Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S3 Ep12: SHORTLIST BOOKCLUB SPECIAL: Piranesi and How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

Bella Mackie, Okechukwu Nzelu and Nell Frizzell join Yomi to dive into the final two books from the 2021 shortlist, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke and How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones.   Bella Mackie is a journalist and the author of Jog On and her new book, How to Kill Your Family is out on July 22nd, Okechukwu Nzelu is a teacher and the award winning author of The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney and Nell Frizzell is a journalist whose work has appeared everywhere from Vice to the Telegraph and who this year released her book,The Panic Years. Listen as they delve into the two incredible books from the 2021 Women’s Prize shortlist - in our very own book club where you can learn more about the six titles selected for this year’s prize.    Please note, this episode includes references to domestic violence and sexual assault.   Every week, join journalist and author Yomi Agedoke, and inspirational guests including Elizabeth Day, Sara Pascoe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as they celebrate the best books written by women. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and has been running for over 25 years, and this series will offer unique access to the shortlisted authors and the 2021 Prize winner.      This podcast is produced by Bird Lime Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Oh, you'd love it if I rang into the wrong show, wouldn't you? So catch the Ian Five Ancles Breakfast Show only on Sportshorn. Sportshorn is a stack for. production and part of the ACAST creator network. ACAS is the home of podcasting, including such shows as, blog books, the high performance podcast and the one you're listening to right now. With thanks to Bayleys, 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 Yomia Degger Kay, your host. the season three of the Women's Prize podcast. And this is the third and final edition of our special book club episodes where we're exploring the 2021 Women's Prize Shortlist. Hello and welcome to this special edition of the Women's Prize podcast.

I'm really excited to say that I'm joined today by three wonderful guests, journalist and author of Jogon and How to Kill Your Family, Bellamaki, Okachuku Nuzelu, teacher and the award-winning author of the podcast, private joys of Nena Maloney, and journalist Nell Frazel, whose work has appeared everywhere from Vice to The Telegraph and who this year released her book, The Panic Years. Welcome to the

podcast. Hi. Hi. They're all here to discuss, compare and contrast two of the incredible books from the Women's Prize shortlist, our very own book club where you can know more about the title selected for this year's prize and hopefully get reading some of them if you haven't already. This episode we're delving into Piranesi by Susanna Clark and How the One Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Sheree Jones. The discussion includes reference to domestic violence and sexual assault. So now, first of all, can you tell me about your experience reading these two books together?

What was your initial reaction? Well, Pyreneesi, which now I say it out loud, sounds much more like hay fever medication than I realized when I was sitting it written down. Or a Nando sauce. Orlando sores. I think it's a really beautiful, poetic book. And it has a sort of strange sense of dread and doom, or at least that's how I found it.

But the narrator is himself quite an orderly, upbeat person. We get kind of biographical details a little bit as it goes along. And then in a kind of mad rush at the end, we find out much more about them. But they seem like the kind of 18th century, sort of polymath who lives in this strange giant house full of tides and seawater and seabirds and they're covered in shells and bits of seaweed and then other people from another world which is a world that we kind of recognise as our world pops in and out and then it was very

odd to read that in conjunction with how the one-un-un-sister sweeps her house which was a book again set beside the sea but the narrators are all women the sense of doom is much more acute and much more, I suppose, tangible, that there is the sort of threat of the men in their lives. And so, I suppose, looking at the two books together, the thing I was struck by is the threat of the unknown versus the threat of the known. And I think Pyrenees is full of the threat of the unknown

and how the one on sister sweeps her house has this really tangible forceful fear of the known and the intimate and the very people you should trust most are the ones who might harm you the worst. Thank you so much now. Oketruku, did you feel similarly? Did you feel that the book spoke to each other in any way or were quite removed in terms of theme?

Do you know, I completely agree. I just think when I first started reading Piranesi, I think the Pyrenezi, I loved it, but when I first started reading it, I was like, you know, it's very, as you said, it's got this kind of 19th century feel to it. And I was like, oh my goodness, like capitalised nouns. I don't know about this. And then I kind of just got sucked into it.

It's kind of like a David Mitchell novel in that way. That at first you start reading it and you're just really not sure. And then suddenly you're on this like magical mystery ride and it's genre bending and it's moving and funny and doing all these fantastic things and really quite a slim volume. And it's really not the kind of novel what I would that I would normally sort of gravitate to. I would normally gravitate to something like Sheree Jones's book, which has these, you know, it's written by a black woman. It's exploring black life experience. that's the kind of thing I guess I would more naturally like pick up off a bookshelf. So it was really great to read these two together because I loved them both,

but I wouldn't necessarily have bought or read them both if I hadn't been sort of suggested to. Bella, what was your experience? Yeah, that's really interesting what Kukutja just said because I don't think I would necessarily have gravitated particularly towards Pyrenees, especially because I found the, you know, the initial intro. so sort of, it was almost like a fantasy world. And, and I thought, okay, if the whole book is going to be this kind of very ephemeral, kind of, you know, quite mysterious place, you know, that I can't quite get a handle on. I'm not sure that I would have been gripped by it. And there's a specific point in the book without giving too much away where what Nell says, you know, there's suddenly a world we

recognize as our own. There are hints of that come in. And I think my ears pricked up and I sort of went, oh, okay, right. I see that there's kind of, there's another thing happening here. and I completely loved it. I thought it was sort of miraculous and interesting and optimistic in some ways. And then with Cherie Jones's book, I mean, you know, it is, it's a grueling read, you know, and it is kind of about trauma and pain and, you know, what it's like to be a woman. And as Nell said, you know, the kind of known dangers. And actually I read an interview with Sherry Jones where she kind of apologises to her reader,

saying, you know, if you read it, thank you, because I know it's a hard read. and it is a hard read, but, you know, she writes so beautifully that, you know, you're gripped by it, even though it's quite grueling. So I loved both of them in different ways. But as Nell said, it was, you know, they're strange reads together. You know, they are. They're definitely one after another sort of, it was a strange, a strange couple of days. So Piranesi by Susanna Clark is our first book. Before we dive in, here's a reading from one of this year's judges, Elizabeth.

day. As well as my regular meetings with the other and the quiet, consultatory presence of the dead, there are the birds. Birds are not difficult to understand. Their behaviour tells me what they are thinking. Generally, it runs along the lines of, is this food? Is this? What about this? This might be food. I'm almost certain that this is. Or occasionally, it is raining. I do not like it. While ample for a brief neighbourly exchange, such remarks do not suggest abroad or deep intelligence, yet it has occurred to me that there may be more wisdom in birds than appears at first sight, a wisdom that reveals itself only obliquely and intermittently. Once it was an evening in autumn, I came to the doorway of the 12th South Eastern Hall,

intending to pass through the 17th vestibule. I found that I was unable to enter it. The vestibule was full of birds, and the birds were all a flight. They circled and spiraled, creating a whirling dance. They filled the vestibule like a column of smoke, which grew darker and denser in places, and the next moment lighter and area. I have witnessed this dance on several occasions, always in the evening and in the later months of the year. So now can you please give us, I mean you've really sort of touched on the themes of the book earlier,

but can you give us a very quick summary of what this book's about again? Yeah, so it starts, I mean, I would say it opens almost like a kind of legend. It starts with this. I don't know if any of you had the fun of reading T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland at university like I did. But it has that sort of same feel of these, there's a character and a narrator. who is washed up in this giant house that is full of big, empty halls, the sort of classical building,

full of statues and tides come in and out. And it seems that they're only company giant albatrosses or rooks or seabirds and fish. And then the seaweed that they seem to make everything in their life out of, which has a very, you know, obviously you think of the tempest and you think of those like,

kind of weird liminal spaces where someone is thrown onto the kind of the bare bones of existence. But what's so strange about it is that the narrator has this amazing kind of encyclopedic mind and they keep all these notes in little notebooks. And I actually wrote to the margin, I find them very annoying. They seem like a train, they seem like a kind of one of those train spotter bods. But then I thought of, you know, Doris Lessing is the Golden Notebook where it's kind of the keeping of a journal is in itself a sort of active identity. And that becomes really interesting later in the book

when it seems that bits of the journals have been torn out, they've been renumbered. There's this character called The Other who comes in and warns them that they're going to lose their mind. There's another character called The Prophet who warns that they're going to lose their mind. And so you get this sort of glimpses of the other world, but with each of them is this over sort of,

not overwhelming, but like I'd say a running under, like undercurrent, if that's not too cheesy, threat of losing your mind, which I found really powerful as someone who would last maybe 45 minutes on an island on my own. Oh, 45 minutes is a good 44 minutes better than I would do. Would you say that you overall enjoyed the book now? I loved it. I really loved it from actually from the first page. I found it there's just enough. I'm not someone who enjoys sci-fi. I don't particularly like fantasy. but there was just enough mystery about this,

just enough uncertainty, just enough kind of, you know, when there was a hint at things being more complicated and more interesting than they at first seem, you know, I find that really compelling. And for all I found the narrator annoying, I found them quite, their sort of naivety and charm, you know, eventually really grew on me.

And also, you know, as a big swimmer, this sort of vision of a submerged house or a semi-submerged house. It's something nightmarish. You know, it's the kind of thing that pops up in my dreams, but the narrator loves it so much that you find a kind of joy in these, there's literally a man called the biscuit box man

because his bones are carried around in an old biscuit tin. And like that, if it were handled badly, would just be either sort of grotesque or nap, but it's actually really poignant. Like the narrator really cares for these dead bone people and he brings them flowers and offerings and stuff And I found that really heartening. So actually, yeah, for all that, I think, as a lot of us have said,

it's not a book that immediately draws you in like a Raymond Chandler. It does nevertheless have this, there's a sort of tang about it that I found really engaging. Thank you. And Bella, how did you feel about the book? Yeah, I loved the book, especially, as I said, like when I realized that there was something else going on. I read an interview with Susanna Clark actually, she talked about how before she wrote it, she'd had like a really bad incident of brain fog,

and she'd had a kind of depressive episode. And I found that really interesting from the perspective of then reading the book, which I think it does feel like a sort of almost like an image originally of kind of mental illness, that you're sort of on your own in this incredibly confusing palace, which is kind of, you know, like a mind. You know, everything's incredibly mysterious.

He's on his own. Things keep changing. You know, he doesn't know. what he can trust and I found that really interesting from the perspective of she said, you know, that she'd been struggling previously, you know, before she wrote the book. So I found that quite interesting, this kind of allegory of mental health. And I think now's right. I found the narrator really annoying at the beginning. I thought you're so trusting and optimistic and, you know, you get given some seaweed and you're

sort of grateful and you think it's thrilling. And, you know, every, he was sort of not curious about anything in a way, you know, he's living in this strange place and he doesn't know why he, you know, why he's there or what's going to happen. And he just is sort of accepting of it. And that I did find really annoying. I thought, what is wrong with you? You know, it's cold. You know, you've got no friends.

This man kind of gives you, you know, the occasional kind of tiny gift and you're so grateful. But then obviously as things change out of the book and you understand kind of more why he's like he is, I sort of found like, okay, fine, I can accept him. You know, it's not just because you're sort of, you know, an annoying optimist. But yeah, and then I think as the book,

changes and you know I don't know how we don't want to give spoilers I guess but you know as this kind of as the perspective like shifts on what's happening and then there's this whole other thing about kind of you know escapeism and and and whether you want to leave the modern world and I think maybe you know there is a desperation in the modern world to kind of escape isn't that you know there's always people looking to kind of go and live in kind of remote places and you know get off the grid um so I thought that was quite an interesting kind of idea behind it as well yeah I mean it's a bit further than Bloody Orkney there, isn't it? It is, yeah, it is.

Just a bit. Okay, Chukku, what did you think? Is it one that you would recommend? Definitely, definitely. You know, I, like I said before, you know, when I started it, I really wasn't sure what was going on, how to respond if I liked it. But I found there was such a tenderness to the portrayal of the protagonist,

whose name, I guess I probably shouldn't reveal, because it's a bit for spoiler, but there was such a tenderness to the way that he was portrayed as this very devoted, loving inhabitant of this world, which he sees himself as being in this symbiotic relationship with, even though there's a lot about it that he doesn't understand, and certainly a lot that we as readers don't understand at first, he has this very loving relationship with the world that I thought at first, I was like, oh, okay, so this is like a metaphor for how we should all be in the world. And it's like, you know, we should all like live in this sort of ecosystem which we love and which loves us back and we don't

want to understand it but we respect it. Okay, I get it and then like I got to page 11 and realised it was a completely different thing. But there was something that really dreamy to that. And then of course what we realise is that he has been, that's spoiling it, that he has been sort of cowed and infantilised by what we think is the world. And then what we realize is in fact certain specific men. And then we realize that those men are in some ways quite character really quite characterise the world. So it kind of telescopes out and in and then out again. And that's a really interesting, I guess, connection point to Sheree Jones's novel,

which I guess we'll talk about later, but which is also, you know, if there's a binding theme of both of these novels, I think it's probably that men are trash. Oh my goodness. I feel like that's usually the point being made by everything, whether it's in advance or intentional. It's usually the takeaway of those things. That's also a good point

that both books end with this of, I think, increased momentum towards possible escape and I think that's something that both of them do really nicely. And I don't think it gives much a way to say the end of Pyranezzi that it almost turns into a cop drama at the end and I don't think like, you know,

it's sort of subtle enough that that won't tell you what happens. But I thought this is really funny. It's almost like I'm sort of expecting a character from line of duty to crash into the end of here. It's very, very unlikely ending. that sense of possible escape, sort of the weighing up between a safety in oppression or a risk in escape, I think it charges both books towards their final pages in a really lovely way. Yeah, that's a really, both of you, that's a really interesting kind of observation on it,

which I hadn't really connected. And I think also, I mean, at the end of Pyronez, you know, again, without trying to give anything away, which is, I've realised incredibly hard. But, you know, you realise that, you know, actually, you're right, like there's a safety in the oppression. and he can't quite leave that, you know, and actually you get a sense that he'll never feel completely empowered and happy by his escape and he'll always be searching to go back. And in the case of how the one-armed woman's sister sweeps her house, you think, you know, whatever her escape looks like, it's going to be really hard. You know, it's not going to be this kind of happy rainbow ending. It's going to be an incredibly difficult thing. And so, yeah, these idea of happy escapes, you know, there isn't such a thing.

You know, they're both held back by this kind of call to where they were, you know, what they were. And that's really interesting. Yeah. And both, now I think about it, both books also have this, the sort of brooding threat of the tunnel underneath them, like the deepest, like the greater depths, the even greater unknown, the submerged horror. So you're like, if you can carry along on the surface for all that it's, for all that it might be dreadful, there is a greater threat underneath that that you don't want to fall into. Yeah. I just wanted to ask you, Ocichoku. So Nell and Bella have both been quite frank about at least initially finding the protagonist

annoying. So what did you think of the protagonist? Yeah, where were you sort of lying on that? I really, you know, I can completely understand why you, why somebody would say they find him annoying because he is very, it takes a lot of space in the book, in a sense, his kind of, his very diligent notes on this world that he lives in and that we, as readers only partially understand. I can completely understand why you would say that as annoying. But for me, I guess it was just part of this portrait of a character who was quite vulnerable. Like he was paying all this attention to the world and trying to understand it

and making all these very, very careful notes and observing things and wondering at things and the marvel, the marveling that he spends so much time just marveling at stuff and thinking how wonderful things are and how strange and beautiful. And I found that really tenement. when you compare it and I suppose contrast it to how little he really does know about his situation. Like he knows a lot about the tides that come in and go out and he talks about the statues and the halls with such reverence. But then when you contrast that with the fact that really he's been kidnapped and taken advantage of, if that was not a massive spoiler, it paints him as somebody who is really quite childlike in his vulnerability.

And I found that so moving, even if even if I didn't always understand what was going on and I will free really admit there's probably quite a lot about this book I just did not understand. But I did find it really moving and I found I found there's something quite magnetic about it, I suppose. Yeah, that childlike thing, you've just reminded me, one of my favorite bits in the book is when he stumbles across the written word batter sea. No, someone says to him the word battery sea. And he breaks it down into two words because that relates to the sort of environment that he's in, the battering of the sea. And at first he's like, oh, this is a nonsense word. And he's like, oh, no, batter sea. And then later in the book, he's in the sort of environment. And he's like, oh,

it comes to mean something else or to get, you know, it has another meaning later on. And I thought that was a really nice, you know, it's really easy to get sort of all up in yourself about language and, you know, trying to do something clever, clever. But I thought that was just a lovely sort of moment of breaking down text and meaning into something that can be pulled apart and can be engaged with differently according to your culture and your climate and your environment. And I thought, I thought that was a really good, a nice bit And then there's a really funny bit where they're talking about the magic of,

is it in this one though? They're talking like the magic of Birmingham and Manchester and like these really brilliant prosaic places. And I say that as someone who's lived in tears, but they come to signify something like glamorous but deadly. And it's like, it's Birmingham guy. And I have to say, as somebody who lives in Manchester and has lived in Manchester my whole life,

that was something that I did really enjoy, the fact that the book spends quite a lot of time in Manchester. I was like, oh, I know what that is. Yeah, I think, funny enough, like the annoying thing is just, I think, because I'm quite cynical and he's so childlike and sort of grateful and optimistic. And I sort of just thought, you know, come on, mate, like, you know, question this. You know, there's more going on here. This is weird.

But in a way, he's sort of Stockholm syndrome to the house. You know, it's so, it's so magical and there's so much to explore and asking questions. you know, pushing his own memory would be dangerous, you know, so actually he's sort of come to accept where he is. And as you said, Okicu, like, you know, he writes these notes and that's his way of making sense of it, you know, that's his way of kind of understanding things. And you said earlier, you know, this idea of maybe it's a kind of a thing about being sort of happy with your lot and, and maybe, you know, we have to treat the world better. And there's a kind of climate change thing going on there, isn't they? It's kind of, you know, he lives very simply and he lives by the kind of the tides and he understands when the world. weather will, you know, when the weather will come and stuff. And, you know, he sort of recycles

everything and lives incredibly frugally and, and it's sort of happy with his lot, you know, and I think probably in the modern world, that's quite hard to understand and quite scary because you think, oh God, in 20 years, we might all have to live like that. And so yeah, I mean, I think it was just, I think because I'm so cynical, and he was so kind of grateful for this very strange and kind of quite grim existence. I think probably I could have been a bit more generous to him as a character. It is strange and it is grim, but, I think there's something really. Another funny moment is when they put all the trinkets back in their hair

and all their amazing decorations. And you get that really like tempesty feeling of there being a kind of weird bog creature that's covered in like jangly bits. A bit like, do you remember and take that when Howard suddenly got white dreads and he was covered in like little shells? It really reminded me of that video. But like there, so there is a simplicity and it does have sort of, it does have correlation to kind of early civil.

civilizations, but you remember that in even early civilizations, text and decoration are as important as nutrition and warmth. Like, of course, of course that character is drawn to the sort of the tiny elements of identity and sort of decoration that everybody else is. Can I ask, did any of you, did any of you want to live in the house for a bit? No.

Oh, yeah, I'd go for a bit. I'd go for, I'd go for my 45 minute holiday. I'd love to see the night sky. The description of the night in that house is incredible, I think. Yeah, because I did find it quite seductive in a way. You know, I don't think I'd want to be there for more than a week, but I did think I could understand at the end his reluctance at leaving permanently. And so I think maybe I got Stockholm syndrome by the house as well, actually, by the end of it.

And I found that so interesting. It was the fact that by the end of the novel, this person, and I'm really going to try very hard not to spoil anything. But I found it so interesting that by the end of the novel, it wasn't just that, oh, right, the resolution has come and everything is going to revert back to this other thing. It was, he is neither one person nor the other. He's a third person that is a kind of joining of these two identities and something else, which, you know, he's made up of what he is now, what he used to be in the journey in between. And I thought that was so interesting in a novel which imagines other worlds and completely wild, fantastical possibility. It refuses to imagine a resolution, as I think one of you touched on before.

It refuses to imagine a resolution that's too perfect. I thought that was really brave of Susanna Clark. You're so right, actually. Yeah, it could have been a much more simple kind of, he's back in his previous life. And, you know, it's difficult, but he's made the best of it and he's happy. And actually, you're completely right. There was a kind of third way there, which was much. more interesting and sort of perhaps you know if you're a reader like me i like i like sharp endings

where i understand everything and there's a kind of happiness to it but you're right it was it was a much more interesting much more interesting approach from her yeah and i'm sorry to bring it back to i mean maybe this is an obvious thing to say but it also feels like a very strange book to read after a year and a half of it being in and out of lockdowns where your like interior world and your exterior world shrink and shrink and shrink until you you know i think it's obviously wasn't really written in those circumstances, but it does give a certain poignancy to the book to read it now about someone escaping, escaping into another world that is in itself just another house, you know, and that you're still trapped within the confines of architecture and your own

sort of imagination. Yeah, definitely. And the fact that by the end of the novel, when he, you know, he's brought back to this old world, I'm really sorry, I'm sorting stuff here, he's brought back to this old world and we hear about all the people who've missed him, and he just has no recollection of them. And I thought, that is what it's, in a sense, that's what it's like now to be like, oh, I can hook people again. But wait, what's hoagy? Yes.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. And also, you know, he's come back changed, as you said. You know, so actually all the people that missed him and loved him, you know, for them, there'll be heartbreak there as well because he's not going to be the same, is he? And I think after lockdown, lots of people have changed, you know,

and actually friendships are different and relationships are different. And there is a loss there, isn't there, of kind of the person that you remember a year and a half ago might not necessarily be the same person and kind of how do you how do you get over that you know is does he have the same relationship with his family well no but for them obviously you know they sort of would expect him to come back and be the same and that's kind of an it's a tragic element but then i did love his relationship with um his police officer you know i thought that was a fantastic kind of bon you know unexpected bond at the end actually it's because women aren't trash Bella that's why oh yeah

Thank you so much, guys. I want to ask you guys about how do Valentine Ketterli and Raphael compare as characters? Let's ask you now, how do you think their motivations and actions differ? It sort of again breaks down into a gender binary in a strange way, but I think there was this whole question about the transgressive thought. What is the attraction of transgressive thought and how far down that path can you go before you, yourself transgress, you know, your moral boundaries or your psychological boundaries. And so I think there's this, I don't know, I don't know how much detail to go into it, but there does seem to be

the ability of one to sort of understand that within transgressive thought, you have to keep your humanity and you have to go and rescue the human and you, you know, even if someone is exploring something that seems electric and full of possibility, there might still be suffering. in there and you know like we were saying there will be other people who are hurt by those consequences while the other seems to just sort of long for the pursuit of knowledge at any cost and you know the person that's called the other in the book is that you know obsessed with the measurements and the dimensions of this world and completely uninteresting the humanity of the person who's tracing it for them doesn't end a trash I've got to stop saying me I think that's

be the episode of Tricu, like open the gate and I am running through it. Well, he's a man, so, you know. What do you think, OK, Joku, in terms of their motivations? Yeah, it was really interesting and I completely agree. I think that Valentine Catterley, he's this very, and Lawrence on sales, are these very interesting characters that, in the sense, reminded me of some of the men in Shiree Jones's book, because as we just heard, they're very, they're very, they're very, it's not that they're not passionate,

it's not that they don't have things that drive them, but they completely lack this, they've just never really learned to see other people's needs as equal to their own, which is how we get this character, the Pyrenee character, Piranesi, who stumbles into this world and is sort of lured in and drawn in. And I just found that absolutely fascinating, because when I think about the male characters

in how the one-arm sister sweeps her house, that people like Adan, or is it Aidan, and their tone, they're these characters who are dangerous, absolutely, and there's a lot of violence in that book, but they're portrayed as broken, whereas Susanna Clark doesn't really spend that time in, you know, it's wondering, oh, how did Lawrence Arn Sales get to be such a jerk? And why is, you know, Valentin Catally so incredibly, like fatally selfish? How is that? I just found that portrayal really interesting because it's kind of presented as this brute facts like this

fate accompli this is the way they are accept it in a way that the ever present violence on a much grander scale is presented in sherey jones's book on an individual level that there's that i guess that and i don't say this is a criticism i think it's very interesting and i i appreciate it there's that kind of lack of curiosity about the origin of the the brutality of these men um which i found very very interesting and in a sense it's kind of just well this is the way they are and I and I think what is most fascinating to me is that is that that is actually quite an effective writing technique she didn't need to explain it it didn't need it didn't need some grand explanation or some kind of sympathetic portrait it just was completely convincing as fact. Bella do you see Lawrence

on sales as a villain? Yeah I think the people in the book who sort of all this, you know, this sort of end result where, you know, Pirinozzi ends up, you know, in this situation. Again, without kind of trying to spoil it. I think the interesting thing about them is, you know, I don't know if they're evil, but they remind me of men in history who kind of have these big ambitions and these big goals and want to do madcap things and have no, no thought about what will happen, what they're unleashing, who it will hurt.

You know, there is no thought for collateral damage, whether that's what. one individual like Piranesi or kind of thousands of people, you know, throughout history that have been affected by these choices that kind of mad, brainy, intelligent, but egonautical men have made. And, you know, Okratu is right, you know, that she doesn't sort of have to explain that in a way. It just, I found it, you know, I was thinking about people like, you know, I mean, obvious examples, but people like Elon Musk who are kind of these big, huge kind of men that think there's no limits to kind of what we can do, you know, what we can discover and what we can sort of build. And, and with the men in this book, you think that, you know, they're in their race to discover

something and in their race to prove that they're right about something and discover, you know, a new, a new world or a new realm, there's just no thought at all to kind of the people that they're going to be using as experiments and how they've destroyed these people. And, and I did find it interesting, which she just doesn't go into any detail on it. You're just sort of like, oh yeah, we've all met men like this. You know, we've all seen them, you know, we've seen these big named men that, you know, there are many of them in the world

who sort of get away with this stuff and are called geniuses, you know. Because in another world, you know, Valentine Kessri, we would be called, you know, he's just a genius. He's what an interesting man, you know, never mind the people he hurt. So yeah, I thought that was a really interesting kind of subtle, subtle look at that.

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Donations of all sizes help us to continue empowering women regardless of their age, race, nationality or background to raise their voice and own their story. Search for Support the Women's Prize to find out more. Acast recommends. This is Sportshorn. Hi, I'm Anthony Richardson, and I present the Ian Five Ancles Breakfast Show with former professional footballer turned current pundit, Ian Five Ancles.

He had 50 England caps if he wasn't Spanish. Listen to us on Sportshorn, the UK's third most popular sports radio network. I'm calling from Paul Smith and I am absolutely disgusted. Wrong show, sorry Colin. Oh, you'd love it if I rang into the wrong show, wouldn't you? So catch the Ian Five Ancles Breakfast Show only on Sportshorn. Sportshorn is a stack production and part of the ACAST created network. ACAS is the home of podcasting, including such shows as

the logbooks, the high performance podcast and the one you're listening to right now. You're listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, a special edition discussing the 2021's Women's Prize Shortlist. I'm Yomiyadh, and I'm joined by Bellamaki, Okka Chuku, Nzalu, and Nel Frazal. And the second book we're discussing today is how the one-armed sister sweeps her house by Sheree Jones. Here's a reading from one of our 2021 judges, Sarah Jane and me. About an hour after Adan leaves her at home alone, Lala stands barefoot in the dark doorway of his house. In a scratchy white nightgown she has stolen from Wilma, assuring herself, despite the obvious, that everything will be okay.

The salty air was still when she opened the door, and sweat still beads her face when she slips her feet into Adam's old sneakers and grabs hold of the inner soles with her toes, worrying about her descent to the grey velvet blur of beach so far beneath her. She has been cautioned not to climb or descend the stairs on her own in her condition. and Adam has been instructed to build a banister to steady her, but they have both ignored the good sense of the fishermen who sometimes help her up them with groceries.

The 25 cement steps to the ground remain just as treacherous as the day she first climbed them, 18 months earlier, with a string bag stretched into the shape of everything she owned. They are perhaps more treacherous, she reasons, with a belly the size of a beach ball disrupting her balance. So she leans on the weather-beaten wood of the house on her left, and shrinks away from the sheer drop to her right. Thank you, Sarah.

Okay, Choku, can you briefly tell us what this book is about? Yeah, so this book is set in Barbados, and it follows essentially two or three women and two or three men. So we have Lala, who's the central character, who is married to a man called Adam or Aidan, I'm sorry, I'm not sure how to pronounce that. She's a very young woman who has just, who's newly married, and she's just become a mother very recently. And the story follows what happens between her

and her very violent abusive husband before and mostly after their baby dies under very, very sad circumstances. The story also sort of follows her and sort of weaves in and out the background of La La La's story with what happens to her mother and La La La La's relationship with her grandma Wilma who raises her and who tells her the story

that gives a novel its name about her sister who essentially was punished for her disobedience by losing an arm. And their story also follows Myra Waylon, who is, I was going to say she's a white woman, but I think she's very, very light-skinned woman. She loses her husband when Lala's husband kills him in a botched burglary. And the story follows sort of Myra's back and forth about her feelings about her husband, and we learn how her emotions towards her husband have sort of shifted and changed. over the years and how she sort of has to deal with the fact that she's lost somebody

with whom she was never really able to achieve a proper resolution and honesty about the feelings that she herself only partly understood that she was having for a number of reasons that are that are revealed later in the novel and the novel is this very very brilliantly empathetic story you know I've been a secondary school teacher for about seven years and one of the things that we teach kids about is the fact that reading improves your empathy and I I think this novel is such a fantastic example of that in that it weaves in and out of these stories so brilliantly. You know, like I mentioned before, the threat of violence is ever present in this novel. And what's interesting is that in the Susanna Clark novel, like I said, the men who are very, these brutal, very, very selfish men, their brutality and selfishness is never explained.

It's presented as not needing an explanation. What's interesting is here, these characters of men like Lawrence on sale, she weaves in and out of their stories very, very interestingly and delicately and just so cleverly to show us how men come to be the way that they are and how women come into contact with them and the vulnerability that's involved. Thank you so much. And what did you think and feel about the book? Is it a book that you enjoyed?

I loved it. It was a very difficult read for me in some ways because of these themes of domestic, violence, which unfortunately I do know about from a personal perspective, but it was beautifully written and so tenderly written as well. And there was a courage to it in a similar way to Susanna's Clark's book, in that she gives you a very gritty reality and sort of demands that you accept that it is reality without promising you any easy resolutions to it. I thought it was really, really well written. Thank you so much. Now, what were your thoughts on the book? I found just like, okay, Juku said,

like there is this really light touch empathy through the book that is amazing, even with a character that comes in as briefly as someone like the Queen of Sheba, brilliantly named, or her lover, Sergeant Beckles, you get these like tiny slices of autobiographical detail. And a lot of them sort of have either a religious flavor or a kind of something that goes back to your childhood.

Like these things are very, very deep seat. traumas that then sort of bloom into these terrible acts of injustice that are played upon the bodies of primarily women in the community. It was unrelentingly grim. You know, there is, there's no, there's no sort of happy ending though. And I think that the lack of sort of, for want of a better word, kind of sisterhood in the book is really stark and really interesting, but also really, you know, it is, it's real. And, you know, there is a kind of belief that if you ask for help, people come, you know, people will come and help you.

But actually, there are some situations that are so complicated and so grim that you don't even know how to ask for help. And I thought that was explored really beautifully. And that you have these dichotomies that are set up between, say, a husband and wife, or a rich neighbour and a poor neighbour or a police officer and a criminal. And then they're just really broken down by the complications of that character's internal kind of struggle and trauma and psychology. And yeah, I thought the,

there were also detailed, there were sort of moments that were, because it's quite a naturalistically written book. And then you have these like amazing little glimpses into times where one of the characters is trying to count her teeth and she's haunted by these nightmares of her teeth. falling out after having suffered trauma and that the way that someone's name is pronounced, these things that are actually really subtle and philosophical.

And then you're back into the kind of brutality of sharp edges and potential weapons and the food that people are cooking and, you know, that kind of thing. So, and, you know, for someone like me who has been brought up as a white woman in Britain, It's also like ludicrous how this is a world that I'm not particularly exposed to. And, you know, this is this is a kind of a culture or a dynamic that I don't know much about. And so I, you know, obviously it was a journey into the unknown for me in a lot of ways. And Bella, obviously a running theme has been, is definitely a difficult read. But is it one that you also enjoyed?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, we don't have to labour the point that it is. difficult read because I think if you read the synopsis you will understand that it is a difficult read. But that didn't mean it wasn't enjoyable and as both of you said, you know, she wrote, Sherry Grones wrote so beautifully. She's such a brilliant writer. You know, sometimes you read books by writers and you think, you almost get annoyed with them because you think, oh, you're so good at this, you know. I find myself kind of being paralyzed because I'm like, oh, this is effortless. And I think there were three things that really stuck out for me. One was she is so sympathetic to every woman in that book, even the women who are kind of, you know, perhaps not particularly

sympathetic or could be not sympathetic. I think the way she writes about every single woman is so kind and sort of full of love and understanding and forgiveness. And I just thought, I thought Shuri Jones is obviously a very nice woman. So that I thought was just so wonderful in a book that's so tough. She is so tender to the female characters. And then I thought, you know, that the generational trauma of the book, I thought was so interesting. You know, we don't know enough about generational trauma, but it's something obviously increasingly we're aware of and sort of what that does to families. And I thought that the main character and her mother and her grandmother, I thought that was such an interesting, clever plot to weave those stories through the book. And then the third thing I

thought was really interesting was the kind of the element of tourism, because I thought, you know, actually, you know, she's writing about this, this island where, you know, they're so dependent on tourism and, and the locals almost have to sort of put on their best face for the kind of, the rich kind of people that are coming in just for kind of a week or two weeks or whatever. And then exploring the kind of what happens underneath that, you know, and actually, I thought that was a really fascinating sort of look at it as well, you know, this family who's sort of, who's, you know, Lala's husband kills, you know, this guy who's on holiday with his wife. And, and, and she's kind of dependent on earning her living on the beach. And so she's kind of on outbraiding hair, you know, even this sort of immediately after her daughter is born, while this kind of desperation is going on in her real life. And I thought, you know,

that was a really interesting look at kind of, I know that Sherry Jones has talked about that, you know, that kind of, you know, she wanted to like have a look at, you know, her home without kind of, not just from the tourist perspective. And I thought that was a really interesting sort of plot point as well.

I thought that's absolutely true about it. I thought one of the things that I found so fascinating was that there's a point in the novel when Lala has lost her child and she's obviously traumatized by this. And yeah, and then that affects obviously her work because her work involves her hiding any problems that she's got. She works spreading hair on the beach and her work involves and requires her to hide any problems that she's got and to mask any pain that she might be feeling so that she can earn money. And I just thought that really brilliantly captures, I guess, how trauma kind of piles on on top of itself. Like if you, if one's,

thing sort of there's a domino effect that not only is she lost her her child but she's also experiencing of course these this terrible emotional turbulence which then impact on her ability to earn a livelihood which then impact on her ability to get away from this horribly abusive man and just really really thoughtfully portrayed I thought yeah and it was obviously another character in the book who sort of has to be a jigalow for women that you know rich women that come into the island and you know again that's such an abuse of power but it's you know it's the only sort of work that he can get you know and again I thought that's another tragedy you know, that this man has to do this for a living

when actually, you know, it's obviously not something he wants to do. And yeah, so it was all, I thought it was all really interesting, that kind of that angle on it. I was just going to about the symbolism of their house, that Lala and Adan's house, but in reflecting what you've just said about, the kind of need to keep up a certain version of your life for outsiders in order for your interior life

to even have a chance of functioning. That amazing scene when there's like a big coconut tree that Lala suddenly wants to go out with the giant cutlass and cut down because it's really like she's suddenly really uncomfortable with it. And then the steps up and down into her house have this huge drop and no railing. And then there are people that come onto the threshold, but are they allowed in?

And then that she can see onto the beach, but she's not allowed onto the beach because of the things happening. There's like this sense of being trapped and threatened within your own home that I think is made all the more powerful because it's a beach on by. Barbados, right? It's somewhere that is seen as like a backdrop to a narrative of luxury, Western consumerism, relaxation, all of that kind of thing. Yeah, she has to escape. They escape

to the tunnels, don't they? When they're sort of, when they need somewhere to escape to, you know, that's almost like your home, but it's not your home, you know, because your home is also a place that, as you say, like, other people use as this kind of backdrop to their, their sort of magic moments on holiday. In that way that everything we read now ties into the pandemic, I thought that thing of other countries now, poorer countries, being desperate for tourism, even if it means kind of, you know, making them, making their own residence unsafe, you know, because they need the tourism. You know, I think that's a really interesting thing of, like,

how much do you need tourism and how much does that impact on the people that live there? So, yeah, I thought it was a really interesting thing. And that all comes together really interesting. And that weird scene in the mini-mart, do you remember that bit where there's like this, two in the morning, like, stumbling grief-stricken trip around, a supermarket that is staffed by locals, but it has in itself replaced, I think, like a Chinese restaurant. And there's just this, the layer upon layer of what is for the community,

what is for tourists, what is owned by us, what is used by, you know, that kind of thing. I thought that was a really, that scene sort of stuck with me in a weird way, maybe because it's so prosaic and so frightening. It's like supermarkets are in every horror film for that reason that you are, supposedly protected from the danger of outside, but you are yourself feeling threatened and in danger all the time. Yeah, and I mean, she, you know, Lala is always feeling unsafe and threatened in her home. So in a way, there's no safe place for her, is there?

There's nowhere for her to feel safe, you know. Her home actually feels like the most, I mean, it is the most dangerous place, obviously if you're an abuse victim. But, you know, every time she was inside her house, I would sort of tense up, you know, actually I can see why even though, you know, her baby has just died, she'd rather be on the beach, you know, in public. But even on the beach, there's nowhere for her to be safe. And it's tragic and harrowing feeling for her,

thinking there is nowhere you can go here. Yeah, and that's a really interesting sort of contrast, I guess, with the point that you made now, actually, about Tone, whose trauma kind of goes with him in a different way. We find out in the novel that Tone was raped by a man when he was just a boy. And Cherie Jones writes really beautifully and very, pointly about how there's a thing that lives inside of him and she never really delves into it very much,

which I think she does very artfully because we get the sense of the fact that he himself doesn't really fully understand it. He's not been offered counseling. He's not, he's not, you know, been really given the opportunity to process what's happened to him. And so because of that, it really, it's more than transforms him. It puts something inside of him,

which he doesn't know how to process or get rid of. And that's a really interesting kind of contrast with Lala, who's, who is, who really could and we want her, in a sense she could, I suppose. I don't want to blame her for staying where she is. But because her, the threat to her well-being is much more localised in the form of her husband, there is, she can run away from it in a way that term can't. But then it's interesting to say that because you've just reminded me, is it in the first chapter that Lala has to think about the scream that can't come out?

There's literally like a scream in her mouth and then it just goes. goes back down into pit of her stomach and that's where it stays for the rest of the book. But like the unlikely romance between, well, not unlikely, but the romance or affection or love, even, between Lala and Tones, almost because they're both carrying around this like unhawlable howl inside their bodies. Yeah, I think, you know, you're right. And I think that the way that Adan treats Lala, there's a kind of, it's a weird paternalistic kind of form of abuse in the way that he says you're always, you're so own way.

He refuses to let her be an adult in any real way. He refuses to let her use her initiative in any sense or to follow her own way. And when she does do that, he punishes her so brutally. And I think there's something so sad about that in a way that I guess is similar for tone and that they've got, they're both kind of like trapped in this place that is at this mental emotional place

that is so unkind to them. I do have some. other questions, which are primarily about both books. I am interested to know from Oketuku first, but I will ask all of you, if either of these books changed your perspective on anything, if there's anything that you feel differently about now than you did before you read both of these books. That's so interesting. I think maybe, I don't think it would be fair to say that either book really changed my perspective on anything. I think, in that I think the same way about women who's been victimized

and about the men who victimized them as I did before I read, how the one-armed sister sweeps a house. And I think the same way about power hungry men and what it's like to feel trapped. And probably, I think, to be honest about the world in a similar way to what I did before I read Pyronezzi. But I think that both books have sharpened the way I see things and added sort of detail and color.

I think that to have that perspective from Lala in which I think now made the point that Lala lives in a world without sisterhood. And I think there's something so, there's something about that I think that's going to stay with me for a very long time that was so tragic and so unfair for her that really move me. And in a similar way that, you know, Pyrenees, the story that she tells is the story of somebody who has been victimized and kidnapped. And that story has been told in some form.

probably loads of times but the way that she told that she tells that she tells that story and the way that she and the detail and the colour that she adds to that I think also will stay with me for a really long time that there was something so tender and so moving about the way

that somebody whose intentions are so pure has been taken advantage of by somebody who hasn't got the slightest idea how to look after another human being or even cares and I think that's something about those two elements of both books that I probably never forget Thank you, Okuchuku.

And Bella, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's changed, but I think actually it's probably more what Okatius said earlier about that they weren't necessarily books that you'd have picked up, you know, specifically, perhaps.

And I think I read the whole of the women's shortlist and again, there were books there that I might not have picked up originally, but I loved both of them and they both stayed with me. And for me, books that stay with me on day three, or day four, books that I still think about a week later, I realize that they've enriched my brain in some way. So they've both stuck with me and I think about both of them a lot. And so for me, it's more like a lesson in picking up books that you wouldn't normally, you wouldn't

normally think, you know, I'm tired. I want to just read something, you know, easy or funny or gripping or whatever. And actually, for me, it's just a thing about, about being way more broad-minded about what I read and not just kind of going, this is the author I like, this is the subject I like because both of these books taught me loads and sort of made me think about things and I thought they were both beautifully written which is kind of a joy if you read someone that can just write so sort of effortlessly as both these women so yeah for me it's just a reminder to kind of to pick up books that I wouldn't normally pick up actually yeah I'd agree with that thank you so much Bella and now yeah I I agree with what's been said I think maybe the only thing

that's changed my perspective more as a writer than a reader is to be a bit more brave about leaving things unexplained. I think that's something that happens in both books really powerfully, that you will get an image or you'll get a bit of dialogue or you'll get an anecdote and then it's just left hanging and it's up to the reader to kind of interpret it however they want. So the tunnels or like Wilmer's the way that she deals with the news of her daughter having being raped or the way that Pyrenees names all the statues or all these things that like they're or I think of that permanent that terrible image of the brown foul smelling sludge coming out from under a wall like you can give some you can give a reader a really powerful visceral image and

if you've built your characters and your environment well enough up until that point you don't need to explain everything and it will they will you know your reader will carry on and they will have an emotional response and they will invest in those characters even if you don't give them like if you don't dot every eye and cross every tea so maybe it changed my perspective more as a writer than a reader that's a really good point I think also I've learned that if someone offers to take you to another realm you should just say no just say no kids just say no thank you so much guys what a brilliant episode and conversation you guys were incredible.

I was like say amazing and then it turned into incredible. It was like, Amaze credible. So, amazing credible, barely credible. Your words,

not mine, your incorrect words. You guys are phenomenal. Thank you. I'm Yomiya Degger Kay and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast brought to you by Bayleys

and produced by Birdline Media. Head to our website www. www.women'sprice for fiction. where you can discover this year's shortlist of six incredible votes and where we will soon announce the winner. Please click subscribe and don't forget to rate and review this podcast. It really helps spread the word about the female talent you've heard about today.

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