Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S2 Ep2: #ReadingWomen: Siblings

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

In this episode Zing Tsjeng is joined by chef, bestselling cookbook author and sustainability champion Melissa Hemsley, radio producer, podcast host and writer Joe Haddow and creator and co-host of the Mostly Lit podcast, Raifa Rafiq. The theme of today's #ReadingWomen book club is siblings. The panel discuss three books that, in various ways, have brothers and sisters at their heart. They are A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore, the Prize's very first winner back in 1996, May We Be Forgiven by A. M. Homes which won in 2013, and The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney, 2016's winner. Every fortnight, join Zing Tsjeng, editor at VICE, and inspirational guests, including Dolly Alderton, Stanley Tucci, Liv Little and Scarlett Curtis as they celebrate the best fiction written by women. They'll discuss the diverse back-catalogue of Women’s Prize-winning books spanning a generation, explore the life-changing books that sit on other women’s bookshelves and talk about what the future holds for women writing today. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and this series will also take you behind the scenes throughout 2020 as we explore the history of the Prize in its 25th year and gain unique access to the shortlisted authors and the 2020 Prize winner. Sit back and enjoy. This podcast is produced by Bird Lime Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With thanks to Bailey's, this is the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, celebrating women's writing, sharing our creativity, our voices, and our perspectives, all while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world. I'm Zing Singh, your host once again for a brand new season of the Women's Prize podcast, coming to you every fortnight throughout 2020. This year is the 25th anniversary of the Women's Prize for Fiction, and you've joined me for a special episode in which we are challenging you to a year of reading women. From Zadie Smith's White Teeth to Chimamanda Ingozzi and Dice's half of a yellow

sun and Naomi Alderman's The Power, we are spotlighting all 24 women's prize winning books during this podcast series, with eight special book club episodes in which three guests discussed three of the brilliant winning novels from the past years. You'll also hear from the women who've judged the prize during its lifetime, so you'll be getting not one but two hot takes from the past 25 years of the prize, alongside a new generation of readers coming in. to the books in 2020. And we want you to join in the conversation. Go to hashtag reading women on Twitter and Instagram to share your thoughts as you read along

and head to the Women's Prize website at women's prizeforfiction.co.uk To learn about all 24 books, read samples, dive into our reading guides and exclusive interviews with the authors, plus lots more to help set you off on your reading journey. Today's guests are chef, bestselling cookbook author and sustainability champion Melissa Hemsley, radio producer, podcast host and writer Joe Haddle, and creator and co-host of the mostly lit podcast, Ray Refique. The theme of today's book club is Siblings, and we'll be talking about three books that in various ways have brothers and sisters at their heart. They are A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore, the prize's very first winner back in 96. May we be forgiven by

A.M. Holmes, which won in 2013, and the glorious heresies by Lisa McEnnerney, 2016's winner. So, Joe, Melissa, Ray, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So three books, you committed to reading three books in the space of what? How long did it take you guys? A month?

Three weeks, three weeks maybe. Three books in three weeks, okay. You guys can be women's prize judges. You know they read like 125 books or something in the space of a few months? Super cool. Yeah, that blew me away from the first series when people were like, oh yeah, I just read everywhere all the time, giving birth, reading. going to work, reading, getting on a tube reading. And audiobooks are great because you can, like, just listen to them sometimes.

Did you listen to the audio book versions of this? I did, May we Be Forgiven, just in the shower, you know, listening, and then going back to the book and then alternating, just making sure that I'm reading. Yeah. What about the, what about you guys, John, Melissa, any audio books or just? No, I did all three as books as texts. I carted them around. Yeah, me too. I was on the train a lot over the last couple of weeks, so it was perfect because you.

You can never get any Wi-Fi on trains. And it was the perfect excuse. Yeah, trains are the new planes. And also, I swear it's actually a really good excuse to when you don't want to do something, you go, I'm so sorry, I'm doing a very important, being part of a very important podcast and I must read my books. That's what we like to hear. But people are like, wow, you're really being very committed to reading.

And actually quite a few people said, that's reminded me, I'm going to make some time to read again. People are very impressed nowadays when you say you're reading books. I don't know why. because we used to do it all the time. I used to, I'm trying to do it a book a week. So for like podcasts or just in general, I always think Monday, start a new book. So that always gives me that motivation to be like,

Sunday evening, have to have finished it. But what if it's really long? Like, you know, 900 pages long? Yeah, I was reading a little life and that took me three and a half weeks. That's impressive still. That was, but it was humongous and very emotional. and I just was so, like, involved in reading that book that took over my life.

But the day, it was quite a big one, so it took. It was worth it, though, right? As in it's probably one of the best books I've read in the past few months. Yeah. No. Well, I'm curious to know what you guys made of these three books, because I think some of you said you had favorites among them, even though I didn't know if we should be playing favorites,

because obviously they all won the prize, so they are pretty fantastic. They're all brilliant books. You already know, don't you, from reading the first. few pages of each of these, or certainly I did, that they're great writers and you can tell why they probably won this prize. But for me, there was definitely one, and maybe it's a personal tasting. There was one that I just absolutely loved, and two that I just thought were really great books. Okay. Shall, wait, shall we do the thing where we all say at the favorite book? The Big Reville. At the same time. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to sit this. I'm going to sit this one out

because I'll count you in. One, two, three. The glorious heresies. Okay, so Melissa and Ray, both like the glorious heresies. And Joe, your favourite was... May we be forgiven. Oh, okay. Interesting. Okay, shall we take them one by one first?

So let's go with the OG winner, a Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore. So this won in 1996. It was to inaugural winner of the prize. And it's a very creepy gothic, isn't it? It's quite different to the other two. It is. Actually, just even you describing it makes my, I had a lot of shiver, because I felt quite shivery the whole time. I was reading it. Good time to be reading it, I think, in, in this particular month. And I found it incredibly moving, especially towards the end. It is sort of

slow, slow to begin and very evocative, and it's the turn of the century, and I loved reading, I guess, because I'm greedy. I felt, I loved hearing about, you know, the old sweets and the peppermint and the sherbetts and the lemonade and then potted rabbit and then beef tea and you know stopping for sandwiches and i just felt totally there in that world okay well i think for readers who might be a bit curious about what the actual book is about i think is it fair to say it's about two siblings who have been abandoned by their parents and are kind of growing up in this creepy manner um and they are they're sort of like approaching the beginning of world war one that's when the big rupture happens and loads of drama erupts

as a result of that but it's also slightly incestuous as well they find comfort in each other yeah oh yeah when that scene happens I was like because I didn't read the blurb or anything so I was like okay what's happening here and then they were in that I sat and they just turned and I was like

what do I have to read that again but yeah I said slightly incestuous it is just incestuous I had to read it again I couldn't believe it and I just remember being like what can't see me but I just turned around and gasped.

But you don't, I don't think you see that coming though, do you? I mean, maybe if you went back and read some of the pages before it or some of the chapters before it, she's carefully put some breadcrumbs to it. But actually,

I just thought, you know, they're sort of bonded, this sibling bond is because of the fact their parents have been abandoned. They live with their grandfather of the thinking of the time that it's set and everything. And I was just like, you know,

they are their best friends. And it's rural, you know, they only have the servants and they're just by themselves, just two kids trying to work it out. I got waded out because I was like, after a while, it became normal in my head. And I was like, oh, I guess it's fine, you know? And then I just had to check myself, like, oh, I don't know, it's unsettling, but they love each other. Very game-in-sense. I think that comes with, that's what Helen Dunmore is trying to do with the whole book is this sense of, usual versus unusual wild versus being you know there's a there's a lot of reference to the wildness

of kathy who is the one of the main characters in the book notoriously wild cathy's notoriously wild cathy's I mean there there are two I can think of straight away um and then and yet then the wildness of of what's about to happen in the country I guess and around the world but then this this sort of connection with the land and just each other it's and I think she sort of plays with that and wants you to almost have to check yourself that you're thinking oh no this is okay now actually we've learnt these two characters are okay

so this is fine and then you step back and you kind of go there were certain bits where I just had to put the book away and like go and make a cup of tea because I found it so incredibly sad and these were parts of the book that were only maybe written over two pages but were so powerful and moving and deeply sad. And I felt the loneliness and helplessness of the situations. And I cried a lot.

So I really, I mean, I'm a sucker for a pure drama. And this was my wildest dreams in a book. I think I absolutely loved the tone. And the way it sets up is almost quite eerie. The beginning is very dark. And I felt cold reading the whole novel. I just thought I'm in a cottage somewhere in the north. so I don't know where, but I'm cold and I'm freezing and all of this drama is taking place.

And it really took me back to when I was reading Tess of the Derbivilles. It really took me back to that, but this just had so much drama. And I was like, I really had to go back and think, when was this written? Because I was like, oh, this is a little bit unacceptable for the time for us to read it. But then I was like, 1996, I'm like, was it wild in 1996? Do they have crazy, you know, notions and ideas? And I was like, they probably did. and I absolutely loved it.

I thought it really balanced the crazy with the subtle, the relationships between families and how it feels like to be abandoned by a mother. It dealt with that really well, but not just in this book, but I think in all the books as well, just dealt with that motherhood aspect quite nicely. You know what got me as well?

I remember that feeling when, I don't know if anyone else had this, but remember when there were certain adults that you were really scared of, you know? And there's quite a few of them that are just wrong uns in the book. That's one way of putting it. Yeah, and that feeling of being left in the room with them

or having to go to their house or, you know, or just like a teacher that you think's got it in for you or, you know, just not, or are people on that feeling of like, you're a kid, you're helpless, you can't go anywhere, you can't really stand up for yourself. And there's that, yeah, I felt cold, like we said, and small quite a lot of the time, like helplessness. So, but I'm curious to know why this wasn't your favourite

considering. Oh, so it wasn't, I mean, it was a really close one. But I guess when we get to the glorious heresies, I'll go into it much more. I thought the book, Spell of Winter, was beautifully written. I just think, you know, I've read other Helen Dunmore books, this one I hadn't read, but she is a beautiful writer and the descriptions and everything were wonderful. And that's what I sort of luxuriated in, but the whole thing really of just going, oh God, You know, like, I'd need to put the book down for a bit

and we'll go away is possibly why it wasn't my favourite because I think I couldn't read it in long spells. I had to sort of do a few chapters. Oh! It's in there. I did a few chapters, I had to do a few chapters and then just sort of go away. Warm up. Yeah, go and sit by the fire.

I thought it was absolutely beautiful. And then I feel like it started off very much about, you know, there's probably eight characters, really, just to begin with for the first half of the book. And then it opens up as you see the impact as the, as conscription comes in, and people are saying, you can't take, you know, all my sons. And it just gets so incredibly sad.

And people start leaving and leaving, and they're running out of money and they're running out of food. And they're putting wood chips and jam to be like strawberries. And you just start feeling sadder and sadder. And I think it is fantastic always to have, serious moments in history be within novels so that you're constantly reminded

what has happened and how lucky we are and I thought they did that beautifully because the love story was enough really for me I thought it was amazing and then the fact that it brought in history in a really digestible way So before we move on to the next book

let's hear from Kate Moss founder director of the women's prayers for fiction and the chair of the judging panel in the first year the prize was awarded she tells us about setting up the award and its first winner, A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore. The very first moment was a Booker Prize in 1991 where there were no women on the list at all.

And that can happen because, you know, the judges are allowed to choose the books that make the hair on the back of their next stand on end. But the point was nobody noticed there were no women, only when it was announced to the press. And so a lot of us got together, writers, journalists, booksellers, publishers, men and women, and said, is there something wrong that people just don't see the women are absent?

And out of that came an idea to set up a prize that would honour and celebrate women's creative voices. And then we went about getting money. And now we're about to celebrate our 25th birthday. It seems amazing. How has it received when the prizes first announced? I have often thought, thank God there was no social media then. It was pretty brutal. It was a really, I'm very positive person.

And I honestly thought that absolutely everybody who loved books and reading would be like a broigal painting. They'll be throwing their hats in the air going, this is amazing, a private company putting all this money into books. But actually, people behaved as if men were under attack, as said a lot of things like if women were any good, they'd win the prizes. You know, all the stuff that we now know. And there wasn't really much of a feminist debate in those days. Things have changed a great deal in terms of diversity and representation and the dialogues around it. But then it was like, well, women had clearly rubbish, otherwise their books would win. And we were going, you know what?

We're just going to look into this. And all the time people kept saying to me, so you're really angry, Kate. I said, I'm not angry, but I am curious. And I want to say to readers that if women's voices are not there, they don't hear about women's voices, it's the readers who are missing out. And the world is made up of all of us, and we should hear all. So it was pretty brutal. But then after the first short list was announced,

and people saw the quality of the books on the list, and they started to think, hey, actually, you know, we hadn't heard of some of those, then people started to realize that maybe there was an issue, not about women getting published, but about women's work being honoured at the highest level. Because when I was setting the prize up, fewer than 9% of novels ever shortlisted for major literary prizes were by women, even though about 65% of novels published were published by women. So it wasn't access to the market that was the issue, it was about honouring women's achievements. And 25 years later, we're going strong.

And what about the first winner of the prize, Helen Dunmore? What can you tell me about her? Helen Dunmore, who died a couple of years ago, sadly, also served as a judge on a judging panel for us, was the most beautiful writer, incredible novelist, superb poet as well, had that amazing ability, which I do not have. I write big old commercial adventure stories, but that incredible thing she could summon up a whole period of time,

a whole person, a whole place, just in the way that she would describe somebody doing a pearl button on a glove. And, you know, she was that sort of exquisite writer. And she was our very first winner. And for a beautiful novel called A Spell in Winter, which is set at the beginning of the last century, two siblings in a house, it's not entirely clear what the relationship is between them or what is going on within the house. But it's one of those absolute lyrical, haunting novels that stay with you long after. And she was, if you like, a quiet writer. And what I mean by that, it's not flashbang, wallop, fireworks type, type of book, this beautiful, spare, elegant prose. And Helen was absolutely wonderful. On the very first

award ceremony, it was just so weird, so many of the journalists asked her about what she was going to do with the money. And you just said, you know, it was very odd that nobody wanted to ask her about the work. It immediately was turned into that sort of narrative of, oh, you know, well done, dear, you know, all of this sort of thing. You won the lottery now. You won the lottery, and what are you going to spend your money on? You know, this sort of thing. And Juliet Stevenson was the person who presented Helen with her award, and she came up with this beautiful thing that sums it all up for me. And she said, you know the thing is sometimes there's a door is shut to you, and you're not going to get through that door. So do you know what? Just

go round the side. And I thought that summed up the spirit of the prize. So it was a beautiful winner, a spell of winter. And I think it's set the tone for the prize, which is you can rely on the women's prize. You can rely on the work being excellent, elegant, gripping, beautiful, the best writing in the world. So I want to move on to the second book, which won the prize in 2013, may we be forgiven AM by AM Holmes. And Joe, you said this is your favourite. Oh, absolutely. I loved it. What did you love about it? I love the subtle huge. I love the subtle, of this book, which is there from pretty much page one and doesn't leave it. I tend to love American novels, and American novels.

I'm sort of drawn to that sort of literature, old or new. I love reading about Los Angeles, although this isn't, L.A. doesn't really play a main character in this book, but that is where it's set. And we, you know, we're talking about siblings. These books are connected through siblings and family. The two brothers in this novel are Harry and George. They are awful. You know, they're just all. Terrible people. They're terrible people. And I didn't really like any of the, I can't think of a character I really liked in the book. And yet I loved reading them. And I think that's the key for me. A.M. Holmes's writing is just superb. And the way she has chosen to talk about grief, which I think essentially is the main point.

of this novel and the thing I took away from it is just so original and I was surprised it was written in 2013 actually I thought it could have been written last year you know it just feels fresh and new and contemporary yeah um I found it quite difficult to attach to the characters mainly because I didn't like them so much right and I was like oh god you're awful Harry like what are you doing and I think when I got back to understanding actually you've kind of lost a few people. So that made me like almost like how he was dealing with his niece and nephew. That kind of brought in that redeeming factor in him. And so it was always of pushing the reader away by how absolutely rubbish you are and then helping a little girl take out a tampon from

her bum. And that was just the cutest part of the novel for me. I was like, oh, this is just absolutely amazing and and the humor and it was great because even in that moment he said something like oh I think I might even go to prison for this and I'm like oh you actually could but but you're not because you're actually doing something really nice so I think the humor was phenomenal um the character's rubbish um especially harry's wife I was like you're mean but then your husband's mean so you're all just mean um yeah I enjoyed it but I think the other too like tugged up my heart a little bit. I think it's one of the ultimate conundrums for an author, right?

Like how unlikable do you make your character? Or how likable? Because even if they're too likable, then they just become, you know, rubbish and like one dimensional. Or Mary Suez, you call it on the internet. Oh, but, oh God, she wrote, I thought she wrote men really well. And I was like, oh, wow, like, yeah. Yeah.

You did really well. The relationship. I love to say that men are rubbish, but yeah. The relationship between the two brothers, though, was interesting because, you know, it's the, I feel like, well, and I, I can't speak, I've got an older brother, but, you know, I don't have any sisters. I feel like when you have a sibling and you have the same gender, there's a different dynamic. Wait, who's got sibling of the same, everyone? Oh, of the same gender, yeah. No, I don't, I don't have a brother.

So Melissa and Ray. Is that, am I just projecting? It's hard to know because you don't know it the other way. Yeah. So I've got both. Oh, you've got both? And I do get along with my brothers much more than my sister. Yeah, me and my sister like cat and mouse.

Love her, but God, she's annoying sometimes. So, yeah. I love also the way that I love the exploration of grief and something that I find myself talking a lot to, I think we're guests, we're coming to an age. where our parents are getting a bit older and, you know, people are getting sick. And I found myself talking a lot about grief. I actually went on a grief course for a whole week.

And it was about grief healing. And I had done that because my dad had died five years earlier. But actually a lot of people there were there to talk about grief of all kinds. So grief of loss of self, empty nest syndrome, grief when your kids leave to go to uni, whatever. Grief loss of career, grief of all sorts. And I thought that was really interesting. and I found it amazing because a lot of it comes, as I learned in my course,

from the way we deal with our grief is a lot of it is how we were brought up and the chance or not chance we've ever had to express ourselves and the things that happened to us as a kid, particularly between siblings, because they seem to be one of our strongest relationships, whether we got on or not, because you've got our parents, but they're slightly unobtainable because they're your parents and they're grown-ups,

but then it's your sibling relationships. I found that really interesting. And I love the bit, especially, the grief and then the therapy side because I've had a lot of therapy when the when when George's therapist says to how it starts asking Harry loads of questions do you remember this bit and Harry's like yeah he was horrible he's a violent bully he used to throw stones at people's heads and the therapist is like well that's your opinion you know he said no no but he did and he's maybe he had bad aim yeah that's the way you've remembered it so I yeah I laughed a lot and I really

enjoyed it. I think I enjoyed the beginning more. I found the start of it just so I remember like going oh, like I'm going to get so into this. But then maybe because like we've said, they sort of became grosser and gross. Everyone became grosser and grosser. I just started getting annoyed with them. Or maybe it's the fact that I just wanted to help them and go, stop. Don't, don't do that. Don't do that. You're just going to get, you're going to make life hard of yourself. Why are you doing that? I couldn't stop them. I couldn't help them. You can't help people, especially if they're not real. You might have touched on something the reason why maybe I love this over say we're talking about the Helen Dunwall book in that I don't have a brother and therefore I can read these characters and this relationship having not being able to relate it to anything so I don't need to worry whereas I do have a sister and so reading the spell of winter is a bit like you know that that throws various things in but what I will say about this book may be forgiven if I may is that for all it it's for all the nastiness of the characters

and there aren't really that many redeeming features from them, there is a sort of warm optimism about the book, I think, because of, you know, what Harry has to end up doing in terms of looking after children and the way that he does slightly change and the way that he approaches, you know, actually being caring. You mentioned Claire, which is his wife. And I just thought that was, it's Claire and Jane actually, who we don't really hear that much from, she's at the very beginning of the book, are not great women, they're not great characters.

No one in this book is sort of painted in a good light at all. But for me, it was all about the writing, I think. And I know that what you're saying about the beginning as well, Melissa, because I was so drawn in the first 50 pages, six pages, it's just like unstoppable. But I, I sort of, it took me all the way through and I, I was so, so thrilled to have read it. I think that's a very strong argument for that book. I think I can't, you can't ask for a better form of praise, to be honest. I mean, it's not surprised really because I think I did, did some research into A.M. Holmes and now she's writing for TV as well. And I think you can tell that in the dialogue. It's very zingy.

That's going to be a show. Yeah. I mean, it's a show. It's a show. Oh, wait, no. I don't think it's a show yet. Should we put our money together and buy it? We could make this guy. You're right, the dialogue's fantastic. It's so, it's so perfectly pitched, I think. And that, that humor and when they're at the,

the wake, the Shiva and some of the Jewish lines that come out and everything. I just, I just think it's so well pitched. I was laughing at it and I had a lot. Yeah, I agree. I think my favourite part was when he wants to, goes to meet this woman for lunch slash not just lunch with. And then the woman's kids are there. And they hang, like, handcuff him.

And they end up having this amazing dialogue where he's essentially like therapistsing them, telling them how to deal with their parents who are just, you know, really just not there for them. At the same time, he's got handcuffs. And then he's like, oh, can I use your toilet? I thought it was. I literally thought it was.

Yeah. And I literally thought it was, I just remember being like, what is going on here? But it was absolutely brilliant. I think also what was nice about it was reading a book where the man had to take on that nurturing role of adopting someone else's children and just having to figure stuff out. Like the pasta lasting forever. Yeah. Oh, yeah. James Spaghetti sauce.

Or just the, but also what I really loved, maybe it's because I've got a dog. But I love how the dog Tessie kept appearing and, you know, oh, Tessie's got diarrhea and she's upset, or the Tessie, you know, the dog would comfort the kids and how just things would move into place in that way. But, you know, back to the, when he gets sort of kidnapped by the kids. And the kids say to him,

well, you know, and this might have basically feel abandoned. They're like, our mom's entirely electronic. And that feeling of actually, you know, I don't have kids yet, but, you know, everybody is on their phone breaking up. They're divorcing on the phone. they're sexting, you know, it's photo for photo, you know, breast for genitals. Everything is just very transactional.

And when they say, our mom's entirely electronic, it made me so sad. Yeah, I think that's what you're indicating as well, Joe, when you said that, you know, this book feels like it could have been written last year or this year, if it was very contemporary. It does. And also, it's not a main, well, it's not a sort of huge plot point, but George, who is one of the brothers, It comes out in the book, doesn't it? At work, he's this TV exec before he goes mad. And there was cases of sexual harassment put towards him.

And having recently watched Bombshell, which is all about the Fox News, the women at Fox News and that sexual harassment case against Roger Ailes, then I was sort of reading it, him, like a bit of a Roger Ales-style character. And, of course, none of that had actually happened at all before there's written. So I think that's another reason why in my head it feels so current. literature is just very prescient.

Read books. Especially with the media aspect of this novel, it was very much like, oh, haven't you read, haven't you seen? It's all over the news. And people would ask him, are you the brother that killed his wife? Because that's probably what they've read.

And he's like, no, it's not. And it's just understanding how media works, knowing the truth and seeing how it's portrayed elsewhere. And I think that was very, like, modern. It's a great argument for reading more women, as we're encouraging all people to do in the 25th. a year anniversary of the prize. So if you are reading these books

and you would like to interact these conversations, if you disagree with us and want to shout us down, please use the hashtag reading women. And we can choose to talk to you if we like. Before we go on to our third and final book, here's Miranda Richardson, chair of judges in 2013 on

May We Be Forgiven by AM Holmes. This book kind of shone through and it's settled and it revealed itself again and this was the one I thought I'm actually really happy to read this again and I'm going to recommend it to my friends it's modern it's forward thinking I think and it's about important things like family like the possibility of change like the possibility of forgiveness and one of the things about this book is the fragmentary nature of the life we're living

now and saying if you connect, if you hang on to, like Harry does, tries to those elements to hang on to family, you know, in its proper form, that'll win through. You'll be okay. We will be okay. I think it's very important. This podcast is made in partnership with Bailey's Irish cream. Bailey's is proudly supporting the women's prize for fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Bailey's is the perfect adultery, whether in coffee, over ice cream, or paired with your favourite book. So we're coming on to now our final book, The Glorious Heresies. And this was both your favourites, Melissa and Ray. Okay, tell us about this one. I feel like

you could talk about this one for ages. I could talk about this book for ages because I just, I didn't expect to enjoy it so much. And it's been a very long time a book has welled me or changed my mind. So I guess I liked it because I don't even know how I will describe or give a synopsis about it. Have a go. You said you love Maureen. I love Maureen. So it's a novel about

Island and I guess I would say working class people and how their lives intertwine and it starts with the death of is it not Tony Cullen. Robbie. Robbie O'Donovan. and an old woman called Maureen

kills him because he intrudes into her property and that just goes into this whirlwind of events or surrounding this killing but at the end of it it really wasn't about him at all it was just about lives and about mothers giving up children and about family structures

and about you know what drinking looks like and how that affects children and, you know, how a parent, what the parent does affects their child, especially with regards to Ryan and his dad and he's drinking, how it affects him and the love that he feels, which gets him into the arms of Tara, who I hate. And yeah, it's just, I thought it was just absolutely magical. And in the end, it was almost this healing, this mum figure being like, I'm going to take care of you.

If the church can't do it, I will. And I was like, God, I love you. that's my splurge I thought it was absolutely amazing Melissa you just hit the nail on the head actually when you said you know the end

I really didn't want it to finish I was so disappointed I wanted to see what's going to be the next chapter with Maureen and Ryan I also thought that I loved the love story I love remembering

I love remembering like what it felt like to have your first love. Love. And what kissing for hours felt like. They kiss for like six hours straight. And they talk about it and what it feels like and the melting into each other

and like any chance they can get and pushing beds against doors and finding solace in each other because Ryan's, you know, got his five brothers and sisters, their mum's died. The dad's a violent, alcoholic. He's giving up the piano.

Oh, the piano. There's a lovely, yeah, the lovely subplot about him learning to play piano. Yeah, and then coming out of the young offenders, the prison and, you know, in it it's quite interesting, isn't it? He says, when he

finds the library and he goes, I'm just going to read the whole time and get really clever, and then he gets sick of reading and he just wants to get out and start his new life. And that hurt when he gets out and life is not how he expected to find it. Then I found I found it very interesting, the loomingness of the Catholic Church. My mom's

Filipino, she's very, she's very Catholic. She's a Catholic as you can be. All Catholics are very Catholic. But what's really interesting is how she, the murder weapon is the relic. And then one of the clues as to where Robbie has died is another religious relic. And the idea of, as you said, the mum's giving up their babies and a bit that I found, I mean, I laughed at, but it's actually very sad. Maureen says, I think it's Maureen, she talks about her fear of the Holy Trinity, and she calls it, which is normally Father, Son, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, and she talks about the priests, the nuns, and the neighbours.

That is right, is a very good, kind of phrase. Yeah, and the kind of the idea that, you know, Tara, the evil neighbor, it feels very, and the fact that the broth, you know, the brothels now, the resident, you feel like you're actually within a couple of streets, the whole. time and you don't really ever get to escape it and you can just feel everything and you can smell things and everyone can hear what's going on next door and everyone's loud and all the arguments and the gossip and then the effect that the church has on how on people's morality and then you know murderers feeling bad about things and then trying to cover it up or it or salvation there's a lot

of people trying to help each other and actually a lot of the time that's what then has spiraled into things getting found out where more people have to get murdered or tried to anyway. I have to confess, I sort of love novels that include religion and even when religion is betrayed in a bad way because I always feel like that little dash of religion just makes it, you know, there's a chance for transcendence with this novel, you know, people can talk about important things like souls and, you know, loss and love and it just lifts everything. Although I have to confess, I had to Google what a holy stone was. And actually, the internet is not very forthcoming on it because now there's a very famous drone named Holy Stone.

Oh, really? Yeah. So I feel like your mum would not approve of this, Melissa. No, she probably wouldn't at all. Joe, what did you think of the book? Well, I really enjoyed it. I think for me it was more about the writing and the voice that I love the most. I didn't get into it straight away either,

and I think that's partly because of the style of it. But then once I'd got this sort of Irish lilt, and this rhythm that she creates that Lisa McKinney recreates, it's just so so hypnotic actually. What I loved was

that sort of fizzing anger that she puts through the pages which obviously all the characters are feeling in some way. The piano which you mentioned I loved as a very small little backdrop to something so beautiful and arguably so unworking class

is something that these characters keep want, there's a want, there's a need to learn it, to play it, to want to have that in their lives. And then, yeah, just as a sort of snapshot of Ireland and Irish culture and the language, I just, I loved it, you know, that sweary, fizzing sort of prose. Did you read it in an Irish accent? I did. Yeah, I definitely, at the beginning, you know, I was a bit, ooh, you disjointed, and then absolutely,

got into this sort of way and I couldn't stop myself reading it. There is an amazing wave of Irish women writers now, isn't there? Like Emma McBride, well, Anna Burns, although she's been going for ages. And for some reason, all their books, I just read it in an Irish accent in my head. And it's not even the correct accent because my idea of the Irish accent comes from Derry girls, which is completely geographically, absolutely wrong. So, you know, I just find it just helps so much more when you're reading it in that tone. But when I heard Anna Burns read from Milkman, having read the book, it made so much more sense to me.

It did something where I could suddenly understand it or I felt like it really hit the spot more, hearing her read it like that because, yes, I'd done it in a sort of Northern Irish accent. Because that's how it's written. But hearing her actually speak the words, it was like, wow, okay, yeah, I get it. So in that instance, we were talking about whether we read the actual book, or audio books. I'd quite like to listen to the Milkman because I think that would actually bring a whole new level to it.

Yeah, it's interesting because I don't read, you know, books by American authors in an American accent in my head. Yeah. So I wonder what it, I think it is just something about Irish literature where they nail the cadence or the rhythm of the way people speak in that country. And the turn of phrase and, you know,

you're not being, whatever, crack, you know, what do they say about crack? He's got great crack. He's got great crack. And I thought she had such amazing turn of phrases. You know, you're like, oh, that's such a good one. And, you know, I was thinking of some of my Irish friends, and I was thinking, oh, they're so lyrical and beautiful and funny and great.

I thought it was profoundly, like, intellectual in that the way that they dissected society through a very small community, there was one part that I really enjoyed. where I think it was Georgie and Ryan talking about the different factions of women, whether you're a whore, whether you're a mammy, whether you, oh God, I think there was like four categories and it was very much like you do the role that you, that society or the community bestows upon you. And if you come out of it, there'll be issues. And so you have to stick to that role.

And every time Georgie would want, you know, she went to that Christian cults, they called it and she'd come back and I'll get better and she goes back to doing exactly what she knows when Ryan goes into prison there isn't that rehabilitation because you know he promises Kareen that he'll go back to school and of course you know at the back of your head that it's not going to happen because that's just the way society is and I think it very much reflected I guess not just Ireland but any sort of working class in a city whether it's inner city London and various corners of you know the Midlands or it I think it was that for For me, it was done so beautifully.

It was like how small interactions between two people can reflect upon the whole society. It was marvelous. And I think it's a sign of a really good author when you can raise these kinds of issues without it ever feeling like, oh, kids, it's time to sit down and learn about the prison industrial complex. It's time to sit down and learn about how bad the Catholic Church was. It comes off so naturally that you just end up, you know, well, you don't have to agree, but you just end up thinking, oh, yeah, she does have a point. Yeah.

And here's our final judge for today's Reading Women episode. This is Margaret Mountford, chair of judges in 2016, on The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney. She tells us why it was a worthy winner. We had a strong shortlist in 2016, and after an impassioned discussion, we selected Lisa McInerney's The Glorious Heresies, because we thought it was original, it was vibrant, it was pacey, and it had a lot of of Irish black humor in it that personally I love. One of the book's strengths was the author's ability to create credible characters and make you feel empathy for characters who at first sight not seem very appealing at all. We had a prostitute, we had a drug addict, we had the mother

of the top criminal in cork and so on, and yet you felt for all these characters, you were interested in them and you felt sympathy for them because you realized, well, it wasn't really their fault that they ended up where they did. So these books were published respectively in 96, 2013 and 2016. So how do you think they sit within the context of when they were written? Do you think they still feel relevant today? We talked about may we be forgiven, feeling very contemporary, but I'm curious to know what you guys feel about, a spell of winter and glorious heresies. I think if you're thinking of Helen Dunmore as a writer and look at a book like exposure or something, I think that book, although it's historical fiction as well, it felt more contemporary.

But may we be forgiven and the glorious heresies absolutely very relevant, contemporary, and I think will be read in years to come. Ray? I absolutely agree. I have nothing more to have. He just said it. I don't, yeah. What do you think, Melissa?

I think you just nailed it. Yeah. I actually now just sitting and digesting with you all, I would love to reread them again. And I feel that I felt a lot for all three of them. And I, you know, we had to read them quite quickly. I quite like to have a bit more time to read and then digest. But I'd like to read AM Homes again,

maybe be forgiven after we've just talked that through and see if I can get over how annoying they were at times. I think I'm going to give that another chance quite soon. Some people can't get over horrible characters, though. You know, I think a lot of people can't read Jonathan Franzen or something because he writes such awful people. And there's no, there's no redemption. So it's like, well, why would I invest then? But if you can get over it for the AM Homes, then I think, you know, I could recommend any of these books.

And I would to certain, you know, there's people I know would love one over the other. Did any of them change the way you think about any kind of issues? I feel like the glorious heresies really brought home to me the issue of the modern laundries, the sexism against women in Ireland in a way that I think just reading about it in newspapers doesn't quite cut it. What do you think? I agree, but I think it also made me, I mean, I was already quite compassionate with regards to women in these circumstances. but I think the aspect of rehabilitation for me was something that was very important and it really struck home is how do you get the right people to help people and I think those

personal relationships for me was very important. Jo, did any of the books make you change your mind about anything? Not, I don't think so, no actually. I don't think anyone changed my mind about anything. I think the AM Homes, if I could go back to it again, maybe be forgiven reinforced my slight hatred of mobile phones and technology and social media and how they are becoming so ingrained in our lives. But what it did make me do is think, these children that are featured in the book who've suffered great loss are escaping.

loss are escaping their lives through technology. And actually that made me think about it differently because usually whenever someone bumps into me in the street and they're looking at their phone, I just think, you know, just get in. Instead, it's made me think, well, you never know, maybe. Maybe this is a way to get, you know, using it to get away from whatever's happening in their own.

Yeah. I feel that way about Instagram, to be honest. What about you, Melissa? I love the, I love the parent versus child in, May we be forgiven when I think it's Harry says something like, we were never given any choices when we were kids, we just had to get on with it and you ate and you dressed. And then there's a point in May we be forgiven where I think Harry's like driving back to the house and he, and he says to his new family unit that he's in charge of now and he's like, I'm going to talk, I promise to talk to the, I can't really

remember, but something like I'm going to commit to talking to them like they're real people. And I've just, I think that's a really good one from all three really, how real people kids are and how much they absorb and how they need to be explained. Like nobody ever explained to in Spell of Winter, Kathy and Robert, where they were told their father was a, you know, a lunatic. But actually, he was probably having a nervous breakdown because the mum left and where is mom? And she was never spoken about. So I think that it's always interesting hearing what we think we can just whisper or talk about it in front of kids or not tell them and how, what the impact that has. The sins of the parents.

Yes. Well, I actually have good news. I actually have good news for the two of you who love the glorious heresies because there is a sequel. Oh, yes. Someone did tell me. Oh, I didn't know that. Someone did tell me I'm sourcing it very soon. It is called the Blood Miracles and it came out in 2017.

Oh, wow. So that's, we just said that, didn't we? Yeah. So that's another one to put on your reading list. Oh, let's go. Let's find the bookshop. Well, I think that's about all the time we've got for this episode. Thank you so much for joining us.

It had such an interesting, illuminating journey through these three books with you guys. I feel like you really kind of showed parts of the books I didn't see when I first read them. So thank you. And to anybody who's reading along, you can obviously get involved with the hashtag reading women. Tweet us, talk to us, tell us what you think. We would love to know what you make of these three books. And thank you to our guests, Joe, Melissa and Ray. Thank you.

I'm Zing Singh. You've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast, brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. You definitely want to head to our website to find out more about the Reading Women Challenge, get exclusive video and audio content, and check out the hashtag Reading Women on Instagram and Twitter to join in the conversation around the 24 brilliant past winners of the Women's Prize for Fiction. Please click subscribe. And don't forget to rate and review of this podcast. It really helps spread the word about the female talent you've heard about today. Thanks very much for listening and see you next time.