Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

This week's book guest is By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart.In this episode Sara and Cariad discuss romance, T. S. Eliot, obsessive love and sniffing glue.Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!Trigger warning: In this episode we discuss people who have taken their own lives.By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart is available here.Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclubTickets for Sara's tour show I Am A Strange Gloop are available to buy from sarapascoe.co.ukCariad's children's book Lydia Marmalade and the Christmas Wish is out in paperback here now. Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sarah Pasco. And I'm Carriead Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we created the weirdos book club.

A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. Each week we're joined by amazing comedian guests and writer guests to discuss some wonderfully and crudely weird books, writing, reading and just generally being a weirdo. You don't even need to have read the books to join in. It will be a really interesting, wide-ranging. conversation and maybe you'll want to read the book afterwards. We will share all the upcoming books we're going to be discussing on our Instagram, Sarah and Carriads, Weirdo's Book Club. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is by Grand Central Station I sat down and wept by Elizabeth Smart.

What's it about? It's a poetic prose classic detailing Elizabeth's love affair with English poet, George Barker. What qualifies it for the Weirdo's Book Club? Well, it's not the regular way to meet a guy. In this episode, we discuss romance, T.S. Eliot, obsessive love and sniffing glue. Trigger warning, in this episode, we do mention people have taken their own lives. Hello, Sarah. Hi, Carriad. How are you? Really good, thank you. How are you? Well, I'm excited because we're talking about a book that we've been talking about for a long time. If I had to distill you down to a few core memories, like a flashback, flashback sequence to show Carriads and Sarah's relationship, You telling me about this book would be one of them.

Oh, that's very interesting. University, 2001. Yeah. And at Carriad Lloyd, she loved going to the theatre. She was going to be an actor, and she was very moved by this book. It's by Grand Central Station. I sat down and wept by Elizabeth Smart. It's not about missing a train.

Just to save you some time. Oh, we've all been there. Rail replacement bus again. That is. The entire book is a rail replacement journey. So yes, I This is a very light book First of all, listeners I knew this is going to happen

Very light I mean my hand is literally drifting up with it's floating away It's floating away So how did you come to this book the first time As a young woman A young woman My copy was this copy was gifted to me In the year 2000

That's how long I've had a relationship Millennia Oh I was thinking Let's meet up in the year 2000 Any of the songs will work Okay In the mega mix I went to the library, as I did, being a geeky person who didn't have the internet,

and I think I just saw it on the shelf, and the title caught me. And I felt like, oh, I've heard of that book, but I hadn't. And then I took it home, and I fell in love. And I was like, I've never read a book like it. It's poetic prose. It is about Elizabeth Smart is a real person. She fell in love with a poet called George Barker. And essentially, it is poetic prose detailing her obsession, her love and their early relationship.

it. I'd never read anything like it. Had you been in love by then? Yes, I was in my first love, I would say. Perfect time to read it. It is the perfect time to read it. And I have spent many years saying to people, oh, have you ever read by Grand Central Station? And what's weird is I remember telling you about it. And every other time I've mentioned it, loads of people have never heard of it.

I always sort of felt like I've made it up. I was like, did I just invent this book? Because I've never had anyone go, oh yeah, gosh. So it is a bit of a cult classic But I think she's Canadian So I think maybe it had slightly more success Or has been remembered more in Canada than it was here Even though it was very successful here

The foreword says that it wasn't very successful No, in published in 1945 was not successful Other stuff going on Other stuff People be dealing with stuff They don't need your love story Released in 1966 with the Angela Carter quote Like Madam Bovry blasted by lightning

A Masterpiece which basically suddenly blasted it into what's the word. But how funny that the Guardian have not quoted Angela Carter. That's so when's your copy published? Because this is a, mine's quite modern. Well, 2000. Let me tell you when my 2000 is modern to us, guys. Oh, mine's in 1992, actually, this version.

But the Angela Carter Review was a big part. Mine's a reprint from 1980. Hmm, that's funny, isn't it? The Andrew Carter Review was a big helped part of it out. to lots and lots of people. So this is the first time I properly reread it. So, oh, it's been a long gap. Long gap.

Year 2000, a year, 2025. Yeah, quarter of a century. I think everyone's favourite books, that is a thing we should all be doing, is rereading them every 25 years. Well, how did you get on? I didn't enjoy it. Yeah.

And I, but in a way that I don't think it's a bad book. I just think it's the book I needed to read 18. And if you were listening to this and you were 18, you should read this book or if you're just really melodramatic i'd say if you're one of those people who every time a boy looks at you or a girl looks at you you're like oh my god this is it yes read this be be in the throes of it with someone who is not going to go i think we should measure up and make a sensible decision i mean the language is so florid and so intense and it's teenage it's absolutely teenage it is teenage and she was 23 when she wrote it right so in that

I think she was 23. In that she was absolutely at that age. This isn't someone retrospectively writing. No. And I'll just read a little bit. To deny love and deceive it meanly by pretending that what is unconsumated remains eternal or that love subliminated reaches highest to heavenly love is repulsive as the hypocrite's face is repulsive when placed too near the truth.

Farther off from the centre of the world of all worlds, I might be better fooled. But can I see the light of a match while burning in the arms? of the sun I mean that's absolutely I mean it's definitely dramatic

sometimes sometimes there are just there are spanners thrown in the sentences yeah because I think some of the writing

is extraordinarily good for the woman that young and then some of the writing is extraordinarily bad and I've got an example of that

go on this is today this is where all roads strove to lead all feet to attain fine. What are the world's problems and sorrows and errors? I am as at sea and as ignorant and mystified as the first day I ever saw algebra. It's got one about Al Capone two pages on. It just sometimes there'll be these clangs of that reference doesn't... I should just add that Angela Carter thing I'm talking about was the Guardian Review. Yes. So that's why it says Guardian. Yes. They just didn't say the journalist. Oh, I see. They just didn't mention... It was Angela Carter writing at Guardian Review. Okay. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about Elizabeth Smart. Because what you need to know about this book, I think, and the reason...

It's more fun if you know the life story. Way more fun if you know of life story. So when I read it, we should have been at university, and I'd say probably dipped into it more than read properly. Because I kept thinking, at university, what I remember thinking is, how can such a small book be taking me so long to read? But it didn't when I read it. I read it in like a day.

But I didn't know any of the people involved, and I wasn't carried away. So I think I probably enjoyed it more this time round. Oh, really? Yes. Especially the first third, I really enjoyed. They're having a crush on someone bit. Yeah, the crush stuff is great.

It's really great. And even though I'm not at that stage of my life anymore, it made me remember, so my husband and I were friends for a couple of years before we kissed or even had a conversation about being together. But he once said goodbye to me in such a raunchy way. And I've completely forgotten. It was a goodbye.

It was like a peck on the cheek like, we're going. He was going with some of my comedians. But when he said goodbye, he put his hand up, up into my hair, up like inside my hair. Excuse me Kiss on the cheek But his hand was on the back of my head We all know what's going on there

And I remember him walking away I've seen Algebra And then like I'm not going to go to guys Be asleep tonight Like you can't just touch someone like that It's like the pressing knee under a table You know

When you're like their knee is on my knee Yeah No one else knows their knee is on my knee I think that's deliberate Is it deliberate? Well I say that But I did know such thing as a fish The day

And Andy Murray's knee It was touching me And it was much more like He's just got He's actually got much longer legs Than you think When I first read it, I read it very quickly, I like gulped it up and I didn't know all this stuff because we didn't really have the internet

And so what I wanted to just talk about is that she Yeah, give me the goss. I'll give you the goss, right? So she was a young, young Canadian heiress, right? He was extremely wealthy. Oh my gosh. Extremely wealthy. Now wonder where parents aren't happy in the book. So she says I'm in love with this poet, okay.

She came from, like, they were a bit liberal, but they were, you know, well-to-do. And she was kind of already breaking rules. She was supposed to be staying in Canada and just being a good girl, and she hadn't. She was using her clothing allowance to travel the world. I wish I had a clothing allowance. So instead of buying a mink that year, she headed off to California to Big Surmler. How do you get a clothing allowance? You need a rich daddy.

How do you get a rich daddy? Yeah, that's genetics. I don't. Unfortunately, our fathers did not. Did not. Is it too late to get adopted by someone? No, I don't think so. Please write in.

Sugar Dodies. Join the Patreon. Sugar patrons. Sugar patrons. It's a different level. So she was travelling the world and so she was in London. She was at a bookshop in Charing Cross Road, better books on Charing Cross Road. Probably a Korean skincare place now.

And thank goodness, because it's so hard to get it. She came across George Barker's poetry book called Daedalus. Dedalus. Like from James Joyce? Yes. She picked up a copy of his work. she fell in love with his poetry instantly and said I'm going to marry this man

She's like my mother She's like my mom and my dad So this is why I thought it's interesting Because it's a bit like hearing a song She didn't even see him mate She tracked him down He was he was T.S. Eliot's protege He'd taken a bad job

And he'd been So he was at Faber as well Must have been he was a poet It's a really small world guys Small world He'd taken he'd made a bad choice To take a job at university in Japan And we're talking

The Wars about to happen With his wife wife. She's friends with Lawrence Durrell. The writer, Lawrence Daryl, My Family and Other Animals. So Gerald Dero wrote my family and other animals. Lawrence is his brother. Lawrence was the one who at the time, everyone was like, he's a genius writer, he's incredible. Gerald came along later with like actually very funny animal stories that were much more successful.

Yeah. But Lawrence was like, the writer. That's another book you love, right? I fucking love my family. It's such a good book. We should do that. It's so good. It's so funny.

And also, I can't think of any point at animal's life. That wouldn't be a great reread. Let's do that. Let's do that. So, Lawrence Daryl was a friend of hers. He says, oh, I know George Barger, he's in Japan. She raises money by going around to other people like Canadian literary figures and poets begging, so we have to get this man out of Japan.

He's a genius. Brings him over to California, where she's living in the artist's commune. And that first chapter, when she's talking about he got off the bus. So that's, she's describing the first time she met him, she didn't know. He'd come from Japan. She didn't know he'd brought a wife. he was like oh I actually need two tickets and didn't say it's for my wife so she's like the wife in Japan as well then the wife was they were living together I'm married and he was teaching in Japan so it comes

off the bus she thinks this is a man I'm going to marry he's Catholic very Catholic that's a big part of his life why did Lawrence Darrell not mention this at any point or did she not mention that she was bringing him over because she just read one poem and decided she was like oh first of all he was he needed money so she said I'll buy a manuscript off you and then she was like oh actually I can try and get you because Basie Japan was going to war. So it was like, how do I get out of here? And he didn't want to sign up. So if he went back to England, he would have had to sign up.

Oh, I was a coward. Oh, no, a side tear it would have been on. Oh, cowards coming. Get your white feathers out. Well, he wouldn't, yeah, he didn't want to sign up. Coward, pacifist, whatever you want to call them. So then they're living together in this sort of commune. And that's what she, we should say, I do love this book as much as it disappoints me as an older woman.

But you're into the biography of the, it as well. But also, I can't read this book now as a woman who's married with two kids without going, oh, for a fuck sake, shut up. And just, what are you doing, woman? Yeah. Because she's living in fantasy land. It's pure fantasy. But the thing that's interesting is she lived in her whole life. This is not her 20 years. She really, really, really enjoys it. But what I loved, what I loved about, especially the first third, was this sense of how much you're actually thinking about them, the effect they're actually having on you, but doing a sort of, uh, an impression of someone who doesn't.

I mean, I think everyone could relate to that. Oh, yeah, it's relatable. Having a huge crush, not showing to the person, being obsessed, and this is the kind of poetry you will write. I actually wrote a poem yesterday inspired by this book. Because my life is different, it was about, it was called Summers Schitts, and about how my kids had eaten too many easy pealers, and then both sat on the toilet all afternoon.

I've been there. Yeah. We were at a birthday party, and I'd turn my back, and I thought he'd eaten for, someone else thought he'd eaten for. He'd eaten ate. Yeah. And then as he was running away, as I said, that's too many. He had the ninth in his hand.

Yeah. Nine in one sitting. Yeah. There you go. Sat sum of shits. I would relate to that poetry collection. Poetic prose. Inscribed by Wendy Cope and her orange poem.

Sat super shits. I just want to say, like, so they had an affair for 18 years. She had four kids by this man. He never left his wife. This book revealed their affair in 1945. This book comes out and says we're having an affair. I don't know how public it was. And also, so there's something really early on where it seems like his wife had lost a child, had a miscarriage.

Something had happened with the first wife. Although I think she also then did have kids. Like he had, he's got 15 kids. Has he? Yeah, 15 kids. I have four different women. So, and also a lot of the language she uses in sort of her blood metaphors, some of it's sort of Christ like about birth, birth a relationship. Her love was, I want to have children with you.

I want to, what she's birthing at the beginning is emotions, but she's laying the ground for. I'm going to have your children. As soon as she gets pregnant in real life she goes to Canada and has the baby there's absolutely no I'm not I'm not keeping this baby and he tries to come to Canada to see her and the parents

tell the governor and he's not allowed into the country for moral reasons because they're like he's a bad man when she publishes it her mum goes to the bookshops we've talked about moms before and buys them and burns them good for sales

So her mum, Louis, who was a very, like, yeah, to-do woman, went up and bought as many as she could find and had them burnt. Okay, just take it out of her clothing budget. She has the first child, Georgina, and then in the middle of the war, she gets on a ship and goes over to England to 1940 feet. And she starts working for the Ministry of Defence. And she gives birth to her second child. So she comes to London in the war to get pregnant again. No, to be with him. She's already pregnant.

And then the Ministry of Defence fire her after the book is published. And also she was pregnant again. Also, reading between the lines, I think she might have been crazy. I think she wasn't like an ideal. And then, right, this thing that's very interesting, she becomes a single mum to four kids. And she works as she was the highest paid copywriter at one point in the country. Yeah.

So she's writing, she moves up, she can't work as a poet. And she has to support them because he won't leave his wife. So she becomes a, like, advertising writer, really well paid. She works for Harper's Bazaar. She writes about fashion. And then in 1966, it gets republished and she gets enough money and she buys this like country estate. But she's still traveling into London.

Like, he never supports her. And she defends him basically to her death, saying he was a great man. So this love, what I find interesting is this love, like we say, this teenage crush we're reading, if Elizabeth Smart never turns into, oh, what the fuck? I've got four kids. That man's an asshole. Yeah.

She stood by, she said. And the kids say, the kids tried to say to her, like, this is a terrible father. And she was like, no, no, he doesn't mean it. He doesn't understand. Yeah. What was his relationship like with the children? Deeply complicated. Yeah.

And I should say, very sad. One of their children had a note, the youngest had died by overdose. Okay. But they also said, like, she basically, he was an alcoholic. She became an alcoholic by hanging out with him. And then she, when she was working, because she was a single mom, she signed them into, like, a Soho private members club. So they were members. So they could go there and wait.

for her while she was working so they one of the brothers that says like our younger sister was around this when she was very young and she met all these people in Soho and she became an alcoholic and then she became a drug addict like and he sort of says in this interview she chose him every time

yeah and she there's an interview where they say to her it's interesting because it's held as kind of a feminist classic but there's an interview where they say what do you think you know if it's between a man or your children and she's like man your man is always more important yeah it's really fascinating looking back on her life

and then compare like you said the 21 year old that writes this because I think I enjoyed it because it was like I said this like oh my god when you just love someone you've got such a crush and every single thing they're doing but really as a 40 something I'm like what the fuck

but she never changed that I think that's a bit mad I mean it's really it's really fascinating because that's what you want, isn't it? You don't want someone to be measured and seeing things historically. Actually, now I look back now, maybe this and the other, you want it to be told from the eye of the storm. And it's such a difficult thing to do sometimes to remember. So you need someone else to really like open a vein and go back there. So, so, you know, voyeuricit you can

go, oh God, yeah, God, remember that, even when you're very much not in that phase of your life. So there's a quote. I had one thing that was underlined in this book from my 2001 reading. And And it's a quote I know really well, so I must have coppered it into lots of notebooks. And it is, I mean, if you were going to write this in like, no, someone's Valentine's Day card, it would be perfect. There is no angle the world can assume which the love in my eye cannot make into a symbol of love. Even the precise geometry of his hand when I gaze at it dissolves me into water and I flow away in a flood of love. I think I remember seeing that in your handwriting somewhere. Yeah, maybe I sent it in a card to you.

I feel like you had it up on the wall. Yeah. It's beautiful, isn't it? And that giddy, really enjoyable, oh, God, because it's so all-encompassing, that kind of, that kind of falling in love. We're like, colours are brighter and music sounds really good. That's why I think we just can't eat. We're just not hungry. This is a lovely quote.

They're staying with this old lady. Again, we should say the book is, there's no clear plot. You have to kind of really search for, like, what's actually happening. I know. And then when she gets arrested, it's like, is this a metaphor? You were actually arrested. No, they did get arrested because they weren't married and they were just. trying to travel to a state. Yeah. Oh, I see. I just didn't know if it was metaphor. No, they were

arrested to the old ladies like, oh, you two lovebirds go out again. And she's, and Elizabeth says, what is going to happen? Nothing for everything has happened. All time is now and time can do no better. Nothing can ever be more now than now. And before this, nothing was. There are no minor facts in life. There is only the one tremendous one. It's like, that's how you feel at 20 when you love someone. Like, there's nothing else. There's nothing else that matters. But also she's really in love with the idea of being in love is the other thing. And that's, I think, the predisposition. So I listened to an interview with her from 86 from Canadian Radio.

I went deep dive, guys. It's my hyperfocus this week. And she said, she's very funny in the interview. She sounds very English, very posh. And she said, well, of course I wrote some of it before I met him. And the guy's like, oh, but you know, it starts with him coming off the bus. Oh, yes, I wrote that afterwards. I wrote the beginning afterwards, you know, structurally, I thought it was interesting.

Yeah, so I wrote some of it before I'd even picked up that book. So I was like, okay. So you were writing this intensely about love before you picked up a poetry book and decided, that's it. This is the man I'm going to marry. But she also never married him. So it's like so much going on there of like how important love was to this person and how beautifully she writes about love. Like I think it's very relatable, like you said, the crush and the intenseness and all this. but like to, like I just couldn't, as an older person, I just found it so unbearably young.

Also as a married person, the idea, because she is the hero of the book, and she does empathise with the wife and things, but when you are the wife in inverted commas, you can't help but think some of the reasoning for why she can't walk away from him. There are stories we tell ourselves, and I think at some points it was really good at like two things can be true at the same time. OTT much, I've written. Oh, it's intense. She's also very beautiful, we should say. She was a very beautiful.

She looks quite little, Sylvia Plath. Yes. Can I read some quotes, actually? Because this is this bit, between page 25 and 30s, really just really melodramatic. I am overrun, jungled in my bed. I am infested with a menagerie of desires. My heart is eaten by a dove. A cat scrambles in the cave of my sex.

I hate, I hate the way old-fashioned women refer to their sex. I know, my sex. Hounds in my head obey a whipmaster who cries nothing but havoc as the hours test by endurance with an accumulation of tortures. I know, because she can't say I really want to fuck him. Yeah, I'm horny. I'm horny. I'm so horny. Yeah, yeah. Oh, this is it. So her passivity in terms of she fancies him, but she can't do anything about it. That's what felt to me like excuses at the beginning. Under the waterfall, he surprised me bathing and gave me what, I could no more refuse than the earth can refuse the rain.

And you're his wife going, ah! You definitely could refuse him as well. Okay, get an umbrella. It was raining. Protect yourself, keep yourself dry. Wear a big Mac. And she writes about his first wife with such like, what is this woman doing?

How can this woman deny this thing in front of her? And she makes her all sort of like naive and tiny little feet and childlike and things. And obviously, like, she's hurting, but also she's sort of stuck. You know, if there's a war, if she has the money, I know, this poor woman. And she's doing all the typing, the writing. So they're sort of going away to her room in secret. And whatever they're doing to each other.

Yeah, so she describes this attraction as like gravity, which again feels like, oh, it's undeniable. There's nothing you can do about it. But there are things you can do about it. Definitely things you can do about it. Dissolve into kisses whose chemicals are even more deadly if undelivered. This idea that, oh, it's toxic not to act on the attraction. She's really, really powerful unless you're the wife.

And can I read a great Angela Carter. So Angela Carter wrote this review in 1966 where she said it was like Madame Bovry blasted by lightning, which is fucking great quote. Later wrote privately to her friend, the critic Lorna Sage, that it inspired her to found the feminist publisher, Virago Press. From the desire that no daughter of mine

should ever be in a position to be able to write by Grand Central Station, I sat down and wept, exquisite prose, though it may contain, by Grand Central Station, I tore of his balls would be more like it, I should hope. Amazing.

Isn't that amazing? Amazing. Because you're like, Antigarten wrote, said, this is beautiful, but behind her back was like, what that fuck? Yeah. Like, what the fuck is this man? He was much older than her as well. Yeah.

Much, much older than her. And he wrote, he wrote his sort of answer to it. It's called The Dead Sea Girl. Yeah. And he published that in 1950, which is a series of poems, which, again, someone bought for me, and I tried to read. And it was so bad. I remember this.

You were really disappointed. It was so male, unemotional. like it's supposed to be the answer to this but I remember thinking also I guess you want then as a reader you want to see what she saw in him yeah yeah

and it's yeah I really like this line yeah I wondered how you felt about it I learned I have learned to smoke because I need something to hold on to oh yeah fantastic yeah have a fag have a fag outside the station

and um Faye Weldon worked with her as well there's another good Faye Weldon quote which she says, Faye Rodden writes about her in her memoir, Otto de Faye. She would fall into the office from time to time,

dishevelled and beautiful and infinitely romantic with her quivering eyes and distracted mouth and teach me how to write fashion copy, all adjectives and no verbs. And then she says, by that point she'd start drinking heavily. So we regarded her with a mixture of awe and fear. Fear in case she was too drunk and awe

because what she did was so good. I was like, so she must have been this like amazing character. I mean, you get that impression, don't you? I said it's amazing character. But flawed, because this book is flawed, which is also part of its charm as well. I can't read between the lines how much of a nightmare she was. I think she was quite a lot.

Because I think people can say very, you know, really sort of underlining the positives so that they can say her eyes are all over the place, she was gurnin. Because that's what that sounds like to me is someone whose energy is so unstable. Yeah. So of course they're creatively, like they're having these lightning flashes. But it doesn't feel like a secure rooted person. person doing the work. No, no, not. And also coming eye with, I think she interests me because it's a bit Shirley Hazard. That generation pre-war, we're like, oh, gloves rough man, no one's

having therapy, no one's talking about anything. You are drinking and you are taking drugs. And hard if, I mean, at that point of what women were, what was expected of women what they were allowed to do, even if you were incredibly wealthy, these creative people had to fight so much to make any work. Yeah. And so, and obviously she is, you know, she's definitely upset. less of qualities going on here. It's just so interesting me because she is a single mom of four kids but yet stayed in that place of like

no, he's the answer. If only he will come and rescue me, it'll be all right. So she still think she wanted him for herself because it feels like, I don't know, but someone who's content to keep having children and having that relationship is like accepting that relationship for what it is. Your wife got you first.

You owe her. He's been married again. He married other women. He didn't stay with this woman. What? He married other women and not her. women? Yeah. Who comes in and goes, she's written a book about your affair and had your baby. You did that behind your wife's back? Yes, I will.

Yeah, I do. We've got 15 kids with four different women. And so her, their son, Sebastian, who was a poet, he wrote a book about them, which I haven't read. And he, I was there as like a guardian extract and he was saying, like he never got on with this man. Obviously, he caught him George. And he, he said our whole childhood was just waiting for him to arrive. And then he'd arrive. Be violent. and leave, and she would always still want it, still talking, and he said one time he was taken to see him somewhere and he was older and he'd bought him a present, he'd brought him

like a record, and he'd bought it in good faith of like, oh, this is like a classical music, he'll like it, and they put it on to listen and he started smacking his hand, George, on the table, saying, how dare you, how dare you? And he said he was so, the Catholic guilt was so huge that he thought they all hated him for what he'd done to them. But instead of dealing with any form of therapy, he would hit them or scream at them. And he said even then after this screaming fight,

his mother, Elizabeth, was saying, oh, daddy doesn't mean it, Daddy, you know, leave him, leave him, he doesn't mean it, he doesn't mean it. And so he sort of writes about her in a very sort of sad way of like, I just, my mother just could not see. Oh, she let them down. She could not see this person.

It's a really sad story. And I also think these things sound really salicious when it's not your family, you don't know the actual hurt involved. Oh, obviously. All of this sort of reeks of agony. I know, I know. I know.

Agony. But that's why, I think that's what I'm trying to say. It's like, it reeks of agony, this book. But when I read it, I found it, like, love. Like, it's such a weird frozen in time moment where none of the sadness had happened where she just loved this person. Yeah.

And she just, like, Capslock loved him. Yeah. And then obviously, if you find out the other stuff, you're like, oh. So did you think, were you thinking more about the other stuff when you're reading it this time? Like the knowledge of it. I was thinking how great the writing was

and how fun it is to read something about someone obsessively and also just remembering that there is a point in life and it is a point for me and I assume for lots of people where you do actually believe love is stronger than death which is something she says in this book or love is more important or you know the overarching thing is did you do everything for love? Did you put yourself out there? And I guess I have a much more measured set of guidelines and rules now. But it's really enjoyable to dip your toe in while thinking that's a phase you should grow out of.

Yes, that's what I think. That's what I think having... But a great face to have. You should also have it. You should have it. And that's the thing, when I read this at 18, I was like, oh my God, this woman understands what it's like. You said to be obsessed with someone.

You know, did you ever do the thing where you just like sign your name with their surname over and over again? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And do all the numbers. All the numbers. But this is where, you know what they say now, that they understand the prefrontal cortex,

which obviously really moderates your emotion doesn't finish developing until your 26. This is why the early 20s are an extension of the teenage years in lots of ways and should be, you should be writing poetry, learning to play the guitar, singing songs, doing karaoke, shouting, Alanis Morissette, like all of these things. And it's why it's so uncomfortable

when someone much older has a relationship with someone in their early 20s. There's this thing where, yes, they are an adult, but they are a different phase of life to you. But also that the time she was growing, up, that's when you got married and had kids. Yeah. So his first wife must have been the similar young age.

So none of them have developed their prefrontal quarters and they're all married for children and being like, oh, now I need to have an affair. Like, well, yeah, of course, it seems like you're married very young. Would you ever write anything about them? So I imagine you could write an amazing film about these two. I think, you know, I think apparently this one's been optioned and it's never got made. There's another story that she, they had a fight, the two of them. Obviously, it's some like literary thing.

And she bit off part of his. upper lip. That's a party. Yeah, but there's so Ted and Sylvia, isn't it? And I feel like they're sort of not as, again, they're not as known as Ted and Sylvia. And obviously she's... Because Ted Hughes was a really good poet and it sounds like George Barker really wasn't. But he was T.S. Eliot's, like, at the time.

But maybe it's like a support act where you don't really want a good one. You don't really want a good progeny in case they make you look bad. It's interesting. I'm really fascinated where, like, at the time, if you go back in time to 9045, everyone's going, oh my god George Barker's incredible Liz's a smart who and now it's like oh no that dead sea guy I don't think you could even get hold of I remember someone bought me an out of print copy I just find it so interesting that like yeah those people frozen them would have been she would have been like I'm a failure and he would have been like I'm a success yeah TSL it likes me

my like I'm published on every face I'm a genius and now everyone's looking back going and I think that's hopeful for people writing that maybe in a hundred years yeah if your partner or has you got a question is more successful than you don't think that long term that's going to stay true it might change guys it might change I think this book like captures a time so perfectly can you think of other books you read at like that age oh what's the what's the really literary love story one oh oh a s buy it yeah A.S. Byett, what's it called? Possession. You think it's possession? Yeah. ASBuyat possession where they write letters.

So George Barker? Married other people. Yeah. But, so did he and Elizabeth ever break up or she just had a relationship with him for the rest of his life? I think it sounds like they had an affair for 18 years. So I don't quite, it sounds like eventually he married someone who was like, you have to get, she can't be here anymore. Sorry. And then they brought like this big country pad or something and he went on, had more kids over there. So I think eventually he must have. But they sound like those people are just involved in each other's lives. Like, that's it. she's made the decision. She even says that at one point in the book. There's one point I didn't fold it over where she's like, I know you tried to deny me, but like give up basically.

Like, I'm yours. I only remember, I am not the ease, but the end. I'm not to blind you, but to find you. What you think is the siren singing to lure you to your doom is only the inevitable welcoming you after so long await. I was made only for you. And that made me go, oh, it's intense, isn't it? Yeah, it's dense, but scary to get that text. Yeah, yeah. It's made only for you. Oh, he's on three dots. I like it when she's got advice to other women. Oh, God.

And it's about why it should be a harlot. Harlots have eyes that scamper like mice around restaurants, you know, really fun. And they're girls in love, be harlots. It hurts less. Like, I just love the idea of her. It's like drink on her fifth martini. I know. She's, I mean, she sounds like such a character.

But yeah, I don't think she sounds like a character that you would like to have been up close to. I read another thing. Yes. He was a Canadian journalist who, when he was like 20, started writing to her because she came to Canada and was teaching for a bit and they became friends. But he was like in his 20s and obsessed with her. Yeah. And then he came to London to stay with her and he ran away.

And he basically was writing this piece in, I think it's the Walrus, this Canadian journal, saying like he couldn't cope being up close with her and her friends. And like, first of you, they did all greet him with it. Oh, are you the homosexual from Canada? I don't think he was quite ready for that. and he wrote her all these letters being like fuck you for ruining our friendship like you know we had this amazing thing

and you've like destroyed it because but he said like he couldn't cope being in her presence and around her incredibly witty, acerbic, drunk pre-war friends who like just the world they were living was too much and then years later he goes to her archive because he wants to kind of dig up this relationship he had and she's got all the, it's his letters as a 20 year old

which he's writing like in this style, like, I love you. Why have you done this to me? So she obviously bought out like intensity in people. But then how do you, yeah, how do you live that intensely? Is it possible? Also, again, I read in between the lines like, that's, it's nasty. I mean, you say acerbic, witty drinking, but what I'm hearing is alcoholics being very spiteful. And again, when you're the 20 year old and you're vulnerable and raw and you just want to feel everything very deeply, someone else is taking no care for your feelings. Do you remember that amazing Simpsons episode where like there's that really

acerbic, I think it's when Marge has the one Chanel suit. She fights a Chanel suit from like the charity shop so she can go to the golf place and they're like, oh, you're rich, we love you, but she has to keep wearing it and they're like they get really suspicious. And this woman like keeps saying horrible, really acerbic kind of put downs in that kind of like

Dorothy Parker way. And then Marge runs out and she's like, oh no, I hope she didn't take it personally when I said that deeply usurbing and witty one liner ever just as she was leaving and it's like this idea of like yeah it's horrible that sounds like a horrible place but we sort of again like dorothy part we hold up those people because it's such like this witty crazy so like the life she was living sounds insane this soho 1960s life she was having she was best like really good friends with geoffrey bernard as well like yeah and it does sound like really damaged people without therapy drinking but but then

the book is so beautiful that's what i can't reconcile like there is such a beauty and what you're saying about that 20 year old she was that vulnerable 20 year old and what's and where the really I guess the genius of her writing is is that it is a sort of epic poem that keeps um being very mundane and real world at the same time which is why something's clang like the algebra or that al capone reference but yeah she will mention something you know hummingbirds and trees and then have a Coca-Cola yeah that's the thing about 20 year olds right like they do occasionally like a stopped clock they're not always wrong I've got another OTT much sentence.

On her mangledness, this is about his wife. On her mangledness, I am spreading my amorous sheets. But who will have any pride in the wedding red, seeping up between the thighs of love, which rise like a colossus, but whose issue is only the cold semen of grief. I laughed at that one. I was like, wow.

The cold semen of grief. I've got cold semen of grief here for Sarah. Is that what your podcast was called? Is it the cold semen of grief, Carrie? Yeah, yeah, yeah I think I was that intense as a 20 year old And I think the re-read was a bit of a shocker I was like, oh fuck

I didn't think I was that intense But now I'm getting to that point in my life When I'm like, you were really fucking intense You're a little, you're a small woman And you're really, really, really full of emotion I mean, you're super clever, you're absorbing all these things, your dad had so recently died at such a sort of pivotal point of your life and then you've met your now husband, first love, you will live in the drama.

I was living the drama. But it's funny because as ever, you know, the, when you look back on your life, you always think the moment you're in now, you're rational at this point. And I think 20 years is a really solid, maybe it's because the age we're at, you really are looking back at early adulthood to when you were making your way like we were at university and we would have felt so grown up and we would have thought like oh we got like a lot of stuff figured out and just looking back and being like oh so I feel like I want to go back to 20 of me and be like oh I know sometimes it looks like adults

where there are eyes at you it's not that you're twat it's not that you're wrong it's just like you haven't lived another this is what we talk about a lot you haven't lived enough I think Paul, I don't think we thought our lives are sorted out. What I see is really linear. It was like, you know, the vegetation from dinosaur times that had to sort of be fossilised to become oil? Yeah, an oil. All I see is all of this stuff, which was actually about creativity, feeling as much as possible, living as much as possible. Really, and neither of you were particularly self-destructive, which we're lucky about.

It was all sort of like propelling us towards this, you know, having lives where we got to make. stuff. Maybe we're lucky we weren't erasers. Yeah, we didn't have a clothing allowance. No. We were spending our money at New Look. Bay Trading, R-IP. Oh, River Island. Those were the days, man. Bay Trading. I still think about the brown top I had from Bay Trading. It was really just a great brown top. I had some really, really good tart and trousers, stretching. Yeah. I remember those? Lighten back, please. Yeah. When Bay Trading were there? They were great. I've got one of the horrible story, but it's so horrible. Come on. I'll come on then. So someone who used to work with her said she used to start the day by sniffing cowgum glue which was a layout paste

what they used to use at Harper's Bazaar. Perhaps to jolt herself to write faster. When deadlines forced her to craft copy into the wee hours, she sometimes sent her eldest daughter Georgina out to Selfridge's department store where a friend who sold lamps in the basement could supply a couple of amphetamines.

I would get purple hearts for her, Georgina now 78 told me and her Kentish town Pieditare so that she could stay up all night. Okay, so she's an addict. She's an addict all around. Uppers and Downers. Uppers, Downers, Alcohol and Love. And I think she's someone really living at the extremes of that addiction. In a time when it was completely normal,

when no one would have said that's a problem, that you should be doing that. Everyone would have been like, we've all got PTSD. Yeah. So whatever you've got to do to get through it. Would you, I know you don't like recommending things, but like I thought our listeners, I don't know. I feel conflicted about it. I think this is so great as a book.

Like if it's on your shelf or you see it on someone else's shelf, pick it up and have a read of it. Because I think she's a really great writer and I actually think that I can't remember which book I was reading recently but it had lots about her and her relationship with George Walker. I want to say it's someone like Rachel Cusk.

Oh, interesting. So it's someone who was... Oh, she's got there before me. But someone who was going back through their relationship and them and their poetry but it might not have been Rachel Cusk herself. It's a really nice wormhole to go down because it does feel historical now.

And I think if you haven't read it because it's nearly 100 years ago. Oh my God, don't say that. Well, it's 80. I still find that jarring. I still find the 20 years impossible to get my head around. Of this century. Like when we were growing up, the war was like 40 years ago.

So now that's the equivalent of like the 80s. Yeah. So like when we're trying to explain to our, when I tried to speak to my kids like, oh, when I was a child, it was like this. It's like being like, when the war was on. Yeah, when Hitler invaded Poland. Yeah.

And you know, they're looking at Wham. Yeah. And I think, hey, this is a modern thing. I'm just telling you, I'm telling you about Kate Bush. Like, this is an important thing you should know. But that's the same as I'm going. Oh, have you heard viruline? Yeah.

She, oh, you've got to go. These cliffs are very important to us. But it's weird that people do have the 80s sort of nights where they play 80s music and go up, but we didn't go to 40s nights where we did tea dancing. Our grandparents would have been going to that. And we would have considered that like, oh, old people's stuff. Oh, like, tea, it was tea dances. Yeah.

And that was their equivalent of going to like listen to like 80s music. It's a boy, George. Yeah. It's also because as someone creeping through their 40s towards their 50s, how you assess half a century is completely different so time now is just

a much less meaningful construct as it used to be ages yeah and I think that's what I find about this is like this was written in 1945 like you said it's so old but it does feel fresh

you do feel like your it wouldn't be out of place now like this Taylor Swift Taylor Swift would get a bit out of this oh she'd get an album out of this mate there's 10 parts to it she can do 10 tracks

Tay Tay 10 you edit But this is right up your alley tape. I bet she has read it. It's very difficult to buy for a really famous pop star. So you would have to go not expensive. Do you know what? Everyone would give her everything. She's got loads of clothes and jewelry.

You're going to have to get her a nice light book. Did I tell you how Steen told me Taylor Swift was getting married? No. So Steen came into the room and I really thought something really that we knew. And he was like, oh God, everyone's talking about it on the internet. Guess what's happened? I was like, what? Taylor Swift is quite engaged.

I'm getting all these messages. And I was like, you. Out of anyone should know how miserable marriage is. We were so happy for Taylor Swift. Thank you for listening to The Weirdo's Book Club. My Kids' book, Lydia Marmalade and The Christmas Wish, is out in paperback and available to buy now. And I'm on tour. Come and see me. Tickets for my show. I'm a strange glooper on sale from sarah pasco.com.com.

You can find out all about the upcoming books we're going to be discussing this series on our Instagram. Head to at Sarah and Carriads, Weirdo's Book Club, all one word. and please let us know what you want us to read. And you can join us on Patreon for extra little sneaky bits. There will lots more weird and wonderful stuff over there. We'd love to have you. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you.