Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S8 Ep20: Bookshelfie: Lily King

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

Award-winning author Lily King joins us from the road during her book tour to explore how women finding themselves and love are such big topics in her favourite books. Plus, she tells us the novels she returns to over and over again for comfort; and why Virginia Woolf has been such an important writer in her life. Lily has written six novels which have been published in 28 languages. Her 2020 novel, Writers & Lovers, won the New England Society Book Awards, was a New York Times Notable Book and was chosen as a top-ten best book of 2020 by The Washington Post, NPR, People Magazine, and The LA Times. Her 2014 novel Euphoria won the Kirkus Award, the New England Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award, as well as being named one of the 10 Best Books of the year by The New York Times Book Review. Her latest novel, Heart the Lover, was released in October and was an instant New York Times bestseller. Lily’s book choices are: ** It's Not the End of the World by Judy Blume ** To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf ** I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith ** Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf ** The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season eight of the Women’s Prize’s BookshelfiePodcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is the biggest celebration of women's creativity in the world and has been running for over 30 years.  Don’t want to miss the rest of season eight? Listen and subscribe now! You can buy all books mentioned from our dedicated shelf on Bookshop.org - every purchase supports the work of the Women's Prize Trust and independent bookshops.  This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

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It's kind of like a literary orgasm or something, you know. It's just like, whoa, you know, and then it's just so amazing. It's just so amazing. This is the Women's Prize for Fiction Bookshelfy podcast supported by Bayleys. Join us in celebrating women's writing from around the world in the 30th anniversary year of the Women's Prize for Fiction, sharing our creativity, our voices, and our perspectives. I'm Vic Hope and I am your host for Season 8 of Bookshelfy, the podcast that asks inspiring and brilliant women to share the five books by women that have shaped them and their lives. Join me and my incredible guests as we talk about the books you should be adding to your reading list. Today I am joined by Lily King.

Lily is the award-winning author of six novels which have been published in 28 languages. Her 2020 novel, Writers and Lovers, won the New England Society Book Awards. was a New York Times notable book and was chosen as a top 10 best book of 2020 by the Washington Post, NPR, People Magazine, and the LA Times. Her 2014 novel, Euphoria, won the Kirkus Awards, the New England Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award, as well as being named one of the 10 best books of the year

by the New York Times Book Review. Her latest novel, Heart the Lover, was released in October and was an instant New York Times bestseller. Lily, welcome. It's such a pleasure to see you today to discuss your favorite books. Can I ask, first of all, whereabouts are you? I am in Jackson, Mississippi, which is not where I live. I'm in a hotel room. I had an event last night at Lemuria Books. And now, in an hour, I'll go off to Oxford for another event. And then I'll go home. You are in the trenches right now of all of the PR and the publicity. And I bet it's such a whirlwind. It's heavy work. It is. It's kind of a new city every day. It's exciting. These two, these two, towns are great book towns, and I've always wanted to come here. And I was supposed to come here for writers and lovers, but it got shut down with COVID. So I'm so glad to be here now. I really

am. It's fascinating. The Deep South is fascinating. You're so wrapped up in the novel that you've been writing, and I don't know how much time there is between having written it and then having to talk about it in interviews like this. But do you ever get a bit sick of it? Or does it change how you feel about the writing when you're promoting it? I think there's a moment when you get sick of it. And then you get over that. I don't know. Or it kind of goes in waves, maybe. When you get sick of it, you think of new things to say and new ways to say it.

You know, I really try to not completely reinvent the wheel because some questions, you know, they only have one answer. And so it's hard to vary it. I just love meeting readers so much. I mean, I'm very, very much an introvert. And this pulls out every single extroverted gene I have, which is not many. I mean, people are so kind, you know, they're so, it's just these conversations that I have like in the signing lines afterwards. And even in the question and answer part of an event, they're really, it's really special. I mean, it's real connection and there's nothing like that.

And when you sit alone in a room for four years writing a book, you know, it is really nice to get out and connect with people. So it's a good thing. I can imagine when you write those words, they mean one thing to you, but once they're in the hands of others, they can take on a whole other life and they mean something to them. It's really true. I mean, that's what I really love about writing fiction is that I feel like I do kind of 50% of the work. And then the imagination of each reader does the next 50. And so they are all building a different structure.

You know, they're telling a slightly different story based on their own experiences and what they've read and what they think about. And it's really cool to run into that and to, find out different interpretations and hear what people argued about at book clubs. And I just love that. And as a reader yourself, what do you love? I love so many things. I think my favorite reading experience and book of the past year was My Friends by Hishamatar. Have you read that?

No, I haven't. It is so good. It's just so good. It's about three Libyan friends who come to the UK to study. It's set before the Arab Spring. and afterwards. It's so beautiful and so much about literature, but also so interesting in terms of politics and so important, I think, for Americans to read right now because, you know, the backdrop is Gaddafi's dictatorship. And I just feel like it should be required reading

for every American, you know, before we move one day forward in the direction we're going in. We're here for recommendations. It's something this podcast does so well. And your bookshelfy books, your selections today, I'm sure will be those for our listeners. So let's get straight into it. Your first book, Shelfy Book, is It's Not the End of the World. By the iconic American author, Judy Blune is a sensitive, honest story of family separation, first published in 1972. The parents of 12-year-old Karen are getting a divorce, and her world feels like it's falling apart. She's desperate for them to stay together, but she eventually comes to understand that while it's difficult, divorce is not the end of everything.

Tell us why you chose this as your book today. I remember reading that so, so vividly when I was about nine years old, maybe nine or ten. And I had read Judy Bloom's first book, Are You There, God is to be Margaret. And I had loved it. But this book really awakened me to the possibilities of literature, basically, and of realistic fiction. I feel like so much of what I read before I was that age was sort of. of talking animals and people going to space. And there wasn't a lot of realism for children in the early 70s. And the humor, like right from the first page, the humor, the voice,

I just felt like I could know these people. I don't know. It was speaking so directly to me that I remember reading it and thinking, I want to do this. Like, not only do I love this book, but I want to do this for kids is what I thought. I want to write for children. My mother gave me this book. And I think she deliberately gave it to me because she was about to leave my father. Okay. So she was preparing me. Right. There were very, very few divorces in our town at that time. And I think she just wanted me to know somebody who had gone through it. And it worked so well. I mean, I honestly, I think I read that book, you know, probably five times, you know, between the time she gave it to me and the time after she left my dad and we went through it. And I was really able to compare

what Karen the experience of the of the girl in the book was compared to mine. And I remember thinking, wow, you know, she really wants her parents to get back together. I don't. Right. You knew that. Yeah. It was really, it was like I was in conversation with that book for a long, long time. I liked how you said it. I didn't know anyone who had gone through those experience. And this book was that. It was a friend to you. Very much so. Someone in whom you found a certain solace. Judy Blum's novel captures the intensity, the uncertainty of adolescence, so beautifully, so perfectly, especially in the midst of a family change, which is what you're going through. But also, you say at the age of nine, it sort of sparks this passion in you. I wanted

to write novels as well. And this helped you understand your own experiences of family life. Now, I've read that your childhood, you had 14 step siblings. Yes. There were 17 of us total. Wow. My mother, well, first, she left my dad. My dad remarried. immediately to a woman with three children. And then she married a man with seven children. His second wife left him. And then he married immediately a man, a woman with four children. Okay. And so that's where the numbers all add up. How did growing up in that environment affect you, do you think? I think it definitely made me an observer. My father was very volatile. He was an alcoholic. and his second wife was also a very serious alcoholic as well.

And I think I really, I hung back and I watched and I was careful. I was very attuned to his emotional changes. I could always tell like how drunk he was or, you know, what kind of mood he was in. And I think it made me really sensitive to people's emotions and emotional state and what's happening in the whole room. I mean, what was my stepbrother doing? You know, my step-siblings were all very, very different and going through their own things. And my mother married a man who had lost his wife the year before in a train accident. And so we entered this family of seven grieving children.

That had a big effect on me, too. I had incredible guilt for having a mother when they had no mother. I'm picturing this young Lily King, super observant, very emotionally mature and attuned to the emotions of others, how much has that played into the way that you write? Well, first of all, I don't know how emotionally I'm mature I was. I often described myself as very feral, and we were all pretty feral. And so I feel like my emotions were, I tried to hide them because, you know, if I showed them that my father would get mad. But at the same time, they would come out sideways, you know, in weird ways. And I did discover creative writing

in high school. And that really gave me a place to put my feelings. You know, my teacher said right away, write what you know. And I did. And it helped me a lot. I think it was cathartic. And also it helped me have the satisfaction of making art out of chaos. And you're now friends with Judy Blume. Yes. What is that like having a connection with one of your favorite childhood authors? What is she like? She's so warm and generous and kind and amazing and fascinating. I mean, I don't know her all that well. We had lunch together. I think the last time I saw her. And she's just amazing. Her story's amazing. She was a very unhappy housewife, you know, in the early, I guess in the late 60s maybe is when she got a divorce. And I mean, she started writing a little bit

before that, but she had to break free because her husband didn't approve of it. And she's just such an icon. She has been so fierce and so on the front lines with book banning. She's just an extraordinary person, but truly kind and generous. It's been amazing to know her. From one extraordinary writer to another, your second bookshelfy book is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Wolf. Published in 1927, To The Lighthouse follows the Ramsey family on their visit to their summer home on the Isle of Sky in Scotland, divided into three distinct sections. And told through a stream of consciousness narrative. The story spans a decade, focusing more on the internal thoughts and deeper perceptions of the central characters than an external action.

Now, you said that you read this for the first time when you were a 26-year-old student, so what was your first experience reading this novel at that time? And how has that interpretation to be changed over time? I was so in awe of that book. I just couldn't believe what I was reading. And I also couldn't believe that I had never read her before. I hadn't read nothing by her before. So, you know, there's the play who's afraid of Virginia Woolf. Yeah. I heard a lot about that in my childhood, and I had this idea.

I was very scared of wolves, first of all. So that play and my incredible terror of wolves when I was a child meant I was very scared of her, which is so funny. And I think that kind of persisted. But I don't know why. Why did I never read her in college? Well, I didn't. I mean, I went to college in North Carolina, and we were reading a lot of southern female writers. And I don't know. I don't know how I missed her, but I missed her. And it was such an amazing discovery. And I just, I keep that book on my desk when I write. And what she is doing with language is just like no one else. It's like nothing else. You've got this book divided into these three sections like you mentioned. You've described the middle one of those as a creative miracle. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? I talk about time passes that section at pretty much every event I have for Heart the Lover

just because it's this jump in time and I love jumps in time and I do two of them in this book but nothing like what she is doing in time passes. You have the first section where it's really about Mrs. Ramsey and being in this marriage with this very domineering, brilliant man and trying to manage him and there are many, many children. And then it ends, and we go to time passes. They're in their summer house on the coast of Cornwall. And then many, many years go by. And the house is being opened by the housekeeper that hasn't been open since the war.

The first World War has happened. And it's the housekeeper's point of view, but we learn, you know, I mean, I don't know if there's such a spoiler to the lighthouse, but we learn the Mrs. Rams. has died and we've learned that one of the children has died in the war but we learn it through the things of this house and the and the cobwebs and the cleaning and the it's just the most and it's so so so so beautiful i mean it's a miracle because there's nothing like it and it the way she's revealing information in this poetic piece is extraordinary to me you've mentioned that this book transformed your own fictional voice as a writer saying that Virginia will reset your compass?

There are these fleeting moments, the way that first love and friendship and memory linger that we see in your writing as well. What was it about this book that had such a powerful impact on your life as a writer and how you approach fiction? I feel like she gets under the skin of her human beings. She can get so close to truly the real human experience, and yet she can say it in the most beautiful language. And so there's an intensity there that is really exciting. And she's doing so many things in that book. I mean, she's writing about this woman's experience, and then she's writing about the children's experience of having this kind of a father. And then she's what she's really, the overarching thing, is Lily Brisco.

painting and what it is to be a woman creating a work of art. And so, you know, she's writing about Lily Brisco, but she's also writing about Virginia Woolf writing to the lighthouse. And that is mind-blowing, especially for 1927. And the exhilaration when Lily Briscoe thinks I have had my vision at the very end, it's kind of like a literary orgasm or something, you know, it's just as like, what? You know, and it's just so amazing. It's just so amazing. Well, on a literary orgasm, we'll leave that Virginia Woolf book there, but we move on to another of hers. Your third book is Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, heralded as Virginia Woolf's greatest novel. This is a vivid portrait of a single day in a woman's life. When we meet her, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied

with the last minute details of a party that she's preparing for, while in her mind, she is something much more than a perfect society hostess. As she readies her house, she's flooded with remembrances of faraway times and met with the realities of the present. Clarissa re-examines the choices that brought her there, hesitantly looking ahead to the unfamiliar work of growing old. Now this is the second wolf title that you've selected today, which I think is actually a first for a guest on this podcast,

selecting two bits for the same author. It's absolutely allowed Lily. It's absolutely fine. Tell me about your relationship with Virginia Woolf and why you pick two of her pieces of work. it's just my very favorite. She is my load star. She is, she definitely guides me. When I am lost, all I have to do is open any page of either of those two books. And I remember, I remember what I love about reading and writing and why I do it. These two books, they're really almost like different people. You know, they're by different people. To The Lighthouse spans all those years, has all those characters. I mean, Mrs. Dalloway has a lot of characters, too, for sure.

It's one day. It's not even a, it's not even 24 hours, you know. It's probably about 14 hours or 15 hours. I mean, it's, and yet, you know, she wakes up and she's having a party, right? And so she's, she's excited and she's going out to buy flowers. But what you get in that day is her entire life. All these memories come back to her and all these things, things from the passage. She's still, she's still puzzling over, you know, that kiss with Sally, you know, by the urn, And Peter, and then Peter shows up, and just, I don't know. I mean, she's struggling with this relationship with her daughter that is not good, and her daughter's getting kind of almost getting like a cult-like kind of

kind of relationship with her tutor, and she's very worried about that. And we just go sweeping, sweeping, sweeping through her mind as she's preparing for this party. And then by contrast, we have Septimus Smith, you know, who is a veteran from the war. you know, having a mental breakdown and his suffering is so extreme and he's such a contrast to her, but also there are moments of great similarity in their humanity. So he's not that separate and he's not mad. I don't know. It's this, it's this wonderful examination of human minds and human existence, really. You said there, Ms. Delaware sat over a single day, not even 24 hours, whereas your most recent novel, Heart the Love, it spans decades.

When you're writing a story that covers a much longer time period, how do you decide which moments or details to focus on? Yeah, with this one, those are the only moments that came to me. And with this one, even though it does span, that kind of sounds like there's going to be like, you know, synopsies of various parts, various years or anything. it's not like that at all. It's like an intense moment in time, an intense moment in time, an intense moment in time. And that's kind of how I like to do that. It's just how I see it. And I didn't feel like we needed anything else in between because, you know, you can get caught up.

And really what's important are the moments that I'm focusing on, you know. Those moments that we focus on, those reflections, we see here, Delaware's reflections on life, on love, on aging are so central. and their themes that I think we keep returning to in literature. Why do you think that Mrs. Dalloway continues to feel fresh and relevant to readers today nearly a century after its publication? It's just the honesty, I think, just the honesty of and the transparency of this character and what is going on in her mind and how it's working. I think that doesn't get old.

And it feels so relevant because she is truly character. capturing humanity. She's capturing how we are. And I'm not sure we change that much. Baileys 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. Bayleys is the perfect adult treat, whether shaken in a cocktail, over ice cream, or paired with your favorite book. Check out Baileys.com for our at Bailey's Recipes. Your fourth bookshelfy book today, Lily, is Icaptor the Castle by Dodey Smith.

First published in 1948, Icaptor the Castle is a classic coming-of-age novel. The story is presented in the diary format of its 17-year-old protagonist Cassandra Mortmain, chronicling her eccentric and impoverished family's life in a crumbling English castle in the 1930s. Exploring central themes of family, first love, class differences, and the challenges of growing up, it is known for its humor, charm, and vivid characters. Now, you chose this book as your comfort read, or one of them anyway. There are a few that you had as options. Something that you turned to repeatedly for comfort, for joy, for delight. What is it about the story that keeps drawing you back? Oh, I love this book so much, and I really feel like it's underrated. I feel

that because Doty Smith also wrote 101 Dalmatians, I think maybe that holds her back from, you know, being heralded as an adult writer. But this is definitely an adult book. It's, it's so hard to know, you know, how actively she was thinking about sense and sensibility or pride and prejudice or anything by Jane Austen. But it's definitely like sense and sensibility for the 1930s. It feels also very, very, very fresh. Like, it doesn't really feel all that long ago. The language is, is, it feels very modern and nearly contemporary. It's about two sisters and they're English and they're very, very poor. And their father has written a brilliant book and he's not been able to write another one. And their mother has died and now the father has a new girlfriend and they live in this old

castle, which they basically don't pay rent for. And her main thing is to get her father to write. again. They need money and he needs to be happy and she's really taken that on. But these two Americans, kind of half American and half British people who have inherited them, the main house down the road arrive. They are two sisters and they are two brothers and so kind of mayhem ensues. And it's so smart. She's right, it's a journal. He's writing only in her journal for the entire book. And you actually feel like it is a journal and which I never feel in books. I'm always like, oh, please don't give me a journal entry. But she's becoming a thinker and an observer, and she's truly coming of age on the page.

Her thoughts about love and attraction, and her sister gets engaged to a man that she doesn't believe that she loves. And that is another thing that she's, you know, kind of solving for. She's just delightful. She has her own love things going on. She's only 17, but, you know, she's trying to figure all that out. And it's just so funny and so smart, so, so smart. I just love it. I have my husband's cousin, her grandmother on the other side, not my husband's side of the family, would read this every spring.

Oh, wow. And so I always aspire to do that, but I don't always, like, regularly read it every spring, but I read it a lot. and I just can't recommend it more highly. Does your experience change as a reader when you reread? It definitely does. At the very least, you just see more. And sometimes when you're racing through to kind of find out what happens or to get to the next scene,

you're not dwelling on the real beauty of a paragraph. And she has some beautiful paragraphs, and I feel like the last time I read it, I was really able to really pause and have, have a good look at what she's really doing there. It's interesting. I'm very rarely reread because I always think, oh, there's so little time on this planet. I need to get through as many books as possible. I want new ones, new ones. But you're so right. If you take the time to go back, you will see new things. I wonder, does it affect how you write or sort of influence your

perspective as a writer to go back to those beloved books and see different things in them? Oh, yes. I don't do a lot of dissecting and deconstructing, you know, exactly how the scaffolding is done. But when you reread, it kind of comes to you and you start, you know, you have a better understanding of the structure and the choices that were made and the omissions and that sort of thing. I, yeah, I find it, I find it very instructive. But I mostly just reread for pleasure. You know, I'm just going back because I just miss those people and I want to be with them. Well, you said that you rotate this book alongside classics like Pride and Prejudice, sense and sensibility, persuasion. Is there a unifying factor that makes these beloved favorites for you? I think I love stories about women figuring it out, you know, figuring themselves out. I mean, you could say that they're love stories, but, and they are and they're great love stories

and I love reading a love story, but they're really people coming into their own. Often, to get to the love that they have, they have to go through great obstacles, you know, that are great challenges. And none of this comes easily. And they have to find it within themselves to know what they want and then to go after it. And yes, it's often a love at the end. But, you know, it's not just like the feeling like, I need to be loved. You know, it's more like, I know what I want and this person is someone who I can communicate with and who will know me and respect me. And certainly in Jane Austen's time, yeah, that was so crucial. I mean, women had so few options. And to find someone who was going to let them be themselves was

extraordinary, you know? And so first you have to know yourself to be able to figure out who's going to let you be yourself, you know, moving forward. Well, Lightheart the Love, this book explores the powerful theme of the first love, potentially the most tempestuous of all, the working out of who you are. What is attractive to you about exploring that subject matter, that first love in writing? It's just so powerful. You know, you're so vulnerable. You have no idea the risks or the, you know, the possible consequences. And you're just so wide open. You know, I mean, the reason it's a first love is because you're really ready for it.

And there's been nothing like it before. There's nothing to compare it to. It just seems like such a miraculous gift. I was interested in, you know, showing that. And then, of course, you know, what might happen after? Well, what happens now is that we move on to your fifth and final bookshelfy book, which is The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazard, considered one of the great English language novels of the 20th century.

century, the transit of Venus follows Caroline and Grace Bell as they leave Australia to begin a new life in post-war England, from Sydney to London, New York and Stockholm, and from the 1950s to the 1980s, the two sisters experienced seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal, with exquisite, breathtaking prose. Hazard tells the story of the displacements and absurdities of modern life. The result is at once an intricately plotted Greek a tragedy, a sweeping family saga and a desperate love story. You've described this novel as a rare form of brilliance, Lily, combining a sweeping family saga with the precision of crystalline prose. What about this balance fascinates or inspires you? I often call it like

a literary soap opera, this book, because my other favorite book by her, the evening of the holiday, is so spare. It's like a prose poem, you know. And then and then she She writes this true saga. Yeah, it's a tomb. She seeds it with kind of things that will happen later, and she's really, really, really in control of it all. It's not like, you know, it's so sprawling that she's just kind of winging it in any way. It's still very, very tight, even though it's a big story. And again, it's about two sisters who come to England and then one of them end up in the States.

and I just, I just love them. I mean, I particularly love Caro, the one we kind of focus most on. She's just trying to find her way. She's trying to figure out how to kind of overcome a difficult childhood. And this, is it a cousin, or is she a young aunt? I can't quite remember who is sort of her guardian, who is just, it's an amazing depiction of somebody who just suffers from. so much insecurity and makes your life so miserable. And she kind of gets put into this

realm of upper class England. And I just love it. And we travel so many places in it. And her writing is, some people don't like it because it's a little kind of almost aphoristic, like literally aphoristic and oblique. And I really love that. and respond to it. And I think her descriptions are, they're very spare, but they are so beautiful. You've noted that this book, it's made of one perfect sentence after another. The word economy is just, but it's across hundreds of pages. Yes.

How hard is that level of stylistic rigor? I can't imagine. I really, really don't imagine. I do know that she and her husband, Francis Stigweiler, who translated Proust, among many other things, they twice in their life, at least twice. They have read out loud the complete decline and fall, Gibbons decline and fall of Roman Empire. Edgibbon being the historian essayist. Yeah, like nine tomes. Is it, does it nine? I think it might be nine. They read it out loud twice. And so it has been suggested that she got her style

from him. I mean, he was a beautiful, beautiful writer and an incredible stylist. I have tried, and failed to finish it, but I'm going to try again. But the fact that they were reading it out loud really makes me think that she had stamina, you know. Yeah. The Transit of Venus explores not only romantic love, but also the deep bonds and rivalries between siblings. They come up again and again in your choices today. Love in all its thorns is a central theme in much of your writing. Why is it so important to you?

I've thought a lot about this, having written now two books. books with the word lover in the title. I does seem to be a focus. And I just feel like I don't know if there's anything more important in the human experience than love. It is what gets us up in the morning. It is what binds us. It is what makes us.

It is what causes so many of our emotions. And I feel particularly right now in this extremely heartless time, that we're going through, that it just could not be more important. And there's this threat right now and, you know, into the future for sure, that we are possibly losing our humanity to technology. And I feel like we just have to hang on to our emotions and we have to hang on to love because I really feel that it's what's going to save us as a species. Yeah, yeah. I feel like we can turn to some of our favorite pieces of literature to remember that sometimes. And it's important to be able to do that. Lily, you've selected several 20th century masterpieces today. What legacy do you hope your own writing will leave? I'm just happy when people connect with it and sort of understand the emotions that I was trying to convey in the book and feel for the character.

and I just really just want to leave small pieces of my own humanity behind, I suppose, for people to know how we work. I like that. Small pieces of humanity and little reminders to love, to keep loving because we need to. Yeah. Lily, we've talked about five books that you are loving and have loved, but I do have to ask you if you had to choose one book from your list. as a favourite. Your eyes just, oh no, no, no. I have to ask, which would it be and why?

Do the lighthouse? With Mrs. Dalloway close behind. Well, they can go hand in hand, I think. And it sounds like they were so incredibly formative and continue to inspire you. Yeah, very much so, very much so. Oh, well, Lily, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us for coming on the podcast. I know it's so busy for you right now. now as you jet about. But it's been absolutely lovely to have a little bit of time set aside to chat about books together. Yes, I loved it. Thank you so much, Vic. I'm Vic Hope, and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Bootschelphie podcast, brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Thank you for joining me for this episode. You'll find all the books

discussed in our show notes. If you've enjoyed it, please leave us a rating or review to help other readers discover even more brilliant books by women. See you next time.