Backlisted - Summer Reading 2024

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Despite the team's somewhat complex relationship with the idea of ‘summer’, this episode is full of seasonal recommendations. Andy previews Intermezzo, the new Sally Rooney (out in September) and enjoys A Body Made of Glass: A History of Hypochondria by the guest on our Agatha Christie show,  Caroline Crampton. John chooses Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott, a re-issue of a controversial 1929 bestseller from Faber Editions and A Spell of Good Things, the latest chronicle of modern Nigerian life by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ while Nicky enjoys Daunt Books reissue of Ann Schlee’s 1981 Booker shortlisted novel, Rhine Journey and ends with a general appreciation of David Nicholls, and his latest bestseller, You Are Here, in particular.   *For £100 off any Serious Readers HD Light and free UK delivery use the discount code: BACK at seriousreaders.com/backlisted *Tickets are now on sale for our LIVE show in London on Wednesday Sep 25th where we will be discussing The Parable of The Sower by Octavia Butler, with guests Salena Golden and Una McCormack * 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 and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and get extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a patron at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Well, I have a very good reading light which makes a serious difference Uh-huh. I think I know what you're doing. You use if I'm not mistaken Andy a serious readers lamp The ones with daylight wavelength technology which are supposed to replicate the daylight spectrum as closely as possible. I do I've been using one for about five years and I absolutely love it which are supposed to replicate the daylight spectrum as closely as possible. I do. I've been using one for about five years and I absolutely love it. It's amazing how much clearer the type stands out on the page and it means I can whip through my 50 pages a day without any risk of straining either my eyes or my brain. So I just got one and actually it does.

It's true. It makes me want to sit and read from an actual book and not turn the TV on, which is a double win. It's also ridiculously easy to unpack, beautifully hand-built in Great Britain. So backlisted friends and listeners, we're going to make you an offer we hope you can't refuse. Yeah, if you order any Sirius Readers HD lamp, you'll get £100 off plus free UK delivery. You just go to SiriusReaders.com forward slash backlisted and enter the code back B A C K. If you're unhappy with it there's a 30 day risk free trial you can return it after 30 days for free

but trust me you won't want to because they're great. So for that £100 off your Sirius Reader lamp, go to siriusreaders.com forward slash backlisted and enter the code BAK. B A C K. It actually makes reading enjoyable again. Now there's a slogan we can stand by. Let's make reading enjoyable again. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books. Today you find us staring out to see bucket and spades in hand, hoping the sunshine will last long enough for us to have a nice picnic before the rain returns. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher Unbound, where people pledge to support the books they really want to read.

I'd just like to say that views expressed by individuals on this podcast do not represent those of Batlisted as a whole. I'm praying for rain because I'm Andy Miller, the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And if you hadn't guessed, welcome to our summer reading special. We do one of these every year where John and I are joined by. Hello me. That's Nikki Birch. Nikki Birch is our producer and she is a member of the public.

Thanks for coming on Nikki. Well, thank you for having me. A card carrying member of the public. To talk through some of the books we've been reading and which we'd like to recommend to backlisted listeners with a view to getting you brat summer beach brain ready. I'm excited because I'm going on holiday next week and so this is going to get me ready. I'll just have time to order my books on bookshop.org and then I can have them delivered. Seamless.

The backlisted bookshop. Are you going to somewhere with a beach? No, but with a pool. Going to sort of middle of France for a week to lie next to a pool and a river. I'm not going on holiday next week, but I am going the week after on my silent fasting retreat on Dartmoor. Are you allowed to read? No, I'm not allowed to do anything. This might not be so useful for you, John. Well, you're allowed to think about things.

I'm hoping that it'll be an inner journey into something. We shall find out anyway. Four days only with water and not even a tent under a tarpaulin. Sounds a bit like the norovirus you've just had. Well, I might. The norovirus is good preparation, I think, probably for the fasting retreat anyway. Precipitate, very, very sudden weight loss and not being able to eat anything. Hey ho. Summer. It's summer. It's summer. It's summer. It's summer. But when the summer is over, I feel certain that a lot of people listening to this will be reading a novel by Sally Rooney called Intermezzo, which is published on the

24th of September around the world, obviously one of the big literary events of the year. And listeners, I've been reading it. You lucky thing. I was lucky enough to get a proof copy and I was reading it. And just to fill in the backstory here for those of you who haven't listened to us before or not for a while, I think we are all, all three of us are fully paid up card carrying Sally Rooney fans. Absolutely. I know we talked about her second novel, Normal People, on Batlisted when it was first published. And I also know, because I can remember where I was, that we talked about her third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, in Cork, John. We did.

At the literary festival where we did that great show on Galway, sorry, in Galway, where we did that great show on Galway, sorry, where we did that lovely show on... With Mary Costello on the novel Elizabeth Costello. That's right, that's how you remember it. You only have to remember three words. I told you, I've got, I told you my brain fogs bad at the moment. JM Kurtz here. Anyway, I can remember reading Beautiful World, Where Are You? in the run up to that. And I love Beautiful World, Where Are You? and I love Normal People and I liked very much Conversations with Friends, her first novel. And as luck would have it, if you are listening to this and you're based in the USA

or Canada, keep listening because at the end of the show, there's going to be a competition to win copies of Sally Rooney's first two novels, Conversations with Friends and Normal People. MIA That's correct. Yeah. Just for our American and Canadian listeners. So it's nice because actually they don't get to come to any of our events or anything. We haven't done any American events, so it's nice to be able to have something for them. That's great. So yes, this, this by way of a literary exclusive, uh, in the summer reading episode, I don't want to give too much away about Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. Should you, the listeners wish to get a preview of it, Nikki, where can they hear Sally Rooney herself

reading from it? Yeah. If you search for the New Yorker, the writer's voice podcast, and Sally Rooney reads quite a big chunk of Intermezzo and it's called, she sort of portions a chunk of it off and calls it opening theory and reads it herself very beautifully. So yeah, I recommend if you like what Andy talks about and you think, oh, I wanted to have a little taste of it, you can have a listen on the New Yorker writer's voice podcast., I seem to remember, John, when we talked about Beautiful World, Where Are You, two, three years ago, whenever that was,

I expressed the view that I felt quite sorry for Sally Rooney because although one might not feel sorry for a writer as successful as she has been, I was very aware that the discourse around the publication of a new Sally Rooney novel was drowning out the actual qualities of her writing and of that novel. I feel that's a situation that's not got any better since the last one was published. And so Intermezzo represents a whole new level of the Rooney discourse. I'll say a bit more about discourse in a minute. What do you think? that it seems, it often seems to be a particular kind of woman novelist that gets this. For a while, I think Sadie Smith had it as well, the sort of

massive expectation and then the inevitable, is it as good as the last one? You know, why doesn't she write the same book again? A lot of that. I'm probably wading into treacherous waters here, but there seems to be more of an expectation for a successful woman novelist to stick within her lane, to write within the same genre? I think that's true. And I also think there's an expectation, not just on women writers,

but on people who experience phenomenal success, which perhaps neither they nor their publisher nor their record company nor the, was quite expecting that it wrong foots everybody, that it wrong foots the artist, it wrong foots the, that it wrong-foots the artist, it wrong-foots the publisher, it wrong-foots the readership, because of course nobody knows anything quote William Golding. So therefore trying to work out what it was that made it appeal to so many people can then set you off in the wrong direction, whether you duplicate it, do you not

duplicate it. There's a writer on Twitter called Yasmin Nair who's a backlisted listener and she agrees with you, Jon. We were talking about Sally Rooney and she said, I've not seen any serious critiques that don't somehow reek of, dare I say, envy and anger that a mere girl, and that is how many see her, not my perception, is so successful. But it takes work to write a novel that actually works as a novel. Absolutely. Now that, and that I think Yazan's brilliant. That is the question everyone should ask themselves,

who cares about such things? It's the only question that actually matters. About Intermezzo. But unfortunately, drowning it out is the discourse. Now, what is the Sally Rooney discourse? Well, I like to think of when I'm thinking about what discourse is, I like to define it in the same terms as Otoan did in their hit single from the late seventies. D I S C O. What's that? D is dialectic. I is intellectual. S is so exciting. C is controversial. It's O U R S E. Or to put it a different way, discourse, it's disco you arse. It's fine to go to the disco, but there comes a point where you have to come back from the disco. It's a lot of fun to go onto social media and strut your stuff and have a hot take on

this phenomenon, but it always comes back to that question. It takes work to write a novel that actually works as a novel, does intermezzo work as a novel? Yes. Oh a novel, does Intermezzo work as a novel? Yes. Oh, a few. And no. But you'll need to read it to find out why. Don't, don't. I don't want to, it's not plot spoilers, I don't want to actually get into the discourse too heavily. But what I will observe about it is, like a Sally Rooney novel, it's set in the contemporary times. It features two sets of relationships.

So far, so what we might expect. When she published her first novel, Conversations with Friends, that actually turned out to be a trace description of what her method is. She gets characters to talk or text or email or tweet and via those conversations, she explores issues to do with modern relationships and how people in the late capitalist environment, as she would say, she's of the left. So this novel, I think, So this novel, I think say. But what I found very interesting about it as a reader of her work and as somebody who's fascinated by how artists consolidate their success and keep going is I suspect this might prove more challenging for people than her previous novels

have her mass readership. It doesn't strike me as automatically a fall in love with it book, but as an artist with a long career ahead of her, it's probably the best thing she could have done. Really? Where does this stand in the list for you? I don't want to say. Okay. But what I will say is if you loved normal people, you may like this. Okay. Okay. But, I, but I think so much cause I keep, I'm sorry, I keep going back to this, but it is really important how you feel about what you read here is going to be so affected by whatever you already bring to the party in terms of how you feel about not just Sally Rooney, but Sally Rooney's success and about people who criticize Sally Rooney. And all that stuff is the merc obscuring the question of the book itself, which is why I'm slightly being cagey about what

I say. I was really happy to get a proof. I was really feel privileged to have discovered what I think about the novel before that really kicks off in the next one. You haven't just because you're not really saying what you think about the novel here, Andy. You're right. And it that be a spoiler. Okay.

Okay. Are you going to later for listeners? Were you like in six months time? Tell us. I tell you what, everybody, let's put a date in the diary. If we all get to Christmas and God knows that might not happen given what's happening in the world, but if we all get to Christmas, I will show my hand on the Christmas episode.

Okay. But that's deliberate Nick. It's not. Yeah, I get it. I get it. Do you know what I mean? And you and I will have read it by then Nick. Yeah.

Oh, a hundred percent. I'll be there in September. People should be able to read a new book by an important writer without coming to it preloaded or at least any more preloaded than they already are. I feel the same about music, Nicky. I think it's wonderful we live in an era where artists release new records with no fanfare and without review copies going out. But I think it's interesting. You know, I get it. I think what you're saying though is you've read it, people will have thoughts on it. And I guess that means some people may have negative thoughts on it. Some people may have positive thoughts on it. And it's probably not

going to be as instantly popular as normal people. I am saying things like that, but underpinning all those things. Thank you, she is a really good writer and therefore deserves to be treated. Underpinning that is the, I'll repeat it. Yeah. I'll repeat it philosophy on this podcast.

Yeah. That it's all one song. If a writer, if a good writer or a great musician puts out a record you don't like, they haven't done it specifically to piss you off. It's coming from the same place that the ones you did like came from. Okay. So I think there's going to be a quite a bit of discourse about the validity of her work as art or not as art. And I want to get it in early and say, she's done the right thing. Right. Good. Regardless of how enjoyable an individual reader might find it. Okay. Well, all I can say is I haven't listened to the first hour or an hour

on the New Yorker. I really enjoyed it. So I'm, and I'm a absolutely flag waving, you know, fan of Sally Rooney and I loved it. So I'm really looking forward to it. Okay, listen, you know where to go everyone to listen to that if you want to hear some of it now. And we'll revisit this at Christmas. John, what have you been reading this summer? Well, I'm, I'm doing a backlisted thing. I'm going to talk about an old book, which has just been re-released. The very excellent Faber editions re-released right at the very end of July,

so very recently. A 1929 novel called Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott, which is the end of the jazz age. It is a book about a marriage, Patricia and Peter, they are a New York Manhattan couple living exactly the kind of very, very kind of drink-filled, brittle, funny, Algonquin round table witty lifestyle that we all want in the 1920s jazz age characters to live. And she was, can I just say a little bit about Ursula Parrott? Cause I think that I'm going to read it. I'm going to, I'm going to give you, she's American. She's American writer. She's a magazine. So magazine writer. I just, all you really need to know is they're kind of, you know, very modern open marriage doesn't work. He has an affair.

She then has an affair with his best friend and he treats her extremely badly and decides he wants a divorce. And the book is really her attempting to deal with what she's done. Her beautiful friend, Lucia, who she goes out and sort of, it is kind of, you know, F Scott Fitzgerald meets Sex and the City. It's astonishingly, it's astonishingly modern. I mean, it was, I'll tell you a little bit about the history of the novel. If you like Anita Luce, or if you like I do, Eva Babbitts, you will, Eva Babbitts, you will love the kind of the moxie with which she writes this book, the story. It's just the one-liners, the put-downs, the Esprit de Scalia that I'm going to get him this time. They keep, Pete and Patricia keep coming back together. He gets more violent. There are

some very uncomfortable scenes of violence against women in the book, just as a trigger warning. She is very funny, very witty, but also incredibly vulnerable, incredibly emotionally complex. It's an extraordinarily mature book in its moral, it's like the whole of the 20th century. I mean, there is nothing that a modern reader who's gone through divorce or gone through a difficult relationship, I kept having to go and think, this isn't a modern novel set in 1929, which is exactly what it reads like. Well, Sally Rooney readers might perhaps, before they get to Sally Rooney, might want to read this Ursula Parrott novel.

You know, the thing about, you know, you're talking, we're talking about sort of tropes. Why do we like rediscovered novels? Part of it is this kind of, to sort of inhabit the consciousness of somebody who lived over a hundred now over a hundred years ago. And, and here you are. So it has also the thing we were just talking about. There's less discourse around an undiscovered quote unquote undiscovered novel, you're not coming to it with a head full of other people's opinions.

You're, you're, you're coming to it with a head full of other people's opinions. You're coming to it fresh. Although this was a best seller, wasn't it? Let me give you a little bit from Monica Heisey's really brilliant introduction, but it gives you a really strong, it sold a hundred thousand copies in its first year. It's full of the Sex and the City thing. It's full of amazing descriptions of clothes. She works as a copywriter in a department store in Manhattan. It's got that kind of madman attention to detail, cosmetics, clothing, so much drinking. I mean, the drinking is absolutely spectacular in the novel. Anyway, this is about Ursula Parrott, because the film was famously made into a, the book

was made into a film called The Divorcee with Norma Shearer won an Oscar for it. And Parrott was a very successful writer, but happiness did not come as easily to her. This is me reading the introduction to her as a writing, despite amassing a substantial fortune Parrott died on the lam and in deep debt having been arrested multiple times, once for impairing the loyalty and discipline of America's fighting forces. She tried to sneak a young soldier out of his barracks to take him to dinner. Three more ill-conceived marriages were followed rapidly by three more divorces and a relationship with her son, whose maternity she only acknowledged seven years into his life, remained strained.

Her abortions, alcoholism, and other assorted scandals were mocked ruthlessly by the press. The public derision got worse as she aged, fulfilling the prophecy of her earlier writing on leftover ladies, a term for the female victims of a society that pitted older women against their younger peers. She spent her final years in various hotels taking lovers, skipping deadlines to drink and walk her dog, a poodle named incredibly ex-wife and a massing unpaid bills as she burned through her fortune. Beset by romantic and financial scandal, her commissions and work relationships dried up. After allegedly making off with a thousand pounds of a friend's

silverware during a house stay, she spent her last years hiding from an arrest warrant, dying alone of cancer in a charity ward at the age of 57. So, against that background, this is a kind of, yeah, this is a sort of glittering riposte of a book of a woman in her full powers writing a novel with no, yeah, I mean, no handrails, no barriers. And yet what really makes you interested, what made me kind of pulled me in is it's not just titillating, although I suppose it is, it's very, very sad. She may come on like Ine Toulouse and Eve Babbitts, but she is Mae Brennan, much closer by the end of the book. You realise, although there is ostensibly a happy ending to the novel, you don't buy it for a moment. She basically, spoiler, she ends up remarrying

a much more wealthy man. But there's's one beautiful little line towards the end, which I think if you want to, you know, you know how we like a bit of melancholy on this podcast. Um, she, this is, I'm just, I don't normally do this. We like a cruel summer, not a brat one. He's she's standing on the deck of a ship. They're going on a cruise with a new husband. What are thinking Patricia that I mean to make you a perfect wife Nathaniel? He smiled down at me happily. I did mean it yet I shall hope through all my youth through all my life that in some far city. I shall find my love again

Very good, you know, it's that thing. Peter, the husband who she loves passionately, he's so not up to what she wants to give. And that is, I'm afraid that is every great romance that you ever read, isn't it? Yeah. The actual, the actual people don't really, they don't really match up to the, to the love that you, that you're looking for. Wow. This is turning into the feel good summer show. I hoped it would.

There we go. The ex-wife, Ursula Parrott, published by Faber and Faber. Fabulous. And it's a paperback original. Oh my God, look at that 80s. Fabious. There's more gold on this cover than anything I've seen in a long time. Can I just describe the cover?

It's got a kind of gold, ex-wife is written in a kind of Athena, if you remember them style kind of font and the eye of wife is a lipstick. Yeah. Fantastic. It's, it's, I have to say it's brilliant novel. I, I, as they say, devoured it and I've not been able to think of much else this week. All right. So let's now turn to the, on the Hackney Omnibike.

That's me. Nicky Burch with her first recommendation of the summer. What is it Nicky? Yeah. So I've also had a book that's been reissued. It's called Rhyme Journey by Anne Schlee and it's been reissued by Daunt and it is actually a book from 1981. It's a novel, isn't it? It is a novel, yes. And I'm thinking about a summer read and to me, this is the perfect summer read. It's like a book you could devour and enjoy a bit like, I suppose, a Sally Rooney book

might be, you know. Might be. Might be. Might be. Although you won't get it. Let's say that's an autumn. That's an autumn read. This is. Might be. Although you won't get it. Let's say that's an autumn. That's an autumn read.

This is a summer read. Yeah. It was actually shortlisted for the Booker in 1981. And it's her debut book. I'd never heard of it. And it's set in Victorian times in an English family go on a journey to be, you know, in sort of somebody's not very well. And so they think they're going to go to Barden, Barden and to be, you know, in sort of somebody's not very well. And so they think they're going to go to Barden, Barden and get healed, you know, that kind

of thing, get better. And it's a woman called Charlotte who's in her, she's middle-aged woman called Charlotte, who has been looking after somebody for many years. He's died and she's inherited some money and she sort of of come into her brother's now sort of charge. He's saying, come and join our family. You can basically be our servant. We'll take your money. And he's a vicar. His wife is the one who needs to be healed in Barden-Barden. So they go on this cruise down into Prussia, down the Rhine. So that's the setting. It's a historical novel and it's written in that time. Do you know what I mean? Like it's sort of like, it's set in the 1850s.

1850s. Yeah. And it's very much with that sort of Victorian constraint. Okay. Yes. Everyone's not saying what they mean. And if they did the whole house of cards would come down. That's exactly it. You've nailed it, Andy. That's basically the whole book. That degree did come in useful. Yeah. And there's a really good intro by Lauren Groff who kind of explains this better than

I can. But yeah, the whole book she sort of says is faithful to the Victorian mindset in language and emotional constraints. So yeah, so she's accompanying her brother and this is also set to the backdrop of Marx has been expelled from Cologne. And so there's sort of like a fervourish kind of political backdrop going on. And really it's about, she's single, as I said, but really it's not really a love story, but it's a what might have happened love story. So she sort of reminisces on what could have happened, how my life could have been very different

if perhaps my over dominant brother hadn't made decisions for me on my behalf. And there's a family, another English family who she sees on this journey. And it's a bit like they're doing a sort of traveling thing. They stop off somewhere, they see a family and then a few days later they bump into them doing the same kind of journey further on.

And she sees this man who's the husband of the family and he looks a bit like somebody who she once potentially had a relationship with. And so she then starts remembering things and having, you know, it's in her imagination. And effectively what it does, there is a historical context which is important, the political situation at the time, but then there's also her awakening. And it's just, it's really beautiful, has beautiful language, has beautiful plot. It really kind of comes together as a great novel and is one of those ones you can just read in a day and just feel like you're so happy that you read it.

Oh, that sounds amazing. It's really lovely. It's a sad summer read. I like that. It's a sad summer read. Yeah. Marvelous. Before you read a bit, are you going to read a bit? I'll read a little bit, yeah. I would like to note that firstly, this is published in the UK, republished in the UK by Dawn Books, as Nikki said, and in the States by McNally Editions, which must mean it's the work of our friend and former guest, Lucy Scoles, who runs that

list. And I would also like to note that we just discussed two books, haven't we? Old books, X, Y, from Ryan Journey, which both represent this thing we were talking about at a festival a couple of weekends ago, which is the idea of backlist books as the new front list books. How to use a particular phrase, new life is being given to old books by publishers and podcasts and bloggers and the internet. And we're going to be reprising that talk at the Cheltenham Literary Festival in October, we have dates to be announced.

So hopefully we'll see some of you there for that. I've not read any, Anshalee, but I think she was, she's one of those writers. I know that I remember reading Jane Gardner wrote a really nice piece about it. She died, I think, last year in 2023. And Jane Gardner was a huge fan. And it feels like Jane Gardam, she writes books, she wrote books that were, I think one of her books won the Carnegie or was shortlisted for the Carnegie and as well as the Booker. So she was one of those writers that was able to, there aren't many who do it well, who can cross between adult

and children's. That's right. This is our first adult book. That's right. Yeah. I'm not, you said it, we sort of talked about being sad. I don't think it is a sad book really. It's more thoughtful, thoughtful, wistful. Yes. And, but ultimately redemptive. So that's quite nice, you know, without giving the game away too much. It sounds like a very good, it sounds perfect. As you say, it definitely feels McNally, Daunt, and a perfect summer reading. Yeah, a really lovely summer read. Right, so I'm just going to read a small bit of it.

So Charlotte, whose main character, she has come across this family, as I said, on the journey. Mr Newman is the man who she sort of thinks might look like. She's not saying he is the person that she had a frisson with. He just reminds her of him and therefore makes her incredibly nervous. And as you can imagine, all kind of can't really speak to this person. And she's traveling, as I said, with her brother and her brother's family. So Mr. Newman turns and directed a question towards Charlotte. He held no terrors for her now. She could even see that he was not entirely a gentlemanly person. How does one know other than by a sensibility to the minutest detail of dress and speech imbued by

years of caution in such matters? Yet she liked the frankness with which he addressed her, as if the little effort to draw her into the conversation should be taken as a matter of in such matters. Yet she liked the frankness with which he addressed her, as if the little effort to draw her into the conversation should be taken as a matter of course. He asked her if she looked forward to visiting the cathedral at Cologne. We do not intend to visit the cathedral, answered Mr. Morrison, that's her brother. What is of real interest, the progress of the building, will be visible from without. As for what goes on inside, I should scarcely care for my wife and child to be exposed to such an atmosphere of superstition

and venial praying upon the ignorant and credulous. When one thinks that these are the very people who are agitating for freedom of conscience, what freedom do they ask but to subject themselves still further to a degrading spiritual bondage. Mr. Newman had watched the clergymen throughout this impassioned speech. He mowed no attempt to answer, but returned his look a little ironically to Charlotte, to whom he had originally addressed his question. That's the kind of vibe. Oh, it's marvelous. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Great. What's that called, Nicky? We have three summaries. What was that called? Rhyme Journey by Anne Schley. And that's published by Dawn Books in the UK and McNally Editions in the US. Join us after the break for three more summer reads. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning, which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants his last parachute? I do.

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I use secret whole body deodorant because more than just my armpits stink. Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss freshness from my pits to my... I love that it's a spray. Me too. And it comes in sticks and creams too. Go get your secret whole body deodorant. Well welcome back everybody. This is the second half of our summer reading special here on Backlisted. If you're in Scotland it's pretty much autumn reading now but hey that's okay. Reading is not a seasonal activity, believe it or not. What have you got in that hamper, Andy, that you want to share with us? I've got a delicious book about hypochondria. Who wouldn't want to know about that in the summer? Our guest on a recent episode of About Listed, about Endless Night by Agatha Christie,

which I know lots of you have listened to to and thank you so much for all your positive feedback about that one. Our guest Caroline Crampton is the host of the She Done It crime fiction podcast, but she's also a terrific author in her own right. And this book, A Body Made of Glass, A History of Hyperchondria was published earlier this year, it's out now. And I just wanted to note before I say a little bit about it, that often, John and I don't have time to read our guests books before they appear on the show, which seems tremendously rude. But what usually happens

is we have so much to do for the actual show that we then don't get time to read their books when we're not going to be able to talk much about their books. But I was thinking this year that some of my favourite reads have been novels or in this case, non-fiction that I've picked up after the guest has been on the show and read, like A Flat Place by Nori Masuda. It's a fantastic book. Rose Ruines Burding, which is a novel that I wish I could talk more about that today. If you haven't encountered Rose's novel about two women in a seaside town, a second novel called Buring. You may remember Rose from our episode about Abra by Joan Barfoot. Well, Rose's novel is absolutely terrific. It also has my favorite

cover of the year, but I've already talked about that on Lock Listed. So sorry, Rose. Sorry, everybody. I can't do it again. But Caroline's book, A Body Made of Glass, and the subtitle is A History of Hypochondria. And what Caroline has done here is take us through the history of people feeling unwell when they may or may not actually be unwell, beginning in the age of Hippocrates and taking us right through to the wellness industry today. So Caroline is terribly... The research in this is superb. You go through doctors who thought that it was nonsense to doctors who thought it was a worse illness than nostalgia. Nostalgia, as we know, originally diagnosed as a… As an illness. I didn't know that.

Did you not know that? No. Yeah. If you were diagnosed, if you were a soldier in the Russian army and you were diagnosed with nostalgia, you were sent home because it's weakness, it was mental weakness. Just that life was better before this, is that the kind of thing? Yes, and it would make you, to use this word again, wistful rather than fighting. And similarly, women in the Victorian era, hypochondria is conflated with this thing, this catch-all term, neurasthenia. It's seen as being a uniquely feminine condition.

That doesn't ring true to my experiences. Well, do you know what I mean, Nikki? It's like this, the gendered nature of hypochondria is also explored by Caroline here. And she talks us through scientists and artists and writers who have suffered with conditions, some of which are real and some of which are imaginary, including Molière, Charles Darwin, Virginia Woolf, Sigmund Freud, Philip Larkin, of course, and Marcel Proust, who is the patron saint of the hypochondriac. So, so hypochondriacal was he that he made himself ill. So it's a really interesting idea anyway, but it's also she's built into it her own experience of being diagnosed. Well, I'll

just read this tiny, tiny bit. She says, she writes in the introduction, I am a hypochondriac, or at least I worry that I am, which really amounts to the same thing. The fear is that there is something wrong with me, that I am sick, is always with me. I doubt that what I experience are physical sensations and I distrust my own interpretations of what I feel. Sometimes the anxiety is distant and muffled, like a radio playing in another room of the house, barely there. At other times, it is all I can hear. It wasn't always this way. For the first sixteen years of my life, I was gloriously unaware of my own state of health. I experienced the usual cocktail of childhood maladies from

chickenpox to tonsillitis, but being ill was merely a temporary state that passed after a few days of rest and the ingestion of the right medicine. Once I was on my feet again, I never gave my sick bed a backwards glance. The watershed in my understanding of myself, the before and after moment, came when I was 17 and on the precipice of adulthood, cautiously looking over the edge at what my independent life might be like.

I was applying to university, making new friends, getting serious about writing. Then a busy winter of feeling run down culminated in me being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a relatively rare type of blood cancer. After months of treatment I was given the all clear and went off to university as planned. Once I made it after five years after the end of the treatment, the likelihood of my getting cancer again had become about the same as for the rest of the population. There were no more annual checkups,

no more preventative medications, no more scans. My body and my life, they said, were cancer-free. But I am not free. I want to draw the listener's attention to something that I really loved in this book. First of all, it's tremendously well written. And by that, I don't mean that the prose is spectacular or that it reinvents the wheel. It doesn't. But what it does is it deals with It deals with a topic in depth appropriately, sensitively, and occasionally surprisingly. It is a total pleasure to read this book. I will note for the listener that that's embedded even in the title and subtitle. It's called A Body Made of Glass, A History of Hypochondria, which at first sight appears to be a fairly standard formula of imagistic title followed by an explicatory subtitle. But the subtitle has two meanings and two resonances.

Superficially a history of hypochondria is what it is. It's a history of hypochondria and what we mean by hypochondria. But there's also a second meaning. A history of hypochondria suggests to me someone with a history of hypochondria. It's like a diagnosis or the note in the margin of a medical record. And that's how Caroline's own experience informs the book. It doesn't overwhelm it, but she's letting you know that this matters to her. She's not giving you a long magazine article with some interesting facts gleaned off the internet. She's exploring so that she can better understand it, her own hypochondria, but not in a me, me, me style. I think it's a really terrific and underrated book.

This book should be much, much more widely reviewed and widely read. It is really, really good. Can I ask you a question about it? Yes, please do. Who's going to like it? Who is it? Who would it appeal to? Do you need to be knowing someone who's hyperchondriac or a hyperchondriac yourself to enjoy this? Nikki, you've been enjoying the Olympics, haven't you? I have been loving it. Right. So I'm going to put it in these terms for you. You know, the horse dancing at the Olympics. Not one of my favorite sports, but I'm aware of it. But you know, right. You wouldn't watch it the rest of you watch it at the Olympics, right? So the author in this scenario is the rider

and the rider is putting the horse through its paces and the horse is the book, right? and the horse is the book, right? And the pleasure, if it's done perfectly, is it's just beautiful to watch. And it can both be judged by experts who know what to look for, but also members of the general public who don't often look at horse dancing, but can see it being done well. So, Nikki, in this metaphor, I am the expert here, right? And you are Snoop Dogg, which I thought you would like. You're the guy going, whoa, what's this happening? Look at the horse dance. Who will read it? People who have an appreciation for good books, well written. Okay. Plus I think there is also a secondary audience of people who are interested in the history of patriarchal ways of controlling women's behaviour or just feminism

or just a social history of women throughout this period. So much of hypochondria is linked is linked incorrectly with female identity culturally. And male attempts to control, yeah. Sounds like the previous book I've just, yeah, just been reading, Rhyme Journey. There's only one, we know, there's just one book. There's only one book. Sounds great, Andrew. There's only one book.

Unfortunately, yes, I'm going to have to reprise many of the same themes. So that is A Body Made of Glass, A History of hypochondria by Caroline Crampton published by Granta. And I'll give you one, Nikki, I'll give you one other group of people who should read this book. Aspiring non-fiction writers should read this book. This is how you do it. Okay, that's good. This is how you do it.

That's very good. And I don't often feel that when I read something, but within pages. Yeah, you know what it's like, John, mostly I read things and go, well, then why did they do that? This one within pages, I thought, oh, I'm going to enjoy this. There's going to be nothing in here that's going to make me feel ill. I mean, it's terrific. It's terrific anyway. Yeah.

I mean, she's such a good writer. Those little essays that she writes on, she done it, I mean, it's terrific. It's terrific anyway. Yeah. She, I mean, she's such a good writer. Those little essays that she writes on she done it. I think a brilliant little, she writes about fiction as well as she writes about. You've really totally sold me on this. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm interested. I'm interested in it. It reminds me a little bit of that great Susan Sontag book, which I haven't read for years, Illness as Metaphor. And also there are themes in it that I think I talked about

Freedom by Olivia Lang on one of the podcasts. That question about who reads it, I think there is, I hate the description of it as smart thinking, but those sections on workshops, I think it kind of is it's sort of nonfiction that is philosophical, but it also has narratives and stories within it. It's not, it's not sort of dry or academic. Nicky, you ask as ever of a highly, seemingly straightforward, but in fact, an incredibly complex question. What is going to sell this book? Well, the subject seems perhaps of limited appeal. And this is always where these are tougher books to sell when what, when

what distinguishes it is the quality with which the topic is handled. You need as, as the cliche goes, you need a lot of good broadsheet reviews and a couple of prizes. And then people really think, of course, I've always wanted to know about hypochondria, they tell themselves. You know, I'm interested in the subject, but I thoroughly, I feel terribly enthusiastic about seeing somebody do one of these things properly. Well, there you go. Full marks from this judge. Plus a lot of people out there, Nikki, I know it's hard for you to understand this,

but a lot of people out there complain about how unwell they are most of the time. Yeah, they don't have your superwoman like qualities of recovery. I think we all know one or two of those people. Mitch, what have you been also reading this? Although as will be revealed, there are points at which, as you say, it's all one book. I'm going to talk about a novel, a novel that was shortlisted for last year's Booker Prize, which is A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adobayo. And she is a Nigerian novelist. Her first novel books published by Canon Gate, as was a previous novel Stay With Me, which again was shortlisted for a whole range of other prizes. That book was set in the early 80s and during the dictatorship.

This is later in the, I mean, they're not connected in any way other than they're both set in more or less nearly contemporary Nigeria. And it is the story of two families, one middle class and relatively well off. The main character, Wariola, is a doctor who is engaged to be married. And a lot of the book is basically the incredible preparation for that massive and important ceremony. There is a poor cast over it by the violence which the groom practises on the wife-to-be, which really is brilliantly handled. And the book is again about how institutions and men in particular, or the patriarchal systems of which Nigeria is full,

control the lives of women. But also there is another family. So there's the middle-class family, and then there's the poor family, which is a schoolteacher who has had his job taken away from him by the government. And the book is a slow, they're slow, or not so slow descent into poverty, the mother having to basically beg for food to keep the two children alive. The main character, Enyola, is a schoolboy, young teenager, and his sister is more academically gifted than him.

So the money that the family have, such as it is, is paid to keep her in a good school. And he goes to a really terrible school where he's badly bullied and eventually falls in with a bad lot and he works the way the two plots are combined is he works in a hair salon as a sweeping the floor and the great matriarch of the mother of Wariola who is organizing the wedding. He overhears many of her conversations. Political corruption, male violence, the horrible debilitating effects of poverty. And yet full of incredible life and incredible description and detail.

I mean, there are people who in that slightly lazy way say, oh, she has a Dickensian sort of flair for, you know, minor characters and great set pieces. She definitely has all of that. It's a bit of a saga, isn't it? I have actually read this, John. This was the one I talked about. Was this the one you read? Yeah. A read this, John. This was the one I talked about. Was this the one you read? Okay. A Spell of Good Things. Well, there you go.

I tell you what I really, I love, it's great to have descriptions about Nigerian culture. So well read and so well kind of the scene is set, but it's also like a proper like summer saga, isn't it? Where you're waiting to see how it all unravels and it's a proper good book. The ending is devastating, just to let everybody know. It doesn't end happily. But what I would also say is that what it really reminded me of, and I interviewed Ayubami at Hay, and hoping she'll come and do a podcast. She was fantastic. Really, really interesting. It was actually Zola. That's what she's really doing. And I think, you know, the next novel is going to be, you know, she's building up in the same way that Zola does, a really detailed, rich portrait of contemporary Nigeria with

characters that you care about, but which she refuses to, you know, she refuses for the purposes of, you know, flattering an audience who want to have happy endings, to give them happy endings. She's a very literary writer, that's the thing. She's read everybody, but she's a great storyteller. I'll give you one paragraph just to give you the flavour, but I have to say this is not a book where you're going to pick flair passages out, but here's a little bit towards the end of the book. All you need to know is that Honorable is the corrupt politician that Eneola, out of his desperation because his family are so poor, has started to do jobs for. And you can already feel by this

stage, this is the sort of last quarter of the book, that things are going to go wrong. Eneola's worry about what his mother would say concerning the food stuff he'd gotten from Honorable's house had been for nothing. He arrived home long before she did and spent the evening thinking about explanations that could help him evade a truth he suspected would upset his parents. He was not bothered about giving his father any explanations. He only worried about what his mother might think. After all, if the man had

done what he should in the last few years, the family would not need the things Honorable had given. His mother, though, she always tried, even if her efforts did not amount to enough money to pay his fees and Bozola's, that's his sister. She had tried. When his mother returned home, it was late in the night. She nodded weakly and smiled when he showed her the food stuff. As she counted out seven cups of rice, 10 cups of gari and five of beans, he waited for her to insist that she would not eat any of the items until he explained their origin. She did not. Instead, she hugged him until his arms felt numb.

So it's so great. It's really about pressure, isn't it? It's about pressure on all sides. So pressure from Kunle's family about the sort of marriage and that she doesn't really, she knows that it's not the kind of the great relationship that it should be. And she doesn't really want to, but she's under so much pressure to sort of be perceived as being a good girl. And her sister, she's got this amazing sister who calls it all out. Yeah, that's right. And her sister is this sort of, she's a very modern character, isn't she? The sister's like, screw society, you should leave him. And then Eniola's pressure about from his parents to do the right thing, but he hasn't got any money and how do we, and the parents'

pressure to be kind of, you know, to do well by their children, but you know, society has, as you said, taken away the tools that allow them to do it. It's really great. It's a forensic, you know, account of what deep inequality does to human values. I just like that a writer in the 21st century is embarking on a Rouges-Macar cycle of 20 novels to analyze the Nigerian society from the top to the bottom. That's incredible. It's a very, I mean, she's got, you know, I like you, Nikki, I love reading African fiction, but she's got such an authority about her. You know, you totally, it's that great thing is why would I want to read about a sad novel, ultimately sad novel set in

Nigeria? Well, you want to read it because every character is not a stock character. It's very cleverly done. Again, it's not the subject, it's the treatment of the subject. It's the way it's done. It's the way it's done. Really, really top quality fiction. What's it called? It is called A Spell of Good Things. It was published last year by Canon Gate, shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

And who's the author? And it is Ayubami Adebayo. All right. Now we've focused exclusively in this summer reading special so far on books by women, but men write books too, you know. And so Nikki, please bring us our token male contributor for this episode. Yes. So we talked about this on Locklisted, our subscriber show, but we're going to bring it here to everybody because we think this is probably a big summer hit, isn't it?

It's the book of the summer. It's not the book of the summer, the David Nichols, You Are Here, another book about middle-aged romance. And yeah, if you could say that the Ryan journey is about middle-aged romance of sorts. And it is a David Nichols. What is it? How many books has he done? Half a dozen, six or seven. And this is his most successful, this has proved to be his

most successful novel since One Day. And as we know, One Day has sort of now become a modern classic in so far as it was a best seller and then again, a best seller. Yeah. Because of the success of the One Day TV show as well, he's become more famous because he was involved in writing that. So, well, it's about two individuals who are among a group of people who set out for a walk, a coast to coast walk. And in doing so they, you know, eventually get together. And or do they, sorry. Well, you know, spoiler alert. And it's also about their own backstories and their lives. And it's one of those books where, and I said this on Lock Listed, but you sit down

to read it at the beginning of the day and oops, there's the day gone. And that is nothing better than that for a holiday read. It's a pure pleasure. And I just think, you know, enjoy it, embrace it. There's lots to be said about kind of, you know, we can all we can pick out books from the backlist and we can kind of enjoy difficult and challenging books. This isn't a difficult or challenging book. It's a really enjoyable book. Okay. So listen, I wasn't being entirely whimsical when I pointed out was this was the only book by a man that we talked about today. Because when we talked about this book on Lot Listed, I talked a little about the experience I interviewed David when the book was published.

And when we came out on the stage to a packed house, it was very evident that the house was packed with female readers and a few fellow traveling men. And indeed, Nikki, could you read out who the names are on the front cover of You Are Here? Gorgeously witty and joyful, says Katherine Rundell. Magnificent, says Marion Keyes. Nicole's is best book ever, says Katlyn Moran. Such a lovely book, says Nigella Lawson. 74% of fiction is bought by women in the UK.

Well, what I want to say is don't, you know, I know men, you find it hard to read fiction, but you really like this men, men you would really like this. You wouldn't like it because women like it. You would like it because it's extremely well observed, amusing. It has a fantastic story, but it also has lots of stuff about the right rucksack to use. So many like that. There's a lot of great walking. So, so I feel almost, I feel I'm very glad that David, who is a great writer and a very good person, has a big enthusiastic readership. But I feel it's one of those examples of, But I feel it's one of those examples of the publisher is doing the right thing there. It's saying to that big enthusiastic readership, women like you really like this writer and will love this book. And you have to choose, don't you, John?

You have to choose who you're going to market a book to. But it's also a thing where I think men probably might miss out on reading a book they would really, really enjoy. I hate on one level making those distinctions, but I'm also very aware that commercially things tend to be divided down that line. And for the reasons I've just said, because know, because women buy fiction, but actually it's not true that only, as I hope this podcast shows, it's not true that only women read fiction. And it's, there's something about David Nichols' work, which I think is, I mean,

there are very few rights, as I say, you could almost give to anyone. But I, you know, if I, if David Nichols is sort of, if somebody's like, I find it quite difficult to read fiction. I've had this conversation so many times with friends. Where would you start this? Actually this would be a really, really good book. Say this, just try this. Cause if you're, you know, as I think I said to you, I had that very strange experience of listening to his David at Island Discs and wondering if in fact I was David Nicholls.

Because it was so, where's he going to go next? You know, he goes from say a little prayer to cloud busting by Kate Bush to life on Mars. And he talks about how he was always rubbish at all sports ever. To the Goldberg variations. That guy's ripping me off. What's he doing? You know, who knows where the time goes by Fairport and ends up with Tracy Thorne's, you know, massive attack. It's just He is a, the Desert Islandist is not just the music, but he, it's really brilliant. The way he talks about, for example, how he plotted out one day.

It's amazing as a book lover, you should definitely listen to his Desert Islandist. Also I want to, I want to make the best best recommendation I can, which is Nikki's description of what captivated her when she read the book, which is she, you know, the day's gone or you couldn't put it down or you wanted to know what happened next. All those cliches. Listeners, even I felt that. And I, as you know, am hostile to those feelings when I'm being manipulated when I read a book. But it really does take you along with it. The plot works and the plot works in perfect proportion to the other attributes that David brings to his writing. So yeah, it's a triple thumbs up from this panel.

Absolutely. I have exactly the same. It's the part of me that wants to kind of get people to read more complicated experimental fiction and work in translation and modernist poetry. There is a great joy in reading a beautifully constructed, intelligent, humane, complex work of fiction. And that's what David Nicholls writes.

These are not pot boilers written to, as you said, Andy, to convert female readers as though that's somehow a kind of a lesser form of fiction. This is a great novel. And everybody who admires and enjoys great storytelling will get something out of this book. There's a link, isn't there? So there's a link at the beginning and the end of this, these books, right? Sally Rooney's and the David Nicholls, right, are people we should be cherishing and promoting, and not, you know, not be knocking them. It's easy

to knock people, but like, you know, let's just knock Colleen Hoover and let's stay with David and Sally, the kudos that they deserve. Yeah, reading for pleasure listeners is not a myth. It turns out. It's still possible. It can still be done. It can be done. Right. Speaking of reading for pleasure, Nikki, do you want to tell people in the States and in Canada how they can enter this draw? Yeah. So we've got copies of Sally Rooney conversations with friends and normal people

to give away. And all you need to do is to either contact us via Twitter or Instagram. And on Twitter it's backlisted pod and on Instagram it's backlisted underscore. And you're not doing that privately. You're not doing that on DM. You're doing that publicly. And to enter the draw, you have to type the exact phrase as follows and any mistakes will eliminate you from the prize draw. Um, and it is as follows. Yes! Exclamation mark.

I will read Sally Rooney full stop. And that's it. That's it. Yes! Exclamation mark. I will read Sally Rooney. Yes! Exclamation mark. I will read Sally Rooney open brackets with an open mind. Close brackets full stop. No, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. So the phrase you need to type is yes! I will read Sally Rooney full stop. That's it. All you have to do is tweet that at us or backlisted underscore on Instagram. We will keep a record of those. And then when that's died down, we will let the people know who won

and they'll be getting copies of conversations with friends and normal people. Sorry, UK listeners, but you- You've probably already read it anyway. You have access to other things. They've probably already read it, so that's fine. So much like the British summer, this has been far too short.

Thank you for joining us and for not lighting your disposable barbecues too close. What weird version of summer is this? I want nothing to do with this. Nothing. Sorry, too irresistible. If you want show notes with clips, links, and suggestions for further reading, for this show and the 217 that we've already recorded, please visit our website at backlisted.fm.

If you want to buy the books discussed on this or any of our other shows, visit our shop at bookshop.org and choose Backlisted as your bookshop. And we're still keen to hear from you on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, via postcard, and wherever else you feel compelled to write from. If you want to hear backlisted early and ad free, subscribe to our Patreon, patreon.com

forward slash backlisted. Your subscription brings other benefits if you subscribe at the lot listener level. For the cost of a fat sand encrusted paperback, you'll get not one but two extra exclusive podcasts every month. The lot listed podcast features the three of us talking and recommending the books, films and music we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight. For those of you who liked our What Have You Been Reading slot, that's where you'll now find it. Or indeed this episode.

Yeah, if you like this. More of these vibes. Yeah, more of these vibes, a bit more chat thrown in. Plus also, Lock listeners get their names read out like this. P Stevens, thank you. This just looks like payola. We didn't plan this everybody, but I'm going to read this up. Caroline Crampton. It may not be the same Caroline Crampton who's been a guest and whose book I've just recommended, but thank you, Caroline Crampton. It is the same one. It is the same one. Thank you, Caroline Crampton.

Trevor Tucker, thank you. Chris Burnidge, thank you. Susan Riaz, thank you Caroline Crampton, if it's the same one. Thank you Caroline Crampton. Trevor Tucker, thank you. Chris Burnidge, thank you. Susan Riaz, thank you. Love Day Newman, thank you. Great name. Makita Brockman, thank you. Michelle O'Riordan, thank you. Julie Slotnick, thank you. Robert McCrena, thank you. Nikki, do you want to say, you take us out this time, go on, say thank you. Well, thanks guys. Have a lovely summer. And we're looking forward to more exciting books. And we've got lots of great shows planned for the autumn. So it's going to be brilliant. We've got live shows. We've got festival appearances. We could actually announce one of our live shows. We're doing another run at Foyles in the autumn. In London, in Charing Cross Road, London.

Yeah. So on Wednesday, the 25th of September, we will be doing an Octavia Butler book. We will be doing The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, which we are very, very, very excited about recording a live episode with. And there's two very specific reasons aside from the quality of that particular novel. John, who will be joining us at that show? We have got a friend of the show and sci-fi expert supreme Una McCormack joined by, and this is very exciting for us because we have been very keen to get her back to do a show and she's a massive fan of this novel and it will be a combination of Selena Gomez, the poet and novelist with Una McCormack on the

parable of the sower. Tickets available now. You can go onto the Foils website and you can buy them. I would pay to go even though I'm actually on stage. If you remember Selena's last appearance on Batlist, which was quite near the beginning of the run eight or nine years ago, where she did Hubert Selby Jr.'s last exit to Brooklyn, the passage she read from that has something in common with the time that Una McCormack appeared on the podcast in front of an audience at the Port Elliott Festival alongside Max Porter and read a section of Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban in as much as both those readings were so amazing that I remember looking at Matt's,

our original producer in the first instance, and Nicky at the desk on the other side of the tent in the second episode, and mouthing, are you recording this? Because in both instances, those readings were so incredible with the and then the latter one because of the live audience. So I'm saying, do not sleep on this, listeners. This is going to be an absolutely fantastic live audience. So I'm saying do not sleep on this listeners. This is going to be an absolutely fantastic live show. Amazing. I mean, so we hope to see some of you there. Brilliant guests, brilliant place. Brilliant audience. Great. All right. Well, look, it's been great guys. Thanks very much for having me. Enjoy your going outdoors. I will not be doing any such thing. I am now, I've got some going back to bed.

Okay. So see everybody. Bye.