Backlisted - The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B. Edwards

Episode Date: May 13, 2019

John and Andy are joined by writer and actor Will Smith for a special episode recorded live at the Guernsey Literary Festival on Sunday May 5th 2019. The novel under discussion is G.B. Edwards's unique The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, set on Guernsey, published posthumously in 1981 and of which William Golding wrote: 'To read it is not like reading, but living.'Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)6'03 - The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B. Edwards* 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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And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the website where readers get to crowdfund the books they really want to read. My name is Andy Miller. I am the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And this week, I was attacked on social media by Sky anchorman Adam Bolton for reading too much.

Did you see that? I did indeed. I contributed, I think, an emollient tweet saying, don't trigger these people, Andy. Don't trigger these people. Well, I wasn't trying to trigger him. I just put up a pile of... You didn't do anything. I think there are two views on this.

There is the view that he was actually trying to pay you a compliment, but he had a pretty run way of going about it, if you ask me. He said, I posted a pile, a picture of the pile of books that I read last month, and it was 20 books. And some of them were short. But reading is my job.

And he retweeted my tweet with the words well done. Do you have a job or a family? And I replied saying, I do have a job, Adam Bolton, and my family is very patient, as I imagine yours must be. It was quite the spat. Quite the Twitter spat. Did he respond?

No, and then everyone else bungled on and it was terrible. It was quite the spat. Quite the Twitter spat. Did he respond? Or did he... No, and then everyone else bungled on and it was terrible. Fraser Nelson, the spectator, weighed in and complained about not reading enough. Anyway. We're also joined today by Will Smith. Hello. Will is a former stand-up comedian, an actor, a screenwriter. He's the co-writer and co-producer of Veep,

for which he was one of the recipients of two Emmys and two Writers Guild of America awards. He contributed to The Thick of It. How many people have seen The Thick of It? No-one. Wow. Amazing. As a writer and actor, where he played Peter Mannion's advisor, Phil Smith.

Phil Smith, whose key character elements were, he was obsessed with Lord of the Rings, and he was described in one episode as having a haircut called the Disney Prince. That's what I asked for. And it's what you got will is the author of several comedy books and a novel entitled mainlander which was published about three or four years ago a thriller set in jersey which is where he grew up the independent described mainlander as john le Carré meets Middlemarch. Pretty good.

George is Elliot and Smiley together at last. So, before we get on to talking about the book that we are here to discuss... I should say, you will perhaps realise from the acoustic that this is a live edition of the podcast and we are at the Guernsey Literary Festival in the beautiful St James Church and Assembly Rooms in St Peterport on the island of Guernsey. So thank you, Guernsey, for the invitation.

We're very happy to be here. So, Will, you grew up here. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Wash your mouth out. I grew up in Jersey. Jersey, what's that? It's a superior island. No, it's the same but bigger.

That's probably more offensive. And did you come to Guernsey much? I don't know whether residents of the Channel Islands travel to the other islands or whether that's frowned upon. No, that lady's saying no. We never go to home. Victor Hugo came here from there. He did to Herm. Victor Hugo came here from there. He did, yes.

Victor Hugo came here from there. He spent considerably more time with you than us, didn't he? Yeah. Yeah, speak volumes. Yeah, I know. All right. Did you not write Les Miserables here? He did, yeah.

And Toilers of the Sea. So did you used to come to Guernsey much when you were growing up? I did trips to sort of, you know, look at all the islands, but not as a regular thing. There is a strange rivalry that I can't remember the basis of, but it just is. But it's fine though, it's fine. We do have a barrier in front of the stage, but we're in a cage right now, but it's okay. It's fine. And John, have you ever been to Guernsey? I have never been to Guernsey before. I've been to the other place for a bookseller conference. It was fine.

Literally on the three slightly jet-lagged hours I've had in Guernsey so far, a very nice man, I thought incredibly friendly, gave me a drive along the coast, which was spectacular. And I just love islands. I think like a lot of people, there's something about island culture that I love. So I'm love islands. I think, like a lot of people, there's something about island culture that I love. So I'm looking forward.

I've got a bit of time tomorrow to go and do a bit more exploring. It's hard coming off the back of the book that we're going to be talking about, obviously, is perhaps the great novel of Guernsey. It's really amazing being here at St James'. I came to a concert at St James's in 1985 and I'm wondering if anyone was here on that night in 1985. I came to see a folk singer and I'm going to play you the first minute of a song that I remember him playing. His name was Jakeake thackeray how many people know the great great yorkshire sean sonnier jake thackeray live in jersey stop doing that he he didn't do that john when he he was a pro

we'll be back in just a sec the book we are here to talk about is the book of Emanuele LePage by G.B. Edwards, first published posthumously in 1981. Before we set the book up, I normally on Backlisted read the blurb, but I'd like to ask Will. Yeah. You know, you grew up in the Channel Islands. This is the most famous novel to come out of the Channel Islands. Were you aware of it growing up, or when did you read it,

or when did you find it? I wasn't aware of it at all. And I was a big, big reader, so it's kind of surprising that... To be honest, I know we've been joking about the Guernsey jersey thing. It probably is the jersey thing that it probably is seen as a... Over there, probably seen as a Guernsey book. Because I think... I remember Steve talking to, yeah, Steve Foote is nodding,

that I think he's tried to set up events promoting the biography and it's kind of like they just don't know what he's talking about. So I think it's probably that. But I kind of came to it, I'd either started or I was building up to trying to write a Jersey novel, which became Mainlander, and I wanted to read other Channel Island novels, and they're mainly Guernsey set for some reason.

There aren't hardly any Jersey set novels. I read Toilers of the Sea, which is fantastic. Then I started Ebenezer, and I got a bit stuck, and I can't remember whether it was me just thinking, oh, this is really great, but it's nothing like what I'm trying to do, so I don't need to check that I'm not, you know, treading on it, or it's not all what I'm doing as it's been done before or whatever.

And also because it's so unusual the way he goes into the narrative and the style of it and the way he sets up the story. It's very kind of elliptical and sort of diversionary and he'll sort of jump around the timeline. And I found it, really again for the podcast, I got a bit stuck at the beginning. And then when it's up and running and everything's there, I just was overwhelmed by it.

It is amazing. Once all those wheels are turning. Yeah, exactly. Once all the balls are in the air, it's astounding. It's an incredibly difficult book to go away from and come back to. I had to start again. You just have to keep in, because the voice is so intense. I had read it for, When we first started the podcast,

a couple of people had said to me, you know what would be a great book to do? The Book of Ebenezer LePage by G.B. Edwards. And, you know, I'd never heard of it. I confess I'd never heard of it. So I read it about three or four years ago, and I liked it very much. I read it again for the purposes of this podcast

and it really blew me away. You know the way some books do that on a second reading, if you're lucky enough to come back to them. I felt that once I knew what to expect, once the kind of the surprise, funnily enough, had drifted away slightly, I could really engage with the book itself. And I got so much out of it on second reading.

It's because it's so intricate and there's so many stories. And like I say, because he's jumping around, that's sort of in your head from the first read. When you go back, you get it even more, the way he drops things in. Him being Edwards. But we need to talk about that, how he gets onto that voice. But can I just ask as someone who grew up on the Channel Islands it kind of resonated with me on a kind of I've heard that voice I've

met that man in Jersey and you know in the you'd hear it there and I just wondered what it was like for you coming to it if it was hard to get into the rhythms or the how did it feel I felt it was it hit me with absolute force of revelation. I feel it's a book I've been looking for. I've never known anybody do that monologue as well. People who've listened to the podcast will know I love that sort of W.H. Hudson, that the people who've, I suppose,

who are coming from a sort of peasant rural background who are telling their life stories in a direct way. I mean, that's the first thing, is that the voices... I don't think... There's not a false step, is there? Yeah, and it's a big, big, big book. It's long. You know, he delivers in an almost sort of James Joyce-ian kind of detail.

Names, families, kind of the whole of sort of 80 years of the history of girls. Yeah, I read Dubliners a few weeks ago in a very on-the-nose gesture because I was going to Dublin. And I think the comparison with Dubliners in some respects is pretty good in terms of Dubliners is a book of short stories by James Joyce, obviously, but the idea of building up in an almost quilt-like way a picture of a specific community, a specific place,

that's one of the things that Gerald Edwards did in the book of Ebenezer LePage. And also with no sense at any point that Edwards is trying to undercut Ebenezer in any way. There's nothing ironic about it. I mean, I think he achieves what very few novelists have achieved. I mean, this is a big claim, but I think he achieves what Lawrence was kind of doing in some of the early novels

that we discussed recently that I know you can't stand. But Gerald Edwards was a massive disciple of Lawrence and was in fact commissioned by Cape to write what would have been the first book about D.H. Lawrence's work. He didn't eventually write it. I'd also like to reassure any listeners who share my feelings about D.H. Lawrence, about the ways in which the book of Ebenezer LePage differs from the work of D.O. Johnson. Let me read the blurb on the back of the New York Review of Books edition. And incidentally, our friends at the New York Review of Books until May the 24th, 2019,

are offering 30% off copies of the Book of Ebenezer LePage if you buy from their website and you use the code backlisted. Here's the blurb on the back of the book. Ebenezer LePage, cantankerous, opinionated and charming, is one of the most compelling literary creations of the late 20th century. 80 years old, Ebenezer has lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, a stony speck of a place caught between the coasts of England and France, yet a world apart from either.

I'm just going to pause this because it occurs to me that I'm wondering if Gerald Edwards' friend and biographer, Edward Chaney, who is sitting in the front row staring at me. I was told to sit here. Yeah, I know. You were told to sit there. Did you write this blurb? No, well, I probably had to work at the same time. Yes. Edward says he probably had something to say about it. It's quite a good blurb. We'll keep going. Ebenezer himself is fiercely independent,

but as he reaches the end of his life, he is determined to tell his own story and the stories of those he has known. He writes of family secrets and feuds, unforgettable friendships and friendships betrayed, love glimpsed and lost. The book of Ebenezer LePage is a beautifully detailed chronicle of a life,

but it is equally an oblique reckoning with the traumas of the 20th century. Page is a beautifully detailed chronicle of a life, but it is equally an oblique reckoning with the traumas of the 20th century. As Ebenezer recalls both the men lost to the Great War and the German occupation of Guernsey during World War II, and looks with despair at the encroachments of commerce and tourism on his beloved island. G.B. Edwards laboured in obscurity all his life and completed the book of Ebenezer Le Page shortly before his death. Published posthumously, the book is a triumph of the storyteller's art that conjures up the extraordinary voice of a living man.

I think that's a very good blurb. And actually the voice, that reference at the end to the voice of Ebenezer Le Page, I think is one of the remarkable things about the novel. Will you just believe him and feel he was real? I mean I know that sounds really simplistic and that's what books are supposed to do but you just do. I really felt it. We're gonna read parts of the novel as we go along but we thought it would be nice to hear the first paragraph of the book. There is an incredible 22-hour audio

book recording of Roy de Tries. 92 years old he was. Yeah, he was in his late 80s or early 90s and I am reliably informed he recorded it in two days. Is that right? He recorded it in two days. It's an absolutely terrific audio book. And we've just got the first paragraph. And what I should say is when Roy de Tries introduces each chapter, he speaks like this. The book of Ebenezer LePage, chapter one. Guernsey, Guernsey, Gansai, Sarnia. So they say, well, I don't know, I'm sure. The older I get and the more I learn, the more I know I don't know nothing, me.

I'm the oldest on the island, I think. Larsa Kerepel from Plymouth say she is older, but I reckon she's putting it on, eh? When she was a young woman, she used to have her birthday once every two or three years. But for years now, she's been having two or three a year. To tell you the truth, I don't know how old I am. My mother put it down on the front page of the big Bible, but she put down the day and the months and forgot to put down the year. I suppose I could find out if I went to the Gref, but I'm not going to bother about that now, eh?

All of us have now started the Book of Ebenezer LePage. How many people here have read the Book of Ebenezer LePage? Again, no-one. That seems extraordinary. Wow, what can you do? So, Will, this was your second go-through. This was my second go-through, yeah. What are the things about the voice? We heard the voice there.

You said it made you feel like he was a real person. What I can't get my head around i really genuinely don't know how he wrote it because it's obviously very intricately plotted but then it's told by a man who is pretty much illiterate doesn't read books he's writing it like a novice and yet edwards is dropping in these plot things that make it absolutely work as a book. The structure and the artistry is completely, of Edwards, is completely subsumed by the voice of Ebenezer so it's just seamless. The character of Ebenezer is so fully realised. I mean there are all kinds of things you could have done. I mean Ebenezer could have been full of knowledge

about Guernsey. In a funny kind of way he is and he isn't. Yeah. There's some very, very, very funny scenes in the book. But the one where he kind of gulls the archaeologist. Dudley. Dudley Wayne. Dudley Wayne with an E. Yes. He knows that these artefacts were in fact done very recently. And I think the charm of the book is that it's totally believable. You know, you can know, as I did, practically nothing about Guernsey and its history, except for, you know, the headlines. You knew that it was occupied during the war.

And the way he deals with history and the way he deals with the war, both wars, is so...it's so delicately done and so believable. I think that's what makes it resonant. I found it, as well as being very, very funny, it's incredibly moving. Yeah. There's a lot of negative qualities to him, but there's a charm and integrity to him that wins you over. And that's one of the great endings in all literature, I think.

You used the word insular, that's you over. And that's one of the great endings in all literature, I think. You use the word insular, that's very interesting. Well, he goes to Jersey once. Didn't like that. And quite everyone's nodding. Goes to Jersey once, they win. They win, that's it. That's the most important thing. He's insular, he's of an island.

And as you say, he doesn't read much, John. He's actually only read one novel in his whole life. Like Robinson Crusoe, yeah. I mean, a good novel. We were talking on the last episode of Batlisted about a different book by Daniel Defoe and also a novel called Crusoe's Daughter by the novelist Jane Gardham. And actually, reading Ebenezer LePage

and Crusoe's Daughter close together is quite an interesting experience as well because both books are about the extent to which one journeys through life alone. You start alone and you end alone, one way or another. And, John, you talked about the ending. One of the extremely clever, wily things that Edwards does in the book of Ebenezer LePage is bring the past and the present

closer together as the book goes on. It kind of goes into real time at the end. He's kind of writing it and then suddenly it's actually happening. That device, I thought, was brilliantly handled. And I mean, there's... In Edward's brilliant book, Genius Friend, which we'll talk more about, there is the discussion that perhaps the ending was overdone

and he resisted... That he... Sort of the plot is too neat. Yeah. The fact that... Without giving away massive spoilers. Most of you have read it anyway, so you do, but both Liza and Ebenezer, it turns out that the young couple they're both related to, it's very neat.

But, I mean, I might read some from the end before we go anyway, just because I think there's... The end is wonderful. Yeah. The redemption and the... In fact, the great American critic and story writer Guy Davenport says, if I can remember it correctly, reaching for the book, he said that it was the...

He said it was, I know of no description of happiness in modern literature equal to the one that ends this novel, which is a pretty extraordinary thing. But I kind of... I think that... I think that's fair, actually. I think, again, there's a kind of euphoria to the ending. There's a crescendo. Because there's a comic thing. I mean, you know, that whole thing about who's he going to leave his money to. It's very funny. It's

almost, there are times when it feels, for me, almost Chaucerian in that sort of voice, the repetition, he's going to try this, but then... They're not getting it. You're not getting it. And then he goes to see the... He thinks the policeman. No, no, I'm not leaving it to a policeman. And he kind of gets... It's very, very funny. And there are some just straightforward farcical scenes

when he's being pursued. We were talking about being pursued by the... The one-legged widow who wants to marry him. Yeah, it was almost Flashman-esque. That where the Germans are coming and she wants to come on the boat with her and go to England. The gangplank and he's like, I've just left my money. You go on, I'll just get my money.

Will, as a comedy writer, is the comedy coming from here, is the comedy coming from character? I go back to this character of LePage. It's his attitude and his turn. Again, there's turns of phrase that really make me laugh in it. They're terrific and there's jokes, you know, there's actual, you know, really funny bits. But it doesn't...

You still completely believe it's coming from Ebenezer because he's so rounded, he's so fully faceted and fully realised. One of the characters in the book of Ebenezer LePage, in fact, at the beginning of the book, it says, this book is the property of, yes, Neville Fowler. The property of Neville Fowler, it says. And on the front of the book, it says, there's a quote from William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies,

to read it is not like reading, but living. I was in a shop in St Peterport yesterday and I saw a copy of Pinscher Martin by William Golding. So I thought, oh, I'll buy that. And when I took it out of the shop and opened it up, it says the property of Margaret Faller. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh.

Is that you? Is that serious to you? Oh! Is this your actual copy? Right, listen. Is this a simulation? That'll be Guernsey. You know what, you and I are going to have a chat,

Margaret, because this copy is hilarious. When I got it out, it's full of underlining. It's my dissertation. Ah! It was your dissertation copy. On William Golding. On William Golding.

You know, I don't want to give the impression this is a small island, but goodness me. There is something quite kind of like almost phantasmagoric, maybe just the jet lag, but looking at the war memorials, because you spent, immersed in hours of this book, both reading and Roy de Tries in your ear, and then you look on the war memorials and the Laetitias and the majors

and the names from the book just are there. It is a really, really remarkable thing that he created. Maybe we should talk a little bit more about Gerald Edwards and the writing. Because the story of the book is a sort of tragic one. He spent most of his life, all of his life, really, writing this one book. Early Promise, I mean, he was obviously a disciple of Lawrence Poole, also a protege of John Middleton Murray and the Adelphi magazine, and famously wrote a very vicious review of Bernard Shaw.

But he was regarded by his friends, Middleton Murray, the author of One-Upmanship, Stephen Potter, and John Stuart Collis, who went on to write another one of those great rural narratives, The Worm Forgives the Plough, although very different. He was regarded as a kind of a genius, and yet he didn't kind of deliver. The book on Lawrence didn't get written.

Stuff wasn't published. And this book was originally planned as a trilogy, wasn't it, that never actually happened. I mean, pulling it right forward to the end of the 60s, which is when Edward Choney comes onto the scene, the book is finished and it's rejected by the great literary houses of the day. One of the, I think, wonderful things about the

book apart from the extraordinary detective work of trying to... he burnt everything, that's the kind of the key, there was very little left. The job of literary detective work in this book is wonderful but also the picture is, as we were talking beforehand andy of of how you went about submitting a book to a publisher yes in the 1970s one of the things about edward cheney's book genius friend is first of all it's an it's a tremendous work detective work trying to find out as much as he could about his friend who he met at the end of his life but edward's a'i gallai am ei ffrind a'i gwrdd â'i llywodraeth ar ddiwedd ei bywyd. Ond, fe wnaeth Edward y llawr o'r llyfr ysgrifennu Ebonesa the Page i Edward Chaney.

Ac mae'n wir yn diolch i'r ymdrechau Edward bod y llyfr wedi'i gyhoeddi a'i parhau i fod yn ar gael yn y llyfr a'r audio. Ac mae'r disgrifiadau yn y llyfr Edward o sut y cymerwyd And the descriptions in Edward's book of how you went about approaching a publisher in the 1970s is totally fascinating. We forget how quickly technology has changed everything. You tried to save up enough money to print one copy, plus a spare. Then you sent it to a publisher. They rejected it. It came back several months later. It did or didn't have a note attached.

Multiple submissions were really frowned upon. And then in the end, it was picked up through a contact by Christopher Sinclair Stevenson at Hamish Hamilton in 1981 and was published very successfully in the early 1980s as a paperback by Penguin Books. I think what's interesting about it is that it then subsists on word of mouth, like all great books do. But we are talking about it here today,

not because of its publishing success when it was first published. William Golding made it his book of the year in 1981 and then it's picked up. Harold Bloom, the literary critic, includes it in his book, The Western Canon. It gets included by Margaret Drabble in the new edition of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. It's widely admired, but it's still, I would reckon, a book that is not known by a lot of the people who consider themselves sort of on top of the great novels of 20th century literature, which I would certainly say this is one of the great 20th century English novels, Guernsey novels. What novels do you think it's similar to?

If someone hasn't read it and you want a point of comparison. I've only got a really unhelpful left field comparison that it reminds me of. Well, there's two books it reminded me of. One, and you're just going to stare at me. One is Catcher in the Rye because of the voice. It's a direct voice completely untethered by literary convention. And it's just speaking to you directly and I'm just going to get a download of that character. And the other is Philip Roth's Sabbath Theatre because both Emily's Le Page and Sabbath Theatre, I think, are about grief and loss.

And it reminds me, his feelings about Jim, which affects him throughout his life, reminds me very much when Mickey Sabbath, who is similar to Ebenezer, is a kind of cantankerous. He's much more objectionable than Ebenezer, but he's just a provocateur and just likes blowing up social situations. And then at the end you realise

it's because his brother died in the war. And there's a scene where he goes to find an old cupboard that an old family member has, the flag that he was given when his brother's body comes back and there's this scene of him and he's just walking down the beach they used to go to his kids in the rain crying for hours and it just chokes me up as i talk about it as as the death in this does john any any advance on sabah's theater and capturing the right as as sort of fiction, I mean, you've got the voice-led fiction. You know, there's nothing of that period, but, you know, what Adam Thorpe tried to do in Ulverton,

capturing the rhythms, or Graham Swift in Waterland trying to catch the rhythms of vernacular speech. I'll always come back to Ridley Walker as a sort of thing. But the thing about Ebenezer is that he is he could be a 19th it's amazing he could be a 19th century character there's a sort of timeless again there's a sort of almost a Beckett element there although it's the more accessible end of Beckett that Waiting for Godot, Craps Last Tape, an old man's voice remembering and going back and re-going over his life. What about you?

I thought there were three books that I thought, OK, one is straightforward. It's very like an American novel by a writer called Alan Gaganus called Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. Who's a massive fan. I only discovered that yesterday. Alan Gaganus was a huge fan of the Book of Ebenezer LePage, which is not to suggest that he's borrowing.

As Anne Tyler as well. But the idea of that extended monologue by somebody living not just their life but the century up to that point is very, very close to Oldest Living Confederate Widow tells all. The other books it reminded me of, one of them, them i'm not sure i even i'm not a big fan of either of these books and actually i preferred the book of ebenezer lepeche to either of these books but they did come to mind the first one is the ragged trouser philanthropist by robert tressel the reason why i mentioned that book is it seems to me that although the ragged trouser

philanthropist has some flaws it's still a tremendously important novel because there are no other novels like it. And in that respect, you know, an editor could cut 50,000 words, 100,000 words from The Ragged Trousers of Philanthropists, as indeed they did when it was first published, and it would probably improve the book. And yet there's something wonderful about how baggy and discursive it is. To some extent, I feel that with the book of Ebenezer LePage. The other point of comparison for me, and I, John, would lay money that Christopher Sinclair Stevenson had this book in mind when he agreed to publish the book in 1981,

is 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Now, they're nothing like one another. Midnight's Children, weirdly, is also much more show-offy. But if you're going for that sort of inside-the-head of a... Yes. But they're also... They're on big canvases and they're about communities over a long number of times and family relationships and friends and it seems to have that that kind of yarning element which was popular in fiction in the late 1970s and early 1980s so I

can I see that Christopher Sinclair Stevenson is not just responding to the literary quality of the book but also he can see that there's a commercial opportunity for the book. And that's what makes great publishing. It's bringing those two things together. I was just thinking of the thematic thing in the book as well, which is the attempt that Ebenezer is remembering his life and he doesn't like what's happened to Guernsey. He doesn't like modern life. And I think, you know, He doesn't like modern life. And I think, you know, again, what's brilliant about Genius Friend is you realise that Gerald Edwards was similar in the streetcar, didn't like the modern world much.

It could be a tremendously conservative, restrictive, disappointed book. And the fact that it doesn't end up being that, although, as we've said, he is ornery and difficult. I don't think I've read any book where the philosophy, the idea of, you know, here are some things I really am interested in, the role of religion in people's lives, the arguments, you know, that you find in great Russian novels,

Dostoevsky in particular, discussions about the nature of faith, discussions about the importance of what religious faith is, of doubt, of the loss of faith. The character Raymond, who is the nephew, I think I'm right. Cousin. Cousin. Cousin, but he's older, so he thinks of his uncle. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Well, do you want to just say a bit about Raymond? Because I think Raymond, the character of Raymond in the novel, for me, was the most powerful and the most moving portrayal. It's the kind of leaven of the book. Because of the sort of innocence and the sort of...

He's a character who can't fit, who tries whatever shape he can force himself into, it never works. Yeah, he sort of quite enjoys being in the army, sort of brings him up a bit. He doesn't get to go and fight, so that's good. And then it's religion. And then there's that awful bit where Ebenezer doesn't see him for years after the marriage has broken down

and then he finds him drunk at the seawall and the implication is he was going to kill himself. And then he brings him home to live with him and then the occupation happens and then he goes over to the other side of the island and it all goes badly wrong. It all goes up. Spoilers. of the island and it all goes badly wrong Spoilers the spoiler should be all goes badly wrong again and again it all goes badly wrong Can I make a point about spoilers because what I find fascinating about this book is it is littered with spoilers

Every time he introduces a character and it's amazing. It doesn't affect you that it you know, um, he'll say, you know I mentioned Raymond and then he'll say all course he came to a terrible end You know, he just kind of blows things out. And then there's this bit that I was just like, I mean, just breaks every rule. It's amazing. He goes, I could say anything to Jim. If I had done a murder, as it happens I have in a way, I could have told him and he would have liked me just the same.

That's a hell of a thing to just slip into conversation, isn't it? Just as an aside. I've murdered a couple of people. That's just there and you're like, what? Do you want to read us the murder in question? The murder? Yes, let me find the murder. I thought you were going to ask me to read the other bit but I can't.

No, we're working up to that. So backstage, Will was saying, do you want me to read something? I went, yeah, we'd love you to read some bits. He went, it's just the thing is, there's one part that I've tried reading aloud three times and I can't do it without weeping. I genuinely choked up. The treatment also of the ambiguity

over Roman's sexual orientation in the book is so beautifully handled, so subtly handled, you know, that he marries... And just character after character of genius. Christine, his wife. There's a very famous essay by Angela Carter about D.H. Lawrence and how D.H. Lawrence was as a cross-dresser, that no man should be this obsessed with women's clothing. The detail that Lawrence put into writing about women's clothing. And she accuses him of being a closet cross-dresser, which was the kind of thing that was fun to do in the 1970s. But Ebenezer's all over the clothes, women's clothes.

He's brilliant at descriptions. Got a couple of... Go on. Well, I don't actually have a particularly brilliant description of women's clothes here, but... Trust us. What I could do was to read... This is a beautiful passage, I think, about him talking to Raymond. And this idea of how do you get ideas into a novel

without them feeling like a sort of cut and paste. Ian McEwan, I've just spent a year with a brain surgeon, hears a lot of stuff about brain surgery. The long, dark evenings he would talk to me by the hour of his misery as a child and of the half and half happiness of his marriage. It was those winter evenings I learnt most of what I've written

about him in this book and a lot I haven't said and won't say. I think his heart was broke because he doubted if God was love. But love isn't love, he said. Is there any other? I didn't want to have to answer that question. Is there Ebenezer, he said. Have you ever known it? love, he said. Is there any other? I didn't want to have to answer that question. Is there Ebenezer, he said. Have you ever known it? Yes, I said. He sat for a long time looking into the fire saying nothing. At last he said, you're thinking of your friend, Jim Mahi. I said, I wasn't thinking of Jim as a matter of fact. I was thinking of Jean-Baptiste and my sister Tabitha.

He said, yes, but Jim and Jean are dead. It's easy to believe in it because it wasn't broken. They didn't break it of themselves, I said. Perhaps it never really is broken if the truth was known. I don't know why I said that, because I'm not at all sure I believe it. He said, I hope to God you're right. It's brilliant, I think. I just want to mention, you were talking about the female characters. I think we should issue a 21st century warning that there is a strain of misogyny running through the character of Ebenezer LePage in the novel, which was picked up at the time. I've got a review by the great Peter Kemp,

which is an excellent review. He loves the book. But I just want to read this out, and then I'd like to run it by you and see what you what you both feel about it he says standardization is what the novel itself never lapses into managing to be both matter of fact and out of the ordinary it has many original strengths and some eccentric weaknesses and I would add of course the eccentricity is in fact one of the the strengths of the novel Most prominent among the latter is its attitude towards women.

Was she a human being or only a female? Ebenezer wonders at one point. In keeping with such broodings, a vein of misogyny runs through the book. Hardy-esque ruminations on the horrors of marriage abound. Once a man's married, he's alone for the rest of his life. A man must learn to live crucified. That's what marriage is for. Illustrating the truth of such openings, most of the book's wives are scheming harpies. Clapping men into wedlock, they detach them from their friends, then hound

them to break down or the grave. One carries persecution even further, burying her husband in the colours of his football club's rival team. Now, but that's not a reason not to read the book, right? That's just the genius. This is why we read fiction, okay? If you know about Gerald Edwards and you know about the kind of the stuff that he was, you know, Lawrence was, we all know about Lawrence's misogyny. It kind of all emanates from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, in particular Nietzsche. You know, the stuff that was around in the air at the time. The genius of the novel is, yes,

you have got characters saying these things, but they're saying them in character as characters. But you've also got some of the, I think, some of the best. Liza Kierpel is one of the great characters in fiction. The fact that she will not bend to any man's will, at least of all Ebenezer's. But the ending of the book has got to be one of the most glorious, the jeté passage at the end of the book, where they meet when they're old, and she's old and bent and feeding chickens, and he kisses her, and he kisses her in quite a sexy way. I mean, it's... And she's still got the milk churn, the silver milk churn

that he bought her. Exquisite. And that's the thing, you know, Lawrence, if he'd only followed it more himself, you know, trust the tale, not the teller. Whatever stuff is floating around there and the attitudes which are,

yeah, that some of the characters say things and Ebenezer says things which are clearly, it doesn't really matter because in the end, as a reader, you can see that he, you know, you don't need to have all the philosophical baggage. You can just see that those are beautifully realised characters. I think it doesn't matter. And I think, and the Camadie the Tabby, the two sisters are brilliant. It would be odd if the character was a feminist. It just wouldn't...

So it's that balance of... You don't want to dismiss that and say, oh, it doesn't matter because that's just how he is, or you can see elements of the story that would make him... turn him towards misogyny because of the frustrations he has with Lisa. You can make an argument for that. I also think the character is alive.

That's one of the remarkable things about the book. Because the character is so alive, I can live with his flaws. But even I don't feel compelled to pass judgment on them. That's the thing, when you say, I like the book and I love the character, that doesn't mean you agree with him on everything he says. It doesn't mean you don't disapprove of his viewpoints. And it seems to me that although there are obvious elements in which Gerald Edwards is, you know, you write a character,

you can't not put... It's through your filter. It does seem quite a remarkable feat for Edwards who doesn't really go back to Guernsey. Yeah, that's the amazing thing. I think it's the odd trip. Like Joyce writing about Dublin, reconstructs it all in his head. And, you know, fascinating reading Edwards' book.

This is not a character who Edwards, who is particularly prepossessing, I have to say. I mean, there's, you know, he's, it's certainly in his early stuff, he's quite arrogant and difficult to like. And there's, I mean, he's interesting, but he creates this absolutely authentic voice. And it's, I can't think of any more, I mean, articulate way of describing what it is that fiction does that nothing else can do.

You create these characters that genuinely live. Several times I had to remind myself that this was a novel, that this wasn't actually a memoir, this wasn't actually somebody's real life. I mean, that's why I find myself crying over the death of someone who didn't exist. I mean, what is happening? Can we read that?

No, I'm not going to read it. I'll do it. I can't read it. No, I did. He was up with the lark in the morning and out swearing at the cows. He was good at swearing before, but he was better now and used swear words even I didn't know. I think they was Welsh, but the cows didn't take a blind bit more notice

than when he used to swear at them in their own language. Tabitha came for dinner to house that Sunday, and in the afternoon when Jim and me were sitting on the rocks, he said, a pity I couldn't have married Tabitha. I would have loved Tabitha. I too wished he could have married Tabitha, though I liked Jean. He told me about his training. He was a good shot with a rifle, he said, but then he always had been. If I can shoot birds, I suppose I can shoot men, he said, but I knew he didn't like the idea. He didn't like throwing hand grenades. He said when he pulled the pin out of the mills bomb, he was always afraid it would go off before he got it out of his hand. I hoped he wouldn't be in a bayonet charge. I couldn't do that to a chap, he said.

I said, they'll give you rum before you go over the top and he'll be trying to do the same to you. I can't rip a chap open, he said. It don't matter who he is. He spent the rest of his leave with Phoebe and the kids. I got a postcard from him from Southampton saying he was on his way. At the bottom he wrote, don't sigh, don't cry. I got one letter from him from Southampton saying he was on his way. At the bottom he wrote, don't sigh, don't cry.

I got one letter from him from France, but there was black lines through most of it. All I could read was, don't think I have forgotten you. If you don't hear from me for a week or two, I'll write again as soon as I can. I saw the news in the press. I'd just come in from work and the press was on the table where the boy had thrown it. My mother was frying some fish for our tea. I opened the press, as I always did, hardly thinking of what I was doing. I saw it at once. Killed in action.

James Mahi, beloved son of James and Agnes Mahi of Les Grands Gégants, St. Samson's, for God and king and country. I went out of doors. I cried. I'm going. There's so many things going on there that just absolutely break me. And one is Ebenezer's reaction, which is he can't cry in front of his mother. He just has to go out and be alone and cry. See, I'm getting it now. It's just a really, I don't know why, I'm really blowing my hard man image here.

But, oh yeah. But it's Jim as well. The Jim is just like a big kid. It's the naivety. It's like, oh, I can't bayonet. He's just a big farmer who's being sent out with a bayonet.'s like, oh, I can't bear that. He's just a big farmer who's being sent out with a bayonet. And he's like, I can't do that. And then proceeding that when... You discover that he was ripped over.

He goes over the top and he's ripped to bits. But also when he tells Ebenezer that he's going to go and fight, and Ebenezer's sort of saying, what do you want to do that for? It's nothing to do with us. You don't have to. Why are you volunteering? At least wait until you conscript her. Because he's been to England once before and he says, I want to ride the big train again. And you're just like,

oh, I can't. It's just, it just gets me. It's terrible. And it's also because that's his, the love of his life to some extent.

And also the pain you've been through through the marriage and the fact that, you know, he and Jim haven't, you know, the regret.

And he also says, if I'd have told him to stay, he might have stayed, but I didn't. And his guilt towards the mother because the mother thought, so you've always got influence over him. Yeah. I was very lucky. Steve Foote gave me a tour of some of the sites of Ebenezer the Page this morning.

sites of Ebenezer the Page this morning. And Steve is an expert and has reconstructed where they think certain houses were. And Lisa Keropel's house is currently up for sale. Her plain Guernsey cottage, do you know how much it's on for 600,000 pounds to live simply in the Lisa Carapel style the amazing enough just last week that Laurie Lee's cottage in slad the one the one next to his cottage where the two grannies were lived is that's also five five hundred and twenty five thousand yeah we're gonna wind up in a minute. I was going to read the murder bit, but I won't read that from earlier.

Can I read the bit where Ebenezer and his sister Tabitha have tea with Otto, who's a German soldier that takes Ebenezer, has to go with Ebenezer when he goes out fishing and they become friends. The whole occupation is so beautifully done. She was in the kitchen boiling the everlasting

sugar beet when I asked Otto to come in. She was in the kitchen boiling the everlasting sugar beet when I asked Otto to come in. He came in and stood to attention as if he was on parade. This is my friend Otto, I said. She turned round from what she was doing and faced him, but stood as stiff as he was and didn't make a movement to shake hands nor say a word. I said to Otto, this is my sister Tabitha.

She is a widow. Her husband was killed in the First World War. I trusted him to understand why she was behaving as she was. He said, my father was also. Tabitha held out her hand. He took it in his and bowed his head over it. I brought some fish, I said, and put it on the table. She said, I will cook it now, if Otto can stop and have some. He said he could. Well, she cooked it and made some real tea with what was left over from what I had brought from Horace, which she would never have done otherwise. And there was bread, though it was mousy bread rather, and even a whispered butter. I taught Otto to say Orphie. He said it was good. I know it was

the meal I enjoyed most of any I ate during the whole of the occupation. Nowadays, when every year there is a celebration of the liberation, it isn't so much the cheers and the excitement of when we was freed I think of, though I was glad and excited as anybody, but Otto, Tabitha and me sitting around the table eating long nose. That was Liberation Day. Brilliant. I'm afraid that's all we've got time for. Nearly all.

Nearly all. You've got something up your sleeve, haven't you, Andy? I should say thank you to our wonderful audience here at the Guernsey Literary Festival. Thank you to Will. Thank you to our technical team here at the Guernsey Literary Festival. Thank you to Will. Thank you to our technical team at the back. Chas and Drew. Chas and Drew.

Thank you, Chas and Drew. Thank you, Chas and Drew. John, anything else before I turn it over to the audience? No, backlisted.fm if you want. There'll be show notes and links and all the other stuff that we've done for the podcast. So thanks, John. Thanks, John. Thanks, Will.

If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts, you can sign up to our Patreon. It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me, and Nicky talking about the books, music, and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.