Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S2 Ep4: #ReadingWomen: Identity

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

In this episode Zing Tsjeng is joined by author, journalist and host of the award-nominated podcast Sentimental Garbage - Caroline O'Donoghue, television and radio presenter, Vick Hope and journalist, host of chart topping podcast You’re Booked and author of The Sisterhood – A Love Letter to the Women Who Shaped Me, Daisy Buchanan. The theme of today's #ReadingWomen book club is identity. The panel discuss three books that explore the complexities of identity. They are the 2015 winner How to Be Both by Ali Smith, Property by Valerie Martin, the 2003 winner, and Larry's Party by Carol Shields which won the prize back in 1998. 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 of Fiction, and you've joined me for a special episode in which we are challenging you to 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 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 prizefiction.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. I'm joined today by three amazing guests. Our first is author, journalist and host of the award nominated podcast, Sentimental Garbage, Caroline O'Donoghue. Also joining us is radio and television presenter Vic Hope. And lastly is Daisy B Cannon,

journalist host of the podcast, Your Booked and author of The Sisterhood, A Love Letter to the Women Who Shaped Me. Now, welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for having us. Hello. I'm excited to be here. Today's book club is all about identity. To explore that theme, we are diving into the 2015 winner, How to Be Both by Ali Smith. property by Valerie Martin, our 2003 winner, and Larry's party by Carol Shields, which won the prize back in 1998. So tell me, everyone, how was your experience of reading the three books?

I really liked reading them together because there were so many different voices. It was interesting, I think, to, I guess, because how to be both is the very typical example of a writer who is really taking on two different voices that really, you know, I don't think are necessarily her own and making them her own. And then, you know, Valerie Martin, you know, it's a voice that's sort of ancient as well as other things. It's, you know, revisiting a time back in history. And then Carol Shields, well, it's not written in the first person, but she's, you know,

looking into the psyche of a man living in the 20th century. So I think that's, it's interesting how much identity really was at the centre of everything and how I think I engaged with the books or didn't engage with them in terms of the way I responded to the voice of the central character. So, you know, Larry, I felt a deep tenderness for both of the protagonists in How to Be Both. I, you know, adored and I felt really moved and absorbed by their journey. because in property there is no one in that book that you really connect with even though it is so well told I struggle with that because it was just so hard to spend time in that awful awful world with those

people where you know society's falling apart and everyone's so cruel and so self-serving there was no tenderness there yeah it's weird because I think when you're you're reading it the characters that I assumed I would have an affinity with and that I would love like Sarah I thought I would love in property, but at no point did, and I felt a bit guilty for not feeling that way, was in quite stark contrast to say a character like Larry, who, like, why should I care? But I did, but I deeply, deeply did. And I think reading them together and reading them through these very disparate prisms of value, in prisms of society and nationhood was interesting because you're seeing completely different

times, but very similar feelings and sentiments that I could relate to despite the fact that none of these characters are like me. it's so completely true and I think as well these books taken as a as a trip titch don't really have anything in common with one another very as you say different on time periods and they all won the women's prize other than that

but the only thing that I could really find to connect them is that they are all it is a group of people we take all these characters and put them in a dinner party who are just not behaving as they should so I think there's a lot to talk about we're really getting very very into it but so I like to take

the moment to kind of go through these books one by one, kind of explain to whoever's listening what these books are actually about. And I'd like to start with How to Be Both by Ali Smith, which is the most recent winner, the 2015 winner. Who among you would like to give the synopsis of this? Because it's quite a tricky book. It's quite experimental.

And I'm really curious to know how people read it and which person or protagonist you started with. Because obviously the book begins with one of two choices because she printed half the run beginning with one protagonist's viewpoint and the other half of the run with the other protagonist's viewpoint. So I feel like...

I'd love to have seen that conversation with their publisher. Can you imagine the publishers who got the manuscript? I wonder if they got two manuscripts actually. Well, yeah, because they just got to get it sent out and get it made. Yeah. I had no idea that it was printed this way until today. And when I heard that, I thought, how on earth would you have been able to read it,

the opposite to the way that I read it. And I don't know which way, which way did you guys? I had George first. Yeah. But I started to read it in 2015 when it won and I had Francisco first and I just thought, this book is not for me. I cannot read it. I can't get into it at all.

And I was really quite scared about trying to read it again. I thought, oh, I didn't really get on with this last time. And it dazzled me. I was, I love George. It absolutely gripped me. And it was amazing. how unexpected that was and it was really exhilarating generally

to realize I can not get on with a book and then five years later when I'm older and wiser really, really connect with it. It's a benefit of age. So I'll jump in. We have two stories. The first is a contemporary story of George who I think is about 16.

I believe she's doing her GCSE. She's got a little brother and her mother has died and her father is really, really struggling to adapt to life. But her mother is very much present throughout the story. The mother is, I think she works for a think tank and she's an economist, but she's also a sort of a radical artist. And her presence in life is so vivid.

In a weird way she made me think a little bit of Bernadette in Where Do You Go, Bernadette? Oh, yes, great reference. That sort of, that liveliness. But it's about George trying to find herself, the world and makes space in the world, but her mother becomes absolutely obsessed with this particular figure in a painting, and I think she's seen it in a magazine. And the second story is, it's Francisco's story, and he is the painter. And it's, I thought it was really interesting as well, because you learn so much about sort of like, you know, patronage and the system of what

you do, and it was such a delight to see their talent being encouraged. There's a duality in terms of Francisco's gender. It's something that we see in different ways in all the books is how much more freedom you have when you live as a man or present yourself as such. It's a good sexy bits in the Francisco bit as well, I thought, which I enjoyed. So it's really about this link

and there are very definite links between the two stories. I was quite slow to see when Francisco really was referring quite directly to George And it took me a few guys like, oh yes, of course. Yeah, it took me a while to realise that the little pictures in people's hands were their phones. What was he talking about? And the walls as well.

I'm like, why is he being so rude about their wall building skills? Where is this ball? So was this an immediate love for you guys? Like, when you started reading it, were you like, this is a great book? Or did it take a while to get into? I think it took me, I'm going to say, 20 or 30 pages of being like, I remember not liking this. And then, and I think because of starting with that new story.

And also, because I really, I loved George's mother. I could see, I'm not sure I'd love her as a mother, but as a character, I was so immediately dazzled by her. And I think about how you, how she's given, she gives George freedoms that perhaps we don't feel that, you know, we have, or I don't feel like I had as a child of very non-behemian parents. I don't think Amdram counts. it took me probably about the same to get into George's story

but by the end of George's story I was in love and I was so annoyed that I had to leave it and come back to this other story I didn't know I was like who is this Francesco get out please can I take it back to the bookshop and say I just wanted more George please but then once I got into that I fell in love again and it was the same feeling inside my stomach

that I was having for this second character and working out that they were intertwined and that George is imagining of the artist having been a girl who had to pretend to be a boy and then realizing that this was a girl pretending to be a boy it was incredibly satisfying and I think that for a story that had so much grief and sadness in it it was full of joy. Yes. Eminated from the page there were parts of it that was laugh out loud funny. Yeah I have to be honest of the three books I adored the other two but this was my least favorite and I hated myself for that because Ali Smith is such a gem

and I love listening to her being interviews. This is actually my first Alice book I've read and you quite and you're a beautiful cover and it won the prize quite recently and you just want you don't you want to be someone who also loves Ali Smith because that puts you in a in a heightened category of existence back to identity you want to be

yeah yeah I would like to be an Ali Smith fan and I but I was saying to the girls before we start recording I think Alice Smith is a great writer and I think great writers need dissenters and I think I might be a dissenter I just didn't get it I just I never quite got into it and what I also

frustrated me the most was that I kept being thrown these delicious plot points. This affair that the mother has, or kind of a pseudo affair with a friend of hers, who ends up being this woman who lies about her entire existence, tantalizing, never get back to it. This kind of teenage romance that George has with her new best friend, and then she suddenly moved to like Denmark or something. And like all these bits come in and you're like, oh God, I would love this. And Ali Smith, she throws that in your face. She literally says towards the end of George's par, she says, this would be the part where the plot would happen. But I'm not doing that. Here's a ghost.

And I'm like, oh, I have to respect it, but I don't like it. I have a question, which is, did you guys actually look up Francesco's art? Because you know the artist is based on a real artist. I did not know that. Yeah, no. I did not look up the art. I'm ashamed of that. I had a look at the Wikipedia page for the artist.

There's nothing. I think Ali Smith just made up the bit of it. about, you know, him pretending to be, well, him, a girl pretending to be him. But the art, I would say, is sort of slightly disappointing almost, because you read this book and it's so radiant and it makes the art sound amazing. And then you look at, I guess, computer resolution images of art. And then you're like, oh, is this it? It makes me wonder if she actually saw the paintings in real life and decided to write the book about them.

But maybe it doesn't matter. Because what the obsession is in the first part, or depending on how you read it in George's part, is with the sketches beneath the paintings. So, and I guess you're asking that question, what comes first? Because in history, throughout history, or wherever I'm going to see is the finished piece, when in fact those beginnings,

and it's the same with any of the great, like form artists like your clumps or your Sheila's, it's actually the sketches that can be the most beautiful and the most telling when it comes to what it means to be that artist as opposed to the viewer of the art. The work and progress. Yeah. And it was the progress.

And the bit I loved the most was seeing Francisco develop as an artist and I really love the bits where going to the brothel where and sort of surprising the women that were painted or drawn and just that we got to see that talent evolving and growing it was I always it's like I love bits and books where you know someone's business is really starting to take off or you know that's sort of that promise starts you can kind of imagine the movie montage of it. Yeah. It's like those sketches are what make up the character,

what make up the identity more so than what the painting at the end of their career would actually be. And I think because I could imagine the painting so clearly. I'm going to claim I didn't want to see the real ones because what I was imagining was just so glowing and radiant that anything could only disappoint me. I think that's the thing, isn't it, about books that discuss great works of art or any kind of music really.

one of the books that also won the women's prize which we're discussing on a different episode is Belcanto, which is an Anne Patrick novel and it features an opera singer who is the best opera singer in the world she doesn't exist in real life but the operas do so I read the book and I went and listened to the operas imagining that I would immediately fall in love with them I don't like opera

just don't like it at all. Just will never be a person who likes opera yeah it's interesting though I find that subject also fascinating when it's a book which is a piece of culture when it's about a fictional piece of culture so it's up to the authors to dream up something amazing. It rarely seems to work. I really seem to take off with Daisy Jones and the Six

which I've just started reading. It seems to be a great example of that. But in my own book, I kind of struggled with that because it's about filmmakers. And for ages, I was like, how can I make this convincing?

And then at the last minute, I was like, oh, what if it's bad? What if it's bad and she knows? Well, it's like the classic example of that is the goldfinch, right? Yes. Which is about a picture of a goldfinch. And then when you buy the book

on the cover, it looks just a really unassuming bird. And you're like, oh, this bus for a bird. Who risked their life with this bird? Okay, before we move on to next book, let's pause to hear from Sharmi Chakrabati, who was the chair of the judging panel in 2015. And she tells us why, how to be both, was picked as the winner.

I think it's partly about gender identity, because there are issues about gender identity, both misunderstanding somebody's gender, but also changing one's outward appearance in the ancient story in order to just get on. You know, women are being discriminated against. I want my daughter to be a painter and to make her way in the world.

She should basically pretend to be a boy and a man and how you live with that. So yes, gender is a big part of how to be both. But there are other complexities too. There are other both in the story. Watching, being watched. You know, when does the, you know, the surveilled person becomes the watch.

that's another aspect to it, ancient, modern, just so many, so many, both, so much otherness and complexity in the book. In the end, it was nearly, it was nearly unanimous. And I think everyone was, was proud of the decision. For my point of view, though I loved, I loved pretty much all the books on the shortlist and many on the long list. It's very hard to go from long listing to shortlisting. but for me this is the book that people will be reading in a hundred years time long after I'm gone and we'll be looking at it as a book about the time we're living in now but also as a book about about the complexities of life and death and grief and gender and so much more

don't forget you can join in the discussion we are using the hashtag reading women So our second book is Property by Valerie Martin, our 2003 winner. And this was a very brutal book to read. I'm not going to lie, it's probably one of the more violent ones that I've read on the podcast. It's like that Woody Allen quote, it's like it was brutal and in such small portions. It is hard to read, but it is mercifully very short. So you can get through it in an afternoon. It's sort of warns you that it's going to be brutal from the outset,

but you never actually see it happen until towards the end of the book, the actual spur of violence. Yeah. But it's coming. It's coming. In a way, you think it's not going to ever actually happen. You'll just have a description of it for so long, but no, it does. So before we start talking about it, would anyone mind giving a quick synopsis of what it's about? Yeah, sure, I'll go.

Property is a story of a woman called Manon, who is living in New Orleans pre-Civil War, but coming towards the end of the antebellum plantation period. She's married to a complete sadist who she kind of, it was very much. much an adventages financial match that was made after her father was killed. And the sort of slavery and how white men treat their slaves is this kind of thing that goes throughout the novel. Her husband has this kind of disgusting God complex where he's torturing his slaves and he's also has this relationship with Sarah, who is a slave brought into the house by Manon. And this obviously creates this tension and this relationship between Manon and Sarah that you, as a reader, you wanted to become this thing where maybe they murder him in his sleep together and they flee, but they don't.

What actually happens and what I think made it so hideously resonant is that Manon becomes somebody who feels victimized by somebody who is the victim. And I think you see that so much in society, right? where people will just, they're more comfortable in that way. So she learns to hate Sarah. Sarah eventually disappears during a slave revolt where her husband is killed. And then she goes to any lengths to track Sarah down. I mean, in many ways, Manon is one of the most unlikable protagonists of the books that we've had to read

for the podcast. I was going to say, in writing. It reminded me a lot of Aunt Lydia from the follow-up to the house And Maid's Tale. Great connection. Where, you know, it's a entire, it's a book from entirely the villain's perspective

and you just hear her rationalise over and over again why, you know, subjugation is absolutely correct, why the violence is absolutely justified. And yet she's never really quite brought to account for those views. I do you think, though, that Aunt Lydia has this really, really sly, fierce intelligence

and she cares much more about surviving, whereas with man on her ego is so bloated. And I think that is what leads to her. ruin in the end that she is so, so self-absorbed. She feels so hard done by all the time. I would say she's got one redeeming feature and that's her wit. I think she's occasionally a little bit funny. A little bit.

I mean, no one in the book is particularly nice. Even the characters who, I always said this before, who maybe we should like, like Sarah, is given no redeeming features. But that's because we see this all through Menon's viewpoint and she can't. them herself so it makes you very acutely aware of that subjectivity that all of us have and that maybe we have ourselves you kind of look at yourself and and maybe where in your day-to-day life you might also be unempathetic unsympathetic horrible a horrible bitch which we all can be and you're you're so right and it makes you so curious about sarah because she looks at sarah and

she sees she's like this kind of blankness and she's like god she never talks to me she never responds to my questions directly and she just kind of wants to rattle her the whole time and then Sarah goes out she escapes to the north and for like six months or something she she she spoil her but she sort of lives in drag right and she she's able to much like in how to be both actually she she lives as a man and is able to pass and is and all these people are saying yeah lots of people met her on this cruise ship and says she was a very distinguished gentleman and and man on's like who has thought of sarah's being quite dull has been like I I can't fathom how she was able to maintain this ruse, but there's a richness to Sarah that we don't

get to see and you so badly want to see it. Until the end. And is, is this a spoiler? When she finally says that all she wanted was a seat at the table. Yeah. And that was the first thing that she said that resonated with me. Maybe it's because of Solange, but that, that for all of the starkness of this novel, that was so rich.

thing to read on the page. I do think it was a really bold and courageous and strong move to write a book where everything is great and everything is bleak and there isn't necessarily anyone that you connect with. I think that's a really powerful thing to a really, really powerful move to make. And I'm really, really glad that Valerie Martin did not go down the route of making Sarah. You know, although I don't think anyone could say that any slave in this novel is not a victim of these awful awful people and of the society but she's not any kind of you know

disney victim you don't feel because even though seeing her through manon's eyes makes you want to find something to connect with her and like but also that kind of the genius of the fact that manon just can't see that she thinks that her husband is the you know the main villain and the real baddie in sarah's life when when it's her it reminded it made me think of two books that I've really, really loved. And it's a bit of a leap. I don't know if anyone's read Good Behaviour by Mully Keen. I found the voice in that book really similar to Manals,

in that you've got this heroine, sort of anti-heroine, who's completely, completely delusional. And that good behaviour is about, it's another sort of a woman who's kind of trapped in rural island in this, with this family who have, you know, seen better days. And she's dismally in love with her brother's best friend, who is gay and she is absolutely in denial of this but that sort of almost

you know putterish level of delusion and narcissism is there that's what I just read Corredja Dora by Gail Jones which is I think that's set in I can't remember begins I think it begins in the 40s and carries them through the 60s and beyond but it's about a woman living gosh I can't remember she's in New York

of Philadelphia but she is the descendant of slaves and the grotesque motif of the book is how her great-grandfather is also her grandfather who keeps talking about making generations and impregnating these women and then their children. And I was really, I think Corredador is the most blistering, astonishing, painful, beautiful book. And it's so magnificent when it comes to a really frank discussion about female sexuality. And that's what made me really, really sad. And what broke my heart a bit for men on is there's no idea. All sex is for her and all sexes for any woman is pain.

And what's fascinating about Corrediador is female sexual pleasure is something like, I feel like all I do is I come here and I be like, you know, as well, honey. But to see, I suppose, you know, the background or the relief, I think it's really enlightening to read those books close together. And I think that one has helped me appreciate the other. more. I guess because it's a matter of light and shade, isn't it? And property to me is all darkness, really. It's very bleak and it's very unremitting. And even, you know, the redemption at the end for someone like Sarah doesn't quite come fully realised because you don't really spend any time with her.

No. I wonder if you have like a level of sympathy for her because she has not afforded any perspective whatsoever. She is so, so ignorant. And ignorance is not bliss for her at all. It's, it's a prison for her. She doesn't even know that she's ignorant. She's so set in her ways. And for those of us reading, at least we can see the course of history. She doesn't have a clue that we're going to look back on that time with such utter disgust.

I really admire that in any historical novelist as well because the temptation is to be like, have the character be like, if only women could vote. Yeah, yeah. I would have shot Hitler if I could have. Yeah. But yeah, you're right.

Nobody gets perspective. It's so interesting as well, I think, how lionizing is. of her father and her conviction that he is a good man and he was, you know, he was a kindly slave owner and all of, and I felt as though I came away with more questions and answers about him. And but I suppose it was this time of just everything being hidden and no one, that's, I suppose, when it comes back to identity, nobody could understand themselves. No one was allowed to know about themselves. Everything was behind locked doors. But also, what, a thing that I thought was such a

brilliant, brilliant part of the writing and made it a really stressful and comfortable read was that the lingering menace, Vick as he said, that the most brutal act

of violence comes quite late but you're never allowed to forget that it's there and it was interesting I think reading that in these times when there's always a sort of lingering threat of global menace

and something dreadful happening. I think that's possibly why I struggled with it as much as I did it seemed to be too much of outside coming in. It's not a very relaxing read. No.

And I was going to ask, do you think that this book is the one with the most amount of contemporary resonance. It feels like it right now, like today. Her mum gets really, really ill and seeing that contagion spreading and the whipped up hysteria about it felt like it resonated a huge amount reading it just the other week.

I guess just the ingrained racism that they don't even know is racism anymore because of the way that it is such a huge part of their everyday lives feels, unfortunately, like something we do get every day. Yeah. The one thing that kind of piqued my interest a little bit was that Valerie Martin is a white author.

She's a white woman. And to write a story that is, it is such an American black story. Do you know what I mean? It's a big bite to take off. And what's interesting about reading the book is that it is about white women's accountability in this system. Because when we hear about accountability within slavery, it is generally a male story, right? and and she is focused on like look you know women were a part of the system too and she's really

offering that which I think is really it's a it's a it's a bruce of all it's a brave decision to to like no I'm going to write about this and it's a brave decision to be like no here's our again here's our accountability within this and I do think I do think there are more conversations now around which authors should be representing what issues and it made me think if the book came out today would there be an instant social media reaction to like what right does she have? Because I do notice those dead discussions happening online

much more than they would have in 2003. But she had to make Manon as awful as possible to be accountability. And I suppose that she is not writing from the perspective of Sarah and maybe that's what's so interesting about how little we are allowed to learn

about Sarah and how it's all Manon's projections. So I think in that way, maybe it holds up. But I think again, back to identity, back to the main question about who is allowed to write what. I thought that it's by taking on the perspective of this, a white woman who is the worst example of the, you know, terrible,

not just privilege, you know, living in privilege and delivering abuse, that, you know, she's sort of the way that's expressed and that we're seeing all through her eyes, I think, as you say, you know, to say this is, how we are complicit I think is it makes it and to be honest that was why I wanted to respond definitely I think this book is unignorable it's you can't not respond to it and it is compelling but I wanted to I think find more in the writing than I did there some really stunning and jaw-dropping and breathtaking descriptions and I think some something's done

masterfully but I think it's almost the research is perhaps more impressive than the writing or that's how I found it. Now that we're having this discussion actually, it makes me think that maybe the fact that we don't hear from Sarah very much is Valerie Martin acknowledging the fact that she can't really write from that perspective. Oh, she can write from is her perspective as a white woman responding to those events historically. It's an interesting conversation. And I think it's one that we're going to keep having on the podcast,

mainly because if nothing else, stories about identity and representation are probably, you know, going to be the bread and butter for decades to come. This podcast is made in partnership with Bailey's Irish cream. Bayleys 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 favorite book. Our third and final book for today's episode of Reading Women is Larry's Party by Carol Shields.

Now, this won the prize in 1998. would anyone like to provide a brief synopsis of it? Very brief. It's about a man called Larry. That's it really. He's Canadian. He's fairly ordinary. But the way that Carol Shields describes these tiny little details of the events of his life makes him quite extraordinary.

He's incredibly likable. And although it's a winner of the women's prize and it's a book by a woman, it's about a man. And I think that I wasn't expecting that when I got this sent to me as a thing that we were going to discuss. Were you thinking it was Larry with an eye at the end? I just assumed that, I mean, maybe I should have known. But I loved this book. I loved it as well.

I really loved it. I also loved Larry's part. He starts as a florist, but he soon becomes a top maze designer, which is a job that now I want to do. But yeah, there's this symbol of mazes that goes around. you know, the mazes, it's all about a journey back to the centre and looking at yourself, that auto perception and discovering yourself as well. And then you go in, you come out again and what you said earlier about only really being able to appreciate a maze from above. And when you've got that distance from it is, I guess, a metaphor for life.

We'll only really know once we're dead what it's all about. I wonder if something that I just loved about being in Larry's world and, you know, unlike, unlike property, there are definitely sort of high points and relaxing points, but it is to do with Larry being a man that he is so lucky. All the good things that happen to him are sort of happy accidents, and he muddles through. And he always comes out with luck on his side and how, you know, while he is, I can't think there are many instances, definitely in terms of him talking about parenthood. And I think, and I forgave him a lot.

It was a different time. It was the 70s. It was the 80s. But he does, I don't think you see any sort of, you know, out and out misogyny. He doesn't, he has romantic partners. Yeah. And, you know, for themselves and for the people that they are. And he has no, I think, compunction either about, you know, he loves working with flowers.

He, although his father of that generation is a little bit suspicious of it. He just connects with it and never. never questions it but his manhood, sorry, means he's avoided a space where he never has to answer too many questions about who he is and what he's doing and that's why he has such a lovely time

and why we all love being in his company. I feel like listeners listening to this now will be like, this guy sounds really boring if he has a nice life. And he is boring, yeah. But he is a boring man. But I think, I don't know about you guys, because I think it says he was born in 1950

and we meet him in 1970. And that makes him the exact age as my dad. And it really did feel like a journey into the mind of your own father, of the person that for years was just kind of a foot in a newspaper. And I think dads in general are much like a woman's heart, a deep ocean of secrets. And I just really appreciated like the kind of living in that head for a while. And you can, you know, it's quite easy to be like,

oh God, we're all sick of straight white men. And we are. But it really takes a wonderful writer to make someone's very ordinary, very domestic, very middle-class life so wonderful and so interesting. And it almost feels like a weird flex from Carol Shields being like... Look what I can do. Look what I can do. Look what I can make you involved in. I love, I truly, truly love Tom Wolfe and Armistead Mopan and I have a sort of love-of-hate relationship with Brett Easton Ellis.

But what I adore about all those writers is the detail of the times they write in and the magnificent social. observation. It really is a sociological document. There's a I think Armistead Mopad, Mopad, the famous motorcycle rider, obviously Mopan has a line in, I think it might be the first Tells City book where it's like the men all express their individuality by wearing patched madras pants. And that is the sort of line that I think Carol Shields, it's just the most amazing striking sketching of people from really vivid period details. And I think that's the, I do not love

historical novels. I really, really struggle with them and I don't want five pages explaining how exactly someone goes to the toilet and Tudor Times. But any social history from about 1930, 1940 onwards is all I want. And that's what this does so deftly

and doing it sort of decade by decade. That's what I truly adored. Although I think that possibly makes it quite an indulgent read. It's very buoyant. so you feel bouncy along with it but there is no real description of actions like nothing actually happens it's all reflections on the action that's being perceived

which I guess lets you reflect on how you might perceive that action as it would happen and you feel quite reflective I think when you're reading it it just lets your mind wonder without it ever feeling like you don't know what's going on what did you guys think of the way the book was split up

So it's called Larry's parody, but I think it begins with like, Larry's school, Larry's job, Larry's penis. Larry's penis is a chapter I enjoyed. The new Ralph. Yeah. Yeah. So it starts with 15 minutes in the life of Larry Uella. Yeah. And you can very much time that that's about 15 minutes what happens there.

And then yeah, Larry's love, Larry's folks, Larry's work, Larry's words, Larry's friends, Larry's penis. Where Carol Shields goes through every possible word for people over about three pages. Yeah, the two things I learned loads about were penis etymology and ferns. To be honest, I don't think an author could ask for more than that. No. And they're all about bushes and not that kind of. I like that. I found that really helpful way for me to order my thoughts, but not about folks, work or peni,

but actually more about whatever felt like his reflection in that chapter. So, you know, in work, it almost felt like he was talking more about love. and in his words he talked about his space in the world so it was almost like it was thematically culminating all of these ideas without it actually being about what that chapter is purporting to be about so am i right in thinking that this was probably all of your favorites was it i don't have a thing i don't know i don't know i think i i've already been very frank about i think i definitely loved them for different reasons i think what i loved about it Larry's party is that on every single page there was just a lovely treat do you

know me like a lovely like sentence that just by itself you just kind of wanted to write down right even today when I was flicking through it it said um they had the kind of so-so relationship that was always running on vertical lines and you just kind of imagine the sort of like dismal sort of toy train track going along it just I found that so evocative and I felt it was like full of lovely sweets and gems where its property was just full of gruel and nails but I but the thing is I think I'm going to remember property for as long as I live. Do you know what I mean?

Whereas I think I'm going to dip into Larry's party and maybe keep it in my loo, you know. Like a little treat. Yeah. I just greatly agree with you. I think that property will stay with me because it's so harrowing. Larry's party, I've probably got the most joy out of reading in the present. But if I'm going to recommend a book to anyone, it's probably going to be how to be both because it, I think it's going to give the reader an experience that they haven't had before,

which is what I tend to look for in a recommendation. I'm really, really excited to recommend Larry's party and to read more Carol Shields. It's when you discover a voice and you think, where have you been all my life? Yes, and there's so much to get into. I was the same. I'd never heard of Carol Shields before and there's so much to do now. There's a passage that's a meditation on Larry really being called Lawrence, but how, you know, you come into a world as a Larry and a Larry is a certain kind of man.

And it could be, you know, George and Jerry riffing in the coffee shop, but it's so true. And it really does make you think about, and that's, I suppose, perhaps the clear as part on identity to bring it back to our theme. But I think... They're these themes. Don't worry about it. But these are the things that really, really stay with me as a reader, the snippets and the vignettes. And I think I will always remember the shape of property. And I'll always, you know, believe it to be an incredibly...

important book but you know I'm just I'm so excited about pressing Larry's party onto people and I think that it's a book that it contains multitudes it's about nothing but it's about everything there are universes here and the joy of it as well I think is that we are all Larry and so we get a bit of our own Francisco experience I think we can see what it's like to move through the world with that kind of joyous accidental freedom I love to about Larry's party as well is that there's all these kind of things that could be miniature novels within the book like this whole bit about his his mother who accidentally killed her father-in-law when she was a young bride it's just like the most

harrowing terrible but like quite comic story of like she cans some beans poorly and he gets food poisoning and just dies and that's the rest of her life it's such a weird instant poisoning as well that she you know just a little murder to be careful say that but team murder I learned a new word the other day say Sonder, which means the realization of every life that passes you as complex and as vibrant as your own. And I think that's what Larry's party meant for me. I'm just going to look at every normal, weird, I don't know, boring person on the tube and think, ah, Sonder.

So good. I love that. It's going to make me a much more compassionate rush hour traveler. Yeah. I think that is probably the best endorsement you can get for a book, a more compassionate person at rush hour. So here's our final judge for today's reading women episode. So this is Sheena MacDonald, the chair of judges, back in 1998 on Larry's Party by Carol Shields. She tells us why it was a winner.

I was very pleased that in the year I was chairing the panel, the very distinguished group of panelists agreed that this is a good book because I think it's a fantastic book. I think it's what I really like about it is that it tells an ordinary man's story towards the end of the 20th century. And nothing very much happens. And therefore, I mean, he has upsets. and downs, he has high points and low points. And it's very whimsical, actually, that it becomes a landscape gardener at all. And therefore it reflects everybody's real life. And if you haven't read it, I urge you to read it.

It's a must birthday present for every 40-year-old man. In fact, men don't tend to read fiction by women. And if they read this, any man who read this would be completely converted, I think. Did any of them change the way you think about, you know, any kind of issues. Yeah. Well, finding out the difference between a maze and a labyrinth.

It's like a revelation to me. The fact that, you know, a labyrinth is just a complex set of paths whereas a maze is a puzzle that is designed to baffle. But then there's actually in House We Both, there's a lovely quote where Francesca realizes that life is a labyrinth.

It's a set of paths that although they look straight, they could go in any direction and they do and that things rarely turn out as you think they're going to. Which I guess is just, it's a nice way of looking at. and one that she never has the benefit of seeing in property because she is fixed and she will never know that one day people are going to be absolutely disgraced by the slave trade you know I suppose they're all women who in so sorry they're all main characters rather who in such different ways that their room to be and their identity is absolutely shaped by their mothers and their small and large tragedies and you know where Larry's identity you know even as a Canadian man is you know to do with the mistake that his mother made. and even though she is someone who's trying to take up as little space as possible, her, you know, I think unrecognised mental illness is something that sort of hovered over him

and it means that it takes for a long time to find himself the same. You know, George has got this amazing, eclectic, sort of dazzling, dizzying mother, but how does she have room to be a teenage girl when she feels like she's got a mother who's already sort of been there and done that? And, you know, Manon as well, she is in the... this situation because you know and it's sort of I think perhaps more you know what you would expect of the time but you know all of her because her life is I think a tragedy even though she is the architect of the tragedies of others that the the misery and what she feels is sort of her due

and what she's to expect it's because of you know what her mother persuaded her into and also of course the you know idolizing her father and never really forgiving her mother for never for giving her father for, you know, a mysterious thing that you will find out when you read it. No spoilers allowed on this podcast. I think though, although in property, it does seem like these identities are sort of set because they are products of the historical situation. What I really loved about Larry's party was that his identity is in flux. Like it's constantly evolving.

In fact, even though there are all these events that have shaped him, we never actually see these events happen. We never hear about them. We only ever hear the reflections on them or the time before them or the time after them. So the way he perceives them changes depending on his feelings. And I think when you're reading it, you're sort of thinking, well, yeah, as a human being, one day to the next,

I feel different, I am different. We all are depending on what's going on. And every chapter, they reset the things that have shaped him as though we've not read them before. Yeah. What is that about, do you think? I think that means that although we see that his character is... Previously. it's done a bit like it's a serialized novel from Dickensian times like yeah we know

it's like it's always the first person sorry it's always the third person but but in the present and it's always like his wife um he divorced his wife or he his father died we find out over and over again it's almost like it's casting light on the fact that although his character and his identity is constantly evolving so as ours as protagonists as a readers so i guess like we're reading it and it's not assumed that we always remember what's gone before because we might be a new person in this new chapter as well as he is and i think that our identities oh that's so fascinating that's so good but everything about us is formed from the stories we tell ourselves and those recaps you know they're larry crafting his own story and something that feels very very raw in the future

he'll look back i think well i did that because of that and that's part of me now but it's him i think or you know carol shields establishing a distance And it goes back so beautifully then to the maze thing And there's that note about like How a maze only makes sense when seen from above Yes It's that thing that happens in all of our lives Where like an event that happened yesterday

That might seem annoying or inconsequential When I look back at it in five years time May have been a great shaping forest And as humans were just kind of In this pinball machine being rattled around or whatever And only with retrospect can we actually See what these things meant And we enforce patterns on things where there are no patterns

I think that's probably about as much time as we've got. I hope you've enjoyed the experience of reading these three books. Yes, thank you for getting us to read three books. I just wouldn't have read in succession at all. No, I don't know. It was a great experience. I'm so delighted. I never would have picked up how to be both again,

and it has brought me such joy and wonder. So, again, I'm going to be a wider reader now, I think. Don't thank me, thank the women's surprise. It's just been lovely discussion. It's so rare, like, sometimes you read the same book as someone else, you get to discuss it, but to read three and then discuss them all is a real privilege. It's a very good book club. I'm Zing Singh, and 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.