said, all those hothouse flowers growing wild, and the volcanoes, and the Mexicans making such wonderful artistic things, and everything so old, and yet, in a manner of speaking, only just beginning, building roads, and learning to read, and getting vaccinated. Sensible beginnings, said Valentine. Yes, that's right. Oh, I'd like to go to Mexico. It must be beautiful. I've got a shirt in Mexico, he said. How did that happen? I asked.

You're one up on me. I haven't got anything in Mexico. It's an uncommon thing to say, isn't it? Oil shares now, or a cousin. That's to be expected, but not a shirt. It all happened before the war because of a German gentleman, a refugee. I noticed him the moment he came in. He sat down at that table over there and I thought to myself, now he's somebody. A bald man and thin as a lathe and most remarkably clean. Bald, but not elderly, you understand. Presently, he ordered a large coffee and a slice of cake. Well, that didn't tell me much except a nice manner and a German accent. But when I brought along his order, he opened his wallet and there were his papers

spread out, a single to Plymouth and a third-class steamer passage. To Mexico? No, to New York. Well, he didn't say anything I could take hold of, but I'd still got a card up my sleeve. There was the ashtray needed emptying. When I went to change it, he said he didn't smoke. Now, I don't smoke either. So that was a beginning. And once you've got a beginning, it's easy, isn't it? From from smoking we got round to seasickness and then I could ask him if he crossed the Atlantic no said he but now I shall living in Plymouth naturally I know a lot about New York so I could tell him things he'd find useful puddings being called desserts and luggage baggage and how you can check it. He laughed and said he'd be able to carry all his. I could see my way to the shirt now. Yes, just a suitcase and what he stood up in,

what you'd take away for a weekend, and he was going to America for good and all, but not worried in the least. What's more, he seemed so pleased with what he had got, made me feel his suit to see what good wool it was, and told me all about a wonderful pair of silk pyjamas he'd been given. And you could tell from the way he spoke that he was the sort of gentleman who knows about clothes, quite a dandy in fact. He said straight out his shoes were a disappointment to him, they were a gift too. And he was quite right. They were very poor articles. Then all of a sudden it flashed on me. He could have my shirt. It was a very nice shirt, providential really. I brought it that very morning and carried it down with me. I always

like to buy my shirts in London. You get a better style. Well, he wasn't the sort of man you can have pretenses with. So I told him straight out, I'd like him to take my shirt. Wasn't I lucky to have it with me, though? You were, said Valentine. I can't wish anyone better luck than that. Yes! And he accepted it so pleasantly, but what I liked best was the way he opened the parcel and looked at the shirt most carefully, what I liked best was the way he opened the parcel and looked at the shirt most carefully, how the buttons were fastened on and all, examined it all over he did. If he had just taken the parcel, that wouldn't have been the same thing, would it? And now he's in Mexico. Oh no, he's in New York. It's the shirt that's in Mexico, with a friend of his. Look, this is the letter he wrote me from New York. Often read, always carefully refolded,

the thin sheet of paper already had the air of something beginning to be historic. March the 11th, 1939. Dear friend, I have to tell you how I have made good journey and I'm settled here in New York City. And I have meet other friends here also and I find some work shortly. And the beautiful shirt you gave me, it is not ungratefully that I bestow it to a comrade going to Mexico when he has greater need than I. I do not forget the kindness. I hope you are well and always make new friends. I thank you again cordially.

Renatus Leutner P.S. New York is very fine. You must feel happy about that shirt, I said. I do, he replied. It was a blue one. Just right for a sunny climate. I've always wanted to go to Mexico Very nice Brilliant

So if you like the sound of that and you want another 20 of those then English Climate Wartime Stories is available direct from Persephone who are mailing out books they're an independent bookshop so you should buy it from them on the internet or on the phone Well, thanks everyone. I enjoyed hearing those again. I didn't.

I went outside into the garden and had a fag while that was on. I enjoyed hearing those again I didn't, I went outside into the garden and had a fag while that was on I enjoyed hearing them again, I have to say one of the great things about this show is when you record them and you go on to the next thing you forget how many books we actually cover a lot

yes, it's a rich a Salmagundi of tasty of tasty book uh i think we referred to it didn't we was it on the last backlisted or a lot listed as this that being strapped to a wheel of fire or a wheel of books or i mean it just but on but we like to grumble a bit. But on the other hand, I was looking back at what I've read over the last couple of years. Just in terms of the episode we've been working on,

The Varieties of Religious Experience, there's no way I would have read that. No. There's no way I would have elected to read it. And it was such a great experience to then talk about it. It's a serendipitous thing of of uh the guest recommending stuff and suddenly there is a spark and you think yes yes that i've always meant to read but probably

we never would so great i think the other thing it's worth mentioning is if you haven't subscribed to lot listed but you are interested this this show is kind of thought maybe this is for me it's worth saying that the last episode we did was just about books we read as children which is a really really great and the next one is about books we read as teenagers so if that doesn't excite you um you know i don't know what's going to because they it's they're brilliant they're very nostalgic unlocking those teenage secrets nikki if anyone's worried we haven't talked about jd salinger enough as well okay get on those lot listed episodes i would i would yeah so you need to go to patreon.com forward slash backlisted and that's how you find us we'll be pleased to see you there and everyone will be pleased that you've helped contribute to keep this thing on the road so thank you very

much thank you very much. Thank you all hugely. Bye. Bye. Hi, it's Andy here. Just wanted to say thanks to listeners to Locklisted who were responsible for the little bits of music you heard in today's show. Clever people who've recorded their own versions of the Backlisted theme tune and sent them in to us via the Patreon. So you heard arrangements of the Backlisted theme music by listeners Nick Riddle and another one sent in by Neil Christie and one from Claire Parsons.

Also, the Beatles sent one in, which was nice of them. Neil Young and I am responsible for a couple of them, too. Thanks very much, everybody. Plenty more where those came from you can choose to listen to Backlisted with or without adverts if you prefer to listen to it without adverts you can join us on our Patreon

patreon.com forward slash backlisted where you also get bonus content of two episodes of Locklisted the podcast where we talk about the books and films and music that we've been listening to over the last couple of weeks