Episode Seven: Kiare Ladner

This episode we talk to Kiare Ladner. 

As a child, Kiare wanted to live on a farm, run an orphanage and be on stage. As an adult, she found herself working for academics, with prisoners and on nightshifts. Her short stories have been published in anthologies, broadcast on the radio and shortlisted in competitions, including the BBC National Short Story Award. Nightshift, about one woman’s obsessive interest in another, is her first novel, written while studying for a PhD. She grew up in South Africa and lives in London.

Listen now to discover Kiare's top five books for her hypothetical shelf.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:13

Hello, and welcome to the hypothetical bookshelf, a kind of desert island discs for books. Inspired by Talo Calvino's SO essay, Who Do We Write For or The Hypothetical Bookshelf? This is a podcast that asks writers what other works their writing is in conversation with. Looking for the ways new work can make connections between different books on a writer's and reader's hypothetical shelf. I'll be interviewing a different author each time and asking them to name five books of fiction or non-fiction that can be put beside their own on that imaginary bookshelf. Calvino also writes about how this juxtaposition and conversation between different works can question the established scale of values and code of meanings generally accepted by the wider culture. And I'm keen to test that theory, asking authors about different approaches to storytelling techniques and traditions to inspire listeners with new reading lists and new creative practices. And today I'm delighted to be speaking with Chiara Ladner. I'm going to give you a little brief introduction to Chiara. As a child, Chiara wanted to live on a farm. I love knowing this, run an orphanage and be on stage. As an adult, she found herself working for academics with prisoners and on night shifts. Her short stories have been published in anthologies, broadcast on the radio, and shortlisted in competitions, including the BBC National Short Story Award. Night Shift, about one woman's obsessive interest in another, is her first novel written while studying for a PhD. She grew up in South Africa and lives in London. She also likes compiling fancy book lists, so we should be in for a treat. Welcome, Chiara. Thank you so much, Rebecca. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for joining me. Um, okay, so let's start just by going straight into your first choice. Tell us about it.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

So my first choice is Zami, a new spelling of my name, a biomythography by Audrey Lord. Um, and I chose this book because I adore it. Um I think, as with most of the books that I chosen, but it perhaps particularly with this one, when I was reading again in preparation for today, um I just I just wanted to swallow the whole thing up all over again. Um and I I think of of my five choices, this might be the one that pulls on me the most emotionally. Um and when I first read it, I remember how tremendously excited um I I was to have found it, because Audrey Lord was so singular. Um and I think that's something that's always attracted me to writers, those who are who are perhaps outsiders, um and um and and who in their writing their their writing feels raw and visceral um and extremely honest. Um and and I just felt reading Zami, you you feel like you really have a sense of what it's like to be another consciousness in another time. Um and one that yeah, I just felt incredibly drawn towards. She I mean Audrey Lord was um lesbian black woman in New York in well this this book is set in the 30s, um, well, 30s to 50s, and it's a it's a s it's a very sexual book. It's a very it's it's it's it's just quite wonderful. It's a very giving book, it feels like that. Yeah. I'll stop there.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

I I think because I have it, I haven't read it all, partly because um I I just sort of dipped into it, but I was looking at her obviously that very famous essay about the master's tools and needling needing to dismantle the master's house uh in order to create something fresh. And I was thinking a lot about that when I was doing my PhD, and this book is kind of a new thing, too, isn't it? It's it's fiction, but it's not fiction, it's about her, but it's also really directly engaged with this idea that we can't really write about the self without kind of inventing things or the way that memory works, all of that stuff, um, which is very exciting. Do you want to give us a little bit of a sense of how the writing sounds, and then we can talk some more about how it might have inspired you?

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Yeah, yeah, um, I'd love to. Um, so um this is a little section from page two. With this reading, as with all the readings that I will be doing today, um, I have left out a little bit, um, a few words just to keep it under the 250-word count. Um but not much. So I'll read this. It's titled, by the way, this little section is titled To Whom Do I Owe the Woman I Have Become? Delois lived up the block on 142nd Street and never had her hair done, and all the neighborhood women sucked their teeth as she walked by. Her crispy hair twinkled in the summer sun as her big proud stomach moved her on down the block while I watched. Even though I tied my shoes and tried to peep under her blouse as she passed by, I never spoke to Delois because my mother didn't. But I loved her because she moved like she felt she was somebody special, like she was somebody I'd like to know someday. She moved like how I thought God's mother must have moved, and my mother, once upon a time, and someday, maybe me. Hot noon threw a ring of sunlight like a halo on the top of Delois's stomach, like a spotlight, making me sorry that I was so flat and could only feel the sun on my head and shoulders. I loved DeLois because she was big and black and special and seemed to laugh all over. I was scared of Delois for those very same reasons. One day I watched Delois step off the curb of 142nd Street against the light. Slow and deliberate. A high yellow dude in a white Cadillac passed by and leaned out and yelled at her, Hurry up, you flat footed, nappy headed, funny looking bitch. The car almost knocking her down. Delois kept right on about her leisurely business and never so much as looked around.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

That's wonderful, thanks so much. Um, I mean, there's just so much joy in that short passage, isn't there? Uh absolutely. And and some wonderful defiance.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Yes, yes, yes. No, and as you were saying earlier, you know, she she she creates this word to describe what she has done in this book, you know, a biomythography. Um and she also what what's so beautiful, I mean, that little passage was was actually titled, To Whom Do I Owe the Woman I Have Become? And the way she organizes the events in the book is, you know, unlike in a typical biography where it will um focus on achievements or, you know, um kind of um you know chronological big moments in a person's life. This this book is uh is centered around uh the woman and her relationship with the woman who have made her the person whom she is and who she feels uh lives through her and she lives through. Um, and this is it's it's quite wonderful, I think.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Yeah, I'm I think also I like that the way that she writes about wanting wanting to have more surfaces, feeling too flat. I mean, there's just that sense of wanting to expand about this passage, isn't there, and be seen and not care. And I mean, there's so many, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of other worries that she has, you know, there's the whole racist angle that's going on here around taking the space, behaving in ways you're not supposed to, not taming things, all of that. But it's yeah, um, it's really just a joy, even to hear that short passage. When did you first come across it?

SPEAKER_02 9:43

The the passage book. Um, I can't remember. It's I I think it was early in the 2000s. It was this century, um, unlike all the other books that I'm going to be mentioning. Um, yeah, but um I I think what I love about that passage as well is there are all the things that you that that you talk about and and but yeah, including the racism and and and I I find it a very poignant passage because it's um it's you know it's told from this the the the version of Audrey who was um a little girl at the time and I mean she was a little girl, she was she was uh designated to be more classed as kind of blind. Um and um there's there's such poignancy to it, I find, you know, to to the to the way that that she sees Delois. But then I love the way that she also kind of grounds it in reality. This ugly thing happens, this ugly thing comes in and happens, and Delois keeps right on about her leisurely business and never so much as looks around. And and and I think that it just I find it very moving and also aspirational.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Yeah. There's there's a lot in this passage around different viewpoints, isn't it? So although it's kind of from hers, this idea we've got how she the neighborhood don't speak to her, the mother doesn't speak to her, and then she gets this abuse from a whole different kind of social group, and that doesn't bother her either. And there's that that's what we're getting here, aren't we? We're getting this this desire from Audrey Lord that this is something to aspire to. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Just be your own person. So when you read it, do you think did it in what ways did it kind of change how you were approaching what you were doing with your work?

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Well, I think it just felt like it felt like there's another Lodst. And and I suppose that I I read to learn as much as anything else, and to kind of, you know, um sometimes absorb a certain perspective, absorb a way of being, absorb, you know, and and I think I also love the way that she writes about sex and it's kind of really bodily and kind of really open, really visceral, raw. She's very, she she doesn't hide anything, she doesn't hide her own feelings either, and and she is very, again, she is very giving. Um, her last kind of lover who she who she talks about in this book, one could so easily imagine someone else having a sort of almost a resentment towards them because what they had, um her last lover, she and her last lover, Africati or um Kitty, as she went by, what they had was um something very powerful, something very passionate. Um, and then um and then Kitty kind of disappeared, you know, she disappeared and and and Audrey was given a note by someone in a bar and she said she had to go up north, you know, up somewhere else to to see to something. And there's no we don't get any sense of pain from Audrey about this, but more a kind of gratitude for what she'd had. And and she just takes it all on her, you know, she she she is appreciative of something and of someone without needing to own them or to own that relationship or to find within it lifelong security or whatever, you know, um, or or even to have her, you know, she she it's it's not like she needs the um, it's not like she has so much pride that she has to be the one to end something. Um she accepts its ending with with with such generosity. But I'm not answering your question about how this affected my writing.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

No, but at the same time, it's interesting hearing you talking about it because um having read Night Shift, in which there is this very strong relationship, well confusing, conflicted, complicated relationship that develops between the writer, the narrator, um, and Sabine, this woman that she meets at work. Um and that kind of sort of sudden taking off, that some kind of has reminiscent feeling about some of the things that happen in the book, in your book. And I wonder whether, I mean, obviously it's played out in a very different way, um, but I I wonder whether some of that kind of thinking about how different people process relationships and feel a sense of ownership over others. There's a lot of kind of interest in your novel Night Shift that about exploring those kinds of feelings that we have about other people in our lives. And I wonder whether just hearing you say that, whether actually there was some kind of underlying influence that maybe you didn't even know.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think, you know, um I think part of why I've chosen the books I've chosen was because I think they were books that all opened me up to things that I hadn't necessarily got in my life before I read them. So I I think that, you know, having grown up where I grew up in apartheid South Africa, um, and in, you know, in a in a conservative city that I hated, um, and um, you know, kind of come, you know, I I I I was looking for lodestars, you know, and I think that um I mean I continue to, I will my whole life, but I think I think some of um finding other attitudes in literature that was so incredibly different to the the ones in the place from where I came was really important and was was a huge influence. And I mean I I I suppose I've chosen these five books, but there's so many other writers whose books I didn't choose, but who as writers, I just, you know, I I I would love to just pick a million sentences, you know, um, that have just have have have just have just yeah changed my thinking or informed it in some or other way. And I think with Audrey Lord, by the time I read her, I think ideologically I shared a lot of what she was expressing, but it was so wonderful to read it. Um and and and I think I was also massively impressed by I mean sh you know she was born in 1934, so she's kind of a bit older than my parents would have been, and it was so exciting to know someone was thinking like this, living like this, even then, you know. Um and I think that just yeah, I I think I found that quite thrilling.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

It's interesting, isn't it, when you think about how books just provide this way of learning about other people. One of the things you said when you first mentioned the book just a few minutes ago was like you felt like you really understood and explored another consciousness. And books have that are generous in that way, aren't they? They give us that gift of kind of taking a completely different view on the world, which may not be around us. Um, and it's kind of mad. Like you can understand, and I'm sure we'll get on to having a discussion about this, why certain states want to ban certain books, because they allow you to think differently. Yeah, um and you know, uh, but there's a complete joy in that, isn't there?

SPEAKER_02 18:22

And suddenly you know you're not alone, you know. But there can be that, there can be that absolute affirmation and recognition, and yeah, that cuts.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Yeah. Uh and also I'm fully aware that this is a very cruel thing to force you to only pick five. And I should just make it quite clear that there is no assumption that these are the only five books that you may well be interested in or have reflected upon for your work or anything like that. So it's just I think sometimes it's that thing, isn't it? Of in a way, we have all of these books that sit like a C. I love sitting in my desk, and behind me, I have lots of nice books on the shelves. And somehow that gives me a sense of comfort. And I think her writing for many people is a confidence boost. It's like a you can do it. You can be, you know, you can be going against what other people are telling you, you know, in terms of how you need to behave, in terms of how you need to write, in terms of what structures you might be choosing to write with, what words you might choose. Um, that all of these things you can allow yourself to be brave and write as you see it rather than as how other people are saying you ought to do it. Um, I'm waffling on here, but you know, I think that sense that different books slide to the surface of things when you're creating different projects. Um there's a joy in that. And there isn't just one book, is there? There's this kind of like sea, and occasionally certain books rise to the rise to the crest of the wave, you know, and you go, yes, that's the book. Just fight for now.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Yeah, yes, no, absolutely, yeah. I I totally agree with what you're saying. And I I also really relate to the sense of these books being this being this comfort, being, yeah, and and and and yeah, feeling like something on your side in a way.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Yeah, so let's let's leave that nice comfort, because I feel like maybe your next choice is is more combative in terms of your relationship with it. So please tell us about uh your next book on the list and why it is that you kind of can't not have it in this list.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Yes. So the next book is Sabbath Theatre by Philip Roth. And this has caused me a lot of trouble. Um, as I was saying to you earlier, I couldn't sleep last night, wondering about, you know, whether whether this was a big mistake, including it in my list. Um but ah, you know, there's something about this book that really, really spoke to me when I first read it. And then um, and that was in the 90s. Um, and then I read it again, um, probably early 2000s. Um, and then I read parts of it again. I mean, I'm always looking at um, it's a book I go to a lot for um, you know, certain parts of it I I really know, you know, certain parts of it I've gone to again and again and again because technically they are brilliant. You know, it is, it is, I I think I I I feel it is a masterpiece technically. Um, and not just technically, but there's there's such life in it. There's it's it's at the same time, Sabbath is terrible. Sabbath the protagonist is terrible. He is a terrible, terrible man. Um, but I guess you know, and and he does these terrible things. Um and and and and he isn't rewarded for them in the book, you know, he he he he he he is desperately unhappy. I mean the the the the hook that pulls you through the book is is he going to end his life? Because he is seriously thinking about this all the way through the book. And I think that was one of the things I loved about the book actually when I first read it was because I feel that um the idea of ending one's life is something that I think isn't you know spoken about or or you know um expressed nearly as often as I'm I'm sure that it's uh a commonplace thought for for many people um at different times and probably to different degrees of seriousness. But this here in this book it's confronted head on this man who's made this total mess of his life in a lot of ways um but right from the beginning of this book we also know he is deep in grief. He he very soon a few pages in we realize he has lost the person he has been incredibly close to um for for for decades um his mistress not his wife um and so I think this book is such a vital mix of of pain and and he inflicts it Sabbath inflicts it in the midst of Sabbath's pain Sabbath doesn't um um act heroically ever quite the contrary he's the total anti-hero um and um but I suppose when I was thinking about it last night and I was thinking you know why has this book mattered to me in the way that it has um and of course this is taking into account that it would never be published now I don't think um and um you know I think one of the things that draws me to it is this idea of the trap of the self. And I think that's been in everything I've ever written probably it's strongly in the novel I'm working on at the moment. It's just something that that fascinates me. Tell me more what you mean about the trap of the self because people who haven't read the book the the protagonist is um this guy Mikey Sabbath right who's a sort of failing puppeteer sort of failing at a lot of things and he's also had um sexual harassment complaints made against him he's got this affair he's been having for many years but he has multiple sexual relationships with other people is that right as well uh yeah he what he yeah yeah yeah and I think famously some critic once said that it should be thrown across the room or something is that right yes I was actually looking for the source of that and then I I I found that I don't know online it's say I I was sure I'd read I'd read an article by a woman who had said that she she threw it across the room but then when I was looking online you know to try to um see who had said that I was coming up against things that it was it was it was it that that idea actually came from Claire Masud who um named it as one of her favorite books um and and and and and referred to the idea of throwing it across the room um but but you know and and also to the idea that it wouldn't be publishable now.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

But still and you think it wouldn't be publishable now because the content is too offensive?

SPEAKER_02 25:54

Um I think I suppose that people there there's Sabbath and then there's there's what Sabbath's doing and saying and there's what the book is doing and saying um and Sabbath he is terrible terrible terrible but um but there's also a delight in him and a delight in his terribleness. And looking at it you know looking at last night at it and coming across a few passages which I had totally forgotten um sometimes I was I was a little bit uncomfortable. And I think I've yeah I've he always takes things too far Sabbath um and um I I can see you know I I I I I can just imagine uh uh an overwhelming amount of criticism for um his depiction of women and his depiction of um certain issues there was an issue that that I that I realized last night that I I had completely forgotten well I'd forgotten it so much that I actually couldn't even remember reading it but where it seems in fact that his wife who is not the person he's close to and um you know is is is not the person he adores um Rosanna and his wife Rosanna um there's there's a strong intimation that she was probably sexually abused by her father and that's something that would be treated very very seriously and sensitively in contemporary literature even if writing about a complete rogue like Sabbath. But yeah I suppose I suppose you know it it's it's I think Claire Massud said it's it's so worth studying as literature you know as as something that that came from a very specific time and mind and place and everything you know um and nowadays I I don't know I think they would I think people would find you know at one point in the book for example um Rosanna who is an alcoholic who is um in rehab during the book uh and Sabbath goes to to visit her um and she's not in a room and um in her room is however a notebook um and Sabbath being totally Sabbath of course reads her notebook now Rosanna had um a father who was um well like I said and there there's an intimation that he abused her but he he was also an alcoholic and he also killed himself um and he left her a pile of letters which we have read earlier in the book because of course Sabbath found them all and read them himself so now Sabbath reads her diary and finds she she obviously I suppose at this rehab thing must have been given an this as an exercise so she has written a letter to her dead father telling him everything and blaming him for everything and so on. And Sabbath reads all of this in her notebook and then Sabbath because he just can't or he just cannot resist doing the worst thing takes out you know his pencil or pen or whatever and in her notebook writes a reply as if from her dead father you know and um and as it's written it's it's kind of it's you you sort of like nowadays you read it all and you it it's it's very very funny you know um the the reply that he writes and it's a terrible cheek and it's 100% Sabbath. But I suppose that for readers nowadays it it would be often seen as that something too serious was being dismissed in in the way that this is is handled. I think that the book starts brilliantly I think there is so much that is exciting and I think what for me kind of what what saves it for me if if you know um not saves it that sounds that sounds patronizing. It doesn't need my saving at all um it but what what makes it wonderful to me and I think what I appreciated at the time of reading it as well is that Sabbath Sabbath is totally Sabbath centered um but he is very very honest. And we we see him sometimes he will be feeling in intense grief and so he will be crying but he will also be extremely aware of the theatricality of his tears and the performative aspect um and he it doesn't feel like he ever justifies his behavior or hides it you know or pretends to be anything other than what he is. And so I suppose when it comes to the trap of self partly why I love this book is because it feels like it you you enter this consciousness which is and I think readers nowadays would interpret it as being a bit of a trap because of it not perhaps seeing um taking other consciousnesses into account enough um because of it being so solipsistic. But it feels like you enter it and you are you you break open the fruit of Sabbath's consciousness and you see everything inside and it's ugly and it's funny and it's raw and it's very very deeply tender sometimes um and very full of love as well you know and I think that whole mess existing together is something that attracts me.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

It makes a lot of sense to me because I think if in a way although completely different to your previous example at the same time you've mentioned some words that carry across like raw like visceral uh like getting a kind of unfiltered sense of another consciousness and I think you know if we are we can't only ask for an unsanitized version from somebody whose political and sort of social views we might agree with.

SPEAKER_02 33:05

You know it's difficult isn't it how if we sanitize everything then then in a way we're kind of shutting off sometimes we have to confront some of the nastier aspects of other ways of of looking at the world um and I think you know I I haven't read the book but weirdly it you you know it has made me want to read it just to think about why certain things are published in certain eras and not others and whether you know that sense of kind of censoring things is always a good thing or needs to be looked at thoughtfully you know exactly yeah but anyway let's it's one reason to read it is just the the writing is magnificent. It is it is it is superb from the very long sentences that do incredible things to you know the the way that he mixes different forms to the way that he will go you know travel in time through the book move in time through the book um the way that he links things um you know I mean from from from from all of those perspectives the writing is just it's it's it's tops I love that I'm gonna look for that and I'm gonna hope someone says my writing is tops someday.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

So uh let's hear an extract. I think you've picked the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 34:39

Yeah yeah I actually picked another extract about his mother because I thought that might make readers uh listeners more more sympathetic to him but then I just couldn't I could not read the beginning um and for for uh what what I would recommend to anyone um who starts the book even is is that that they also read the end the end is wonderful I would have loved to have read the end but I thought that would really be spoil us spoiling it so I'll just start um and again I I have actually at one point um left out quite a big paragraph just to to fit in the word limit either forswear fucking others or the affair is over this was the ultimatum the maddeningly improbable wholly unforeseen ultimatum that the mistress of 52 delivered in tears to her lover of 64 on the anniversary of an attachment that had persisted with an amazing licentiousness and that no less amazingly had stayed their secret for 13 years. But now with hormonal infusions ebbing with the prostate enlarging with probably no more than another few years of semi-dependable potency still his with perhaps not that much more life remaining at the approach of the end of everything he was being charged on pain of losing her to turn himself inside out she was Drenka Balik the innkeeper's popular partner in business and marriage esteemed for the attention she showered on all her guests from her warm-hearted mothering tenderness not only with visiting children and the old folks but with the local girls who cleaned the rooms and served the meals and he was the forgotten puppeteer Mickey Sabbath a short heavy set white bearded man with unnerving green eyes and painfully arthritic fingers who had he said yes to Jim Henson some 30 odd years earlier would have got himself a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and been to China with Bob Hope.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Or so his wife Rosanna delighted in reminding him back when she was still drinking herself to death for her two unchallengeable reasons because of all that had not happened and because of all that thanks Chiara I mean even that last line that just kind of sums up doesn't it in a way exactly why we resent other people it's quite it in some ways it's very vague and in other ways it's very precise. Yeah to resent everything that oh let me get those words again to resent all because of all that had not happened and because of all that had you can see the character there right from the start and I think you can see some of the complex kind of troubles that you have around you know enjoying the book um but it's interesting that you say you go back to it again and again for things like time management, you know some kind of quite sort of craft elements of the writing um reading the book as a writer I guess specifically rather than and do you think that you do you think that's become the way that you read books now or do you think there are some books where you feel like you escape that sort of reading with the eye of how it's constructed?

SPEAKER_02 38:22

No I never escape it no no I read everything that way I love it it's half the fun it's like a game to me it's fun I mean I I I I always have you know two eyes so I mean the the one is always like seeking out anything that you know any sentence that comes to life that makes me gasp and go oh wow or go oh yes that's how it is or go I knew that but I'd never I'd never quite grasped it that way or you know or whatever. So there's always a part of me doing that but then there's always the other part so even when I get really caught up in something when I notice if I've like missed my tube stop or something then I'm like hang on okay what were they doing here that was so brilliant how were they doing it you know um and inevitably I you know I so I mean I might go back to to to something like that and I might go how does he transition this scene so elegantly you know into the next or whatever um or you know how does he you know manage to go back for six pages into the past and then back into the present and and it's and it's beautiful. And then you know I might I might take it and um yeah I think I've even got an age here where I'd you know I might I might step I might go through it I've lost it oh no I haven't yeah so here I I found this paper in it when I was looking at it again and I was I was thinking I was I was thinking there there's there's there's a scene um near where I was originally going to to read from where he goes from describing um sucking at Dranker's breasts you know to to saying how that made him long for his late mother um to going back into you know a whole lot of history and so you know on this page like I'd I'd you know I'd sort of done Dranker sucking at her breast to longing for her late mother emotions hadn't stirred he hadn't felt since he was eight or nine and his mother was mothering her two boys to his brother to his brother's death at 20 to how his mother didn't get out of bed who talked to his brother Monty until she was 90 in a home to now Sabbath talked to her to his late father Sabbath never uttered a word but suddenly talking to his mother to he questions it the afterlife to his mother is everywhere to his mother is taking him to his death. So you know I'd do something like that and then I might I might go okay now let me see with what I'm trying to do you know could I could I follow that kind of structure and then I will you know I will try sentences of my own or paragraphs of my own. Of course what I come up with when I do that that sort of thing is always something of my own that's dreadful because it's not of my own it's kind of you know it's leaning too heavily on another structure then I'll, you know, but but then you know and I'll I'll read it a few days later and I'll be like oh gosh that is dreadful that's my worst rating ever but then something of the you know something something stays behind of how how those sorts of you know and then just working purely with my work you know not going back to whatever source has inspired whatever technical thing um I you know I I'll I'll I'll chop it and shape it and something and sometimes I'll end up with something that nobody would ever make the link because it's just so hugely different in every way rhythm, syntax, content, everything but that wouldn't have come had I not gone via B to get to C, you know, if had I not got I don't know whatever that triangle is that you you know you have to go sort of the wrong way to get to the right way but this is the wrong way. This is someone else's way but someone else who's very skilled and so it leads you on a path that you can't maybe just get to on your own.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:29

Yeah I think I mean as a person who likes to make lists as you've confessed in some biography somewhere hence I found it um I also quite enjoy kind of lists about of books when I'm thinking of you know writing something. And I think it's often really interesting how what I often take from a book is an atmosphere that it creates for me. A kind of way that I feel when I'm reading it. And it's that feeling that I I feel connects to the project that I'm working on. So it might be a book about something completely different but there's some kind of flavor of feeling that I experience that I want to recreate in some way or that I want to inhabit some of the ways I'm writing the project I'm working on. And so it can often be a book that doesn't seem related you know but that actually just feels right for something that I'm trying to do. And then it kind of sits there like I have it sort of sat there like a kind of like you know winking at me across the desk and going you know how did I do this have a look at me um and yeah I know what you mean it's like it feels like it's something quite far off and yet at the same time it's having an influence over your thinking around what you're trying to do in in your own project. So it makes a lot of sense to me.

SPEAKER_02 43:58

That's so well explained I I love the way that you say that. So, in in fact, like your sort of comparable novels might not be novels dealing with the same subject matter or in the same style or anything. It might just be that that atmosphere speaks to something that you're also trying to create. Although the sort of colour of the book in your mind is a colour you want in yours or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

Yeah, and I think also sometimes, you know, there's that feeling, isn't there, of how books kind of get, you know, when you read a lot, sometimes you don't remember everything perfectly, but you have like a kind of image that sticks with you. So somebody was talking to me about how they'd kind of waded their way through, oh, that book about um, you know, where they they go, they go up to a sanatorium in the mountains. Can you magic mountain? Yes, yes, the magic mountain. And for me, when I think about that book, all that comes to me is a guy wrapped in a blanket on a deck chair. That's the book for me. And it's like is like I can't really tell you everything that happens in it. And you know, I know people have said many things and written many things about the wonder of that novel, but for me, that's what it is. A kind of slightly grey, brownie blanket. It's not even a particularly nice blanket uh in my head, and they're just sat there sort of staring out. Um and I don't know, I think sometimes that's what happens, isn't it? There's a there's a scene maybe that overtakes your other other knowledge of the book that you hold somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Um I totally relate. I've I I mean I've got I've got the most terrible memory ever. I've always had a terrible memory. Even when I was a child, I remember spending an entire afternoon trying to learn sex traffic signs for health. Um, but you know, of course, like, but I um uh yeah, I totally relate to what you say. And the interesting thing is though, sometimes I will find in my writings something that later I'm reading something I've read before, and there's an echo, and I'll think, my God, I didn't really, you know, I didn't realize I was echoing in that way, you know. Um, so something does stick. Something yes, and and I I know exactly what you mean by that, you know, by by there just being this one image and the whole book being kind of that image to you. Um, and yet that image being so much more than just the image. It's like some there's a resonance. There's definitely a well, I have to believe that since I forget everything.

SPEAKER_00 46:32

I'm sure I think there it definitely is. Uh, and it makes me want to jump to one of your other books, but we'll come back to it. So let's move on to the next one, um, which is uh None to accompany me by Nadine Gordimer. So tell me about this book because this book kind of feels to me like from someone from South Africa that it's speaking, as in you, sorry, not me, just in case people are confused, um, that it speaks to that part of your history, but I'm sure there's a lot more of it as well.

SPEAKER_02 47:04

Yeah, so this is an interesting one because um again, um, so Nadine Gordomer, uh, we had to read some of her stuff at school. I mean, some of her books were banned in South Africa, but we we had to read some of them at school. Um, I mean, I grew up in a very kind of liberal anti-apartheid type family. My my my my parents, you know, always spoke of her with enormous respect. Um but she yeah, it didn't it didn't do anything for me kind of growing, you know, when I when I was a teenager. Um, and then when I was at university, I started reading her again, and she just came to life for me, her writing in a completely new way. I think, I think I I had to reach that age, maybe. Um, because her writing, her writing is hard. It's most for the most part, some of her books are more accessible, like um House Gun is, I think, her most accessible book, and it's the one I most usually recommend to anyone who wants to read Sam Gordomer. But in in my early 20s, I just I just read her hungrily, and yeah, her sentences are long, sometimes unwieldy. Her book is her her her her books are are very intellectual. Um and um and and so I always felt that by the time I'd read a Nadine Gordomer book, by the time I reached the last page, I'm a slow reader anyway, but I would always feel as if I had read it at least twice, probably more, because I thought every sentence I probably have to do that with, you know, because it was it was kind of kind of hard work. Um but yeah, but but I just um what I found in them at that point was um something I admired um and respected um and didn't have within myself. There there was a a degree of um control or or something like that, that the complete complete um ability to I don't know, it's it's it felt always to me like her I was quite intimidated by her books actually um and by the characters in them as well. They were um so it felt to me so ethical. And I suppose I felt like a weak, faulty, frail human being. And and and and her and her characters and her writing felt to me like something out of reach, but which I felt yeah, filled me with kind of just admiration and respect. So again, it was very, very strange going back to this book now. So Notting Gauthima's book, Nantu Company, was written was written um between 1990 and 1994. Um and um there are there's there are two main couples in the book. There's Vera and Bennett Stark, and then there's Sibongila and Didymus Macorma. And but Vera Stark is very much the center of the book. Um, and she is um uh a civil rights lawyer, and she's working for a legal foundation that helps black people reclaim ancestral land, um, which was taken from them under apartheid laws. And what drew me to the book were a number of things. Um partly that we get um a view that is actually really unique in terms of we get the perspective of someone who is in fact an activist. Um, we get her perspective on the country. Um and it's hard to express how different that is to the perspective of someone writing about the country um and making what often seem very obvious points about race. Um and the I I partly chose the passage that I'm going to read from this book because of that. Um because in this passage, again, we we it it just takes things so much deeper and it's it gives such a far more complex and interesting view um of the ways that, for example, a system like apartheid um would affect people. Um and again, it's just it's just yeah, because way beyond the obvious things that people might think of. Um that that they're they're yeah, so um, so that was one of the things that that that that drew me to the book enormously. Um another thing was the protagonist's sexuality. Um she's a heterosexual woman, um but she has an affair, um, and her affair is with actually Bennett Stark. So she has a first marriage, her husband goes off to the to fight in the war, I think the second world war, um, and she has an affair with with um with with Ben Stark. Um and she then leaves her first husband for Ben. Um, and Ben is um gentle and adores Vera. Um and they have they have a wonderful sex life, and that is in the book, but she has affairs again. Um and I found this fascinating. Um, and I found, as always with Gordomer, how she writes about these affairs is different to how I'd ever read anyone else write about an affair. Um, and she puts them within the context of a country where lying was a necessity in political life, for example, to you you couldn't give if if you were an activist, you couldn't give things away. You you had to keep secrets, you had to lie. Um and and similarly, this is taken into into her private life. And and it was interesting because she um has a husband who she loves deeply, um, and yet she will have another affair because her sexuality feels deeply uh her own, deeply something about the self. And sometimes there's you you you sometimes get a sort of slight sense of self-hatred over doing this. Um, but she doesn't dwell on it, she doesn't make a drama of it as well, you know, and she also depicts at one point she depicts Ben. Um and she it's a very moving depiction. She describes just being in a car, or I think it's a car, um, on the road and passing a restaurant where he's sitting alone at a table and kind of stooped over. And it's just such a poignant image, and it's she understands that he's even if he doesn't consciously know what she is doing, at some level he he he knows. Um and so again, I suppose with Gordomer, it again something that so has always attracted me to her writing is that she is it feels as though she is scratching at the truth, you know, as though she is trying to be as as honest as she possibly can be. Um about well, about everything, about this woman who lives this, you know, in in many ways exemplary life. Um, and and and uh and and so that's fascinating. But then the other thing that really drew me to this book was the title, None to Accompany Me. Um, the the quote on the very first page. Well, one of them, there too, but there's one by Basho, um the Japanese poet, and it's None to Accompany Me on This Path, Nightfall in Autumn. Um, and I just loved that, and I loved something of how this is a woman, the protagonist who is deeply connected to her society, deeply involved with her work, sexually alive, um, and and connected, um, and yet alone, ultimately alone. And something in that felt to me like it expressed something very true about the human condition.

SPEAKER_00 57:19

I think what comes out to me, apart from the thread, uh, which I think all of your choices so far have been trying to scratch at the truth, as you said, uh, is also just that yeah, there is a kind of um solitude coming out. I've lost my train of thought now. Suddenly, you know, when you somehow feel like you've grasped something and then it slips away. Um, but also a nuance, I guess, was the word I was searching for. That fiction, one of the things fiction does, and I think one of the reasons we need fiction now, and there is always an argument for fiction, is that it gets closer to the complexity of life, right? I think, you know, a fact book, a list of kind of you know, the things that one has done in one's life or the things that a character might do in the lot in their life, never really gets to the bottom of the muddle that we actually are involved in. And I think, you know, one of the things that you're describing about this book and about that particular time in South Africa is that it's complicated. You know, it's easy to imagine from the outside that, well, you do this and this is how it happens and this is how it is, but we all know that nothing is straightforward, nothing is that, you know, simple. And you're describing this woman who politically has got a very um correct view, but is struggling with her sensuality and how that expresses itself, and this whole idea of living in a way in which you have have to hide certain aspects of yourself, um, that instantly kind of that feels like a political choice to explore that aspect of that character in a way, you know. Um we are not all good, we are not all bad. We are not, you know, that whole kind of thing of how difficult it is to take decisions um and to and to live in a way which is entirely kind of morally one way. So I think you know, there's this thing of how you know, I'm you know, you can be drawn to some big figures, and I remember particularly when I was a young person, you know, I had I was obsessed with Gandhi, and it was only later, and I found out lots more about him and somehow the complexities of his family life, for example, that made me think, oh I remember feeling this deep sense of having been betrayed by this person obviously had never met, you know, but I'd had this image in my head, and I think, but actually that's important. I think it's important to know what we sacrifice um in order to behave in certain ways, and in you know, and that you can be many things to different people, that you can still stand for change, you can still, you know, be fighting for a country for people, a non-violent way of protest, all of that, and be morally flawed. You know, that it's it's complicated, and I think we need that now. We need that understanding of complexity. So, you know, it's there's no easy way through this kind of book, is there? There's no easy way through a really a period of time which was created, you know, had it has a complex history, and which also we forget was having is still having an impact, is you know, and and was was was having an impact across Africa, the whole continent, not just that place. Um, and also I think you know, um, it's difficult to talk about these things, but they they go on. We still live with them, and I think sometimes we ignore them, and to ignore them, we're ignoring them at our peril. You know, it's a mistake not to look at some of these difficult times because they can speak to us and they can help us understand where we are now. Um yeah, give us you bring it together so beautifully.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:16

Bring it together. That's wonderful. I'm enjoying that. Um, but you know, I also I think I think for me, I like like I remember when I found that Martin Luther King, for example, also, you know, another uh, you know, a huge figure. And when when I found out a few other things about him, it made me love him all the more because it was just and similarly with um um Bishop Chute, I was listening to an interview with him recently. Um, and well, obviously it the interview hadn't happened recently because he's he's not around anymore, but he had chosen in this interview to expose something that he wanted forgiveness for in a sense. He had been asked if he forgave someone, and instead he turned the question into an exposure of something he wanted forgiveness for. And it made me absolutely adore him all the more because I felt if even such a great man can fuck up, you know, it's I don't know, it gives it it it makes him human, it makes it makes it seem like of course we're not perfect, you know. Um, and I think certainly this book, None to Accompany Me, it wouldn't it wouldn't really exist without the affair aspect. It's that's essential. And uh and also again that she just doesn't she she doesn't take uh the ordinary perspective you would expect. You know, she she it it it's exactly as you put it complicated.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:57

Risk is important, isn't it? It's that idea of in a way you're in a situation and in a place where you're constantly taking risks, and an affair is another one of those risks. It's almost like I haven't read the book, but I can imagine this character who in a way how do you stop taking those risks? Like, when does it feel like when are you living your truth if you're not risking something in order to live it? I don't know, I'm just throwing that out as a as a kind of like thought.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:29

Well, I think that's I think I think that is something that this character, you get this sense that what this character does, I mean the book, I don't feel that the book is either condoning or condemning the idea of having an affair, neither. But um but the character is almost unable to be anything except fully herself, and that is a part of it. Um and it's a self that is trapped or or or constrained or shaped, however you want to see it, by the norms of a damaged society.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:15

Yeah. It's interesting we've come back to the idea of being trapped, but also how how the idea of of a self in desiring to push against that the confines of structures that are being given to us. Let's hear your let's hear the extract that you've chosen from the book.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:37

So again, I'm leaving a bit out, but here's the gist of it. And so she's talking here about generally about about exiles coming back, and the reason she's talking about that is because Sibongele and Didimis uh were exiles who have come back. In the euphoria of being back, of presenting themselves alive, resurrected from the anonymity of exile, of those who have returned, and the eager desire of those who have stayed at home to make up in welcome for the deprivation of exile they have not suffered, people who had had reason to distrust or simply dislike one another, and people who had once been as close as brothers and sisters are all greeted in the same way as cherished returning heroes. Yet beneath it, the old dependencies, the old friendships, the old factional rivalries, the old betrayals and loyalties, political scandals and sexual jealousies were not gone forever, but persisted in evidence of traceable, ineffigable features, sorry, ineffaceable features, visible cell structure still living. The past was there. Perhaps because of the break in continuity, this was so. If the satin skin had been seen slowly bruising dark with age and heavy drinking, if the blonde curls had been observed, in the course of ordinary encounters thinning, if Jonah had been heavier, maturing each time he dropped in for a talk and a beer with Ben, the changes would have wound away naturally in the reel of years. But there was no tape running between the state of being they had been in when they left for exile or prison and their sudden reappearance back where they had left. The weight of their lives, the weight their lives had was the weight of the past out of storage and delivered to those who had stayed behind. I suppose again, you know, one of the things also is that I suppose the books I love best are books that almost every sentence or a lot of sentences will springboard you off onto your own train of train of thought. Um and I think even someone who is not in exile but who has been gone from a place for a long time and then returns to the people in the place. Um for such a person, um it it it it it will resonate too. Um you know, uh the the that in reconnecting your lives have the weight of the past out of storage and delivered to those who stayed behind.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:44

Yeah, it's it's a really powerful passage. Uh and that idea that as you the living with someone, the way the change dissipates into the everyday, and you lose sense of it in comparison to carrying it suddenly. That's sudden, it's like you know, you don't see a child for six months and they're completely different. And that's happening to all of us, we're just less kind of conscious of it, it's less overt sometimes. Um, yeah, it happened to me actually. I saw someone's face on an Instagram that and I hadn't seen their face in a long time, and all I could think of was um just how time thickens. And I don't mean that people get fatter, I just mean the your facial, your facial features change a little bit. Um and yeah, yeah, and and then and of course there's that thing, isn't it? When you see people you haven't seen a long time ago, you feel like when you have a good connection with them, you feel like you slot right back in to where all of your common kind of knowledge was, all of the things that you share. But at the same time, and sometimes in families that can be quite stressful. I've fallen back straight back into those patterns I thought I'd escaped. But there is also um, there's a day, you know, there's an there's there's a niceness and there's an anxiety in that returning, isn't there? That you cannot fully escape the kind of tendrils of where you of what you thought you had broken free from. They just come straight back in and kind of wend their way back over your ankles. It's a bit dark, but you um it's really interesting because you can get straight away what you were saying about the sentences. You can see that she's dealing with some complex thought just because they're long, you know. I mean, there's almost like there's no way of trying to describe this differently. It feels like the complexity requires a long sentence.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:38

Absolutely, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:41

I don't want you to give us a spoiler, but do you come away from this book feeling like you've gone through something and you're moving towards something positive?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:53

No. Well, I I don't I I I think this is what I adore about the book. I don't feel like that. I feel like I've gone through something and I'm coming towards truth.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:12

And I think it's something that always I've felt and that that I'm I want for my writing, and and sometimes it feels almost like a discipline to try to make it for my writing, but I the idea that that what I'm going for isn't um positivity but kind of clarity.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:38

I wonder if that to some degree is I mean, that kind of marks you as wanting to write a certain book, doesn't it? Because I I sort of feel like genre leans towards wanting positivity kind of over a truth, even if those truths have been explored in the book, there's a sense of wanting the end to kind of to come back in and create a sense of safety, which maybe a book like this might not give you.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:11

I wondered though, because I also think of those genre books where um where the crime is solved, so there's that sense of safety. But yeah, we still have our detective all on his lonely own dealing with himself, which isn't as easily resolved.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:35

No, I hear you. I think that's one of the joys about those long series, isn't it? Is that actually ultimately, in a way, you end up reading them because you're interested in the character's trajectory almost more than the crime. The crime is nice, um, but there is there is a sense of of sort of feeling you've solved something. Um I don't know. Um yes, because I don't wish to sound, I actually like all genres. I don't want you to sound like I'm being snooty because I I I actually feel a fondness for all kinds of books. Um, but yeah, I think it's interesting that ending thing, and I think it's an ending thing. I feel like publishers want to get their hands on endings, maybe big ones in particular, you know, that sense of kind of wanting some sense of resolve. Um and it's a tricky thing, isn't it? How do we resolve things in ways which aren't too neat, which aren't too kind of like um because if something's too satisfying, it stops, it stops, it stops doing that pushing, which a lot of the books you've kind of come across are doing, they're pushing against that structure. Whereas if it's too neat, you know, it just doesn't, it stops being so so pleasant and satisfying, doesn't it? Actually ultimately ends up feeling a bit glib.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:55

It's funny how powerful endings are because actually, you know, again, when I looked at all these books together, I found something they had in common was incredibly strong endings. I I could have just read all of their endings.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:11

Okay, maybe I need to go because I think ending is something I'm so bad at. I'm really good at opening beginnings, but I'm really bad at endings. Um okay, shall we um move on to your next choice, um, which is wonderfully different again. Please tell us about The Door by Magda. I can't say her surname, so I'm hoping you're going to say it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:32

Sabo, Sabo, according to what I could find, Sabo. But um, yeah, so uh this sort of leads on in a way because I suppose it's a book that pretends it's kind of got a crime in it. Um, the the sort of preface goes um, so it's it's it's in essence it's about a woman um who's the writer who has a cleaner called Emirence. The woman, the main character, uh her name is M Magda, uh, and she has this cleaner called Emirence. Um, and um the the kind of preface um ends with these sentences, I killed Emirence. The fact that I was trying to save her rather than destroy her changes nothing. So we we then we then find out about this, but it's not um it's it's it's I don't think you would ever find this book in the crime genre section. Uh it's not written like that. It's um it's the book out of my five that uh I read most recently. I only read it, I think about three years ago. Um a friend of mine recommended it. Um and I loved it mostly, I think, because um well partly because of Emirence, the character of Emirence. Um Emirence is is is is marvelous, she is again so complex, um and um and she is absolutely centered in the book. So um unlike um all of the other books where the narrator um or the the the the main protagonist is the person who's who's kind of centered um in um the door um Magda is the narrator, um but Emirence is completely the one who is at the center of it all. Um It was originally written in Hungarian, wasn't it? Yeah, yes, yeah, yes, and again, it's all my all my books fit in between the time span of I think the the mid-70s and the mid-90s. Um so Magda Sabo is also dead. Um but um it's the thing that drew me to it the most, I suppose, is guilt. You know, the guilt, the guilt that it is saturated in. Um and that I suppose is a feeling that I relate to a lot and that I think is dealt with in a psychologically interesting way in this book. Um again, I mean, as with each of these books, um the the writing is is is is wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:36

Let's hear your extract from the book.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:40

Great. So this will give you some idea of what Emirance is like. And again, of course, I'm leaving a little bit out. Things got off to a less than encouraging start. Emirance had been rather brusque when asked to call around for a chat. So I tracked her down in the courtyard of the villa where she was caretaker. It was close by. So close I could see her flat from our balcony. She was washing a mountain of laundry with the most antiquated equipment, boiling bedlinen in a cauldron over a naked flame in the already agonizing heat, and lifting the sheets out with an immense wooden spoon. Fire glowed all around her. She was tall, big boned, powerfully built for a person of her age, muscular rather than fat, and she radiated strength like a Valkyrie. Even the scarf on her head seemed to jut forward like a warrior's helmet. She had agreed to call, and so now we were standing here in the garden in that twilight. She listened in silence while I explained what her duties would be. When she did finally respond, she didn't even raise her head. Assuming that someone could vouch for us and assure her that neither of us were likely to brawl or get drunk, we might perhaps discuss the matter again. I stood there dumbfounded. This was the first time anyone had required references from us. I don't wash just anyone's dirty linen, she said.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:41

I love that. So tell us what happens with uh so obviously she does end up working for them. They they pass the reference test, and then and then what happens?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:52

Yeah, so she works for them and she works incredibly hard, emirates, you know, she never sleeps. Um and um the the the reason she's working for them is because Magda and her husband, they are writers and they um they they've they've moved to a new place and they have uh the Hungary is just, you know, things are just kind of emerging. Um they they're just being given some opportunities in their writing world. Um it's just you know, sort of post post-communist era, um, and they just want a bit of help so that they'll have a bit more time. And an emirants, you know, she they they find platters of meats in their fridge sometimes. They, you know, she she she she goes above and beyond. She is remarkable. Uh but also all on her own terms. So she arrives any time of night and just starts cleaning, any time of day or night, usually night. Um she uh but so the the big thing about Emirence is Emirence has a lot of pride. Um it takes a long time in the book before we sort of learn anything of Emirence's background. Um and um but Emirence values her privacy above all else. And one time when uh she hasn't uh I I don't know that the the the the main character Magda needs to get a message across to Emirence and and just thinks oh well I'll just go and you know tell tell her at her house and and Emirence is fuming, she is furious, nobody must come to her house. Her flat is is is is deadly private, nobody's ever allowed inside. Um she had all they know is she has lots of cats, and but yeah, they know nothing. Um and yeah, it's just a very interesting relationship between these two completely different people. Um and yeah, emirence is difficult. One sense is maybe Magda is in her own ways too. So it's but there's obviously a lot of kind of well, really love between them, I suppose. It will never be given that name in the book. Um and um I don't want to give much away, but the way that Magda betrays Emirants is by violating her privacy. Um and and Magda does it with a good intention, um, and also the pressure that she's got to go off and receive some fancy prize, writing prize. So, you know, that too, but um but she she betrays Emirence and Emirates' privacy is invaded and the result is tragic. Um the interesting thing about all of these books, I think, is that again hadn't struck me until until you asked me to collect something together for this podcast, but is that they skirt extremely close to the author's lived life. Um and it's always a very irritating question when you've been published and people go, is this true? Is this your life? It's very irritating. But I I guess that what uh coming at it from the other angle of being a writer, there seems like there's something there to be considered. Um, because apparently Magda Sabo, like her protagonist Magda, uh, did have a cleaner um and and did have some kind of relationship with her and something that happened that she felt guilt about. And what you sense, I haven't finished reading anything else of Magda Sabos, um, and I think maybe sometimes there is this particular power that something gets when it comes so close to what has been lived, even if it's fiction and explored imaginatively.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:37

Yeah, I was reading something or listening to something, actually. It was Ben Lerner talking about his latest book, um, translation, and he was saying he's always asked about you know, uh auto fiction, which is kind of I guess the word that gets used now, and um which I'm also very interested in. And yeah, you've got Zami with the biomythography, and you know, the um and he says he he he doesn't really understand why he gets asked it. And I kind of like what he's saying that, you know, for him it's about getting to the truth, which is kind of what you're talking about, trying to find a way to represent what really happens as kind of authentic, well, as carefully as possible, as kind of near to repeating that experience as possible. And this idea of kind of just is it fiction, is it not fiction, is it, is it biography, is it, is it, is it auto fiction, is it for him, isn't kind of like a nonsense. I mean, I am like definitely tickling over the top of what he does. These are not his words, but I think that interests me, this idea that in a way you're not there's another book he has where he talks about poetry and how nobody says to a poet, did this happen to you? You know, I I think it's in like I think it's sort of something he's talking about in that book 1010. And it's like, yeah, you know what? Nobody does. They don't, do they? They don't say, Is this your life? But actually, we expect a level of kind of grappling between the self and the experience and expressing it in poetry because we just want someone to just tell us about the feeling of living, right? About what it is to experience being alive, being a human. We're not looking for um, you know, a kind of tick mark as to whether or not you had that experience yourself, it's about whether or not you express it well. Um, and so I wonder whether actually that's what you're getting at. Like, does it matter, you know, if if you if you can use the way that you write to get to the heart of that complexity, in this case, you know, the guilt over this relationship to some extent, then then you're getting at something that's more important than whether or not it was true, quote unquote, or not. Like whether did it really happen? Um but yeah, I don't know why it matters to people whether authors have done these things or not, but it does seem to.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:59

No, absolutely, I couldn't agree with you more.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:02

I mean, for me, the book stays with me, you know. It's not to say that I'm not interested in clearly am, because I'm talking to one now, but you know, in what writers have to say about how about their process, how they make things, but I think in the end, it's the books that stay with you, you know, and um the way you were saying that you feel like some influences and some kind of things that you've read have stuck with you and you've forgotten where they've come from. They've kind of, you know, got lost in that sense of where was their root, but they're still there, they're still echoing within you that sort of sense in which you're contributing to a sort of floating-free idea network I'd like, you know, we'd all like to be part of.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:49

Um exactly. And I think similarly to what you said earlier about where you said, you know, sometimes what you know, there's something like maybe just sort of one image, there's something or an atmosphere that stays with you about a book. And I think sometimes as writers with our own writing, and I I love fiction because I think the lies can be the truest. And sometimes, you know, things have to be bent and and squiffed a bit while also telling, you know, while while while little little bits of exactly as it happened might be in there, you know, speckled in there. And there's this whole like mesh to try to create something that matches the atmosphere, the image that's in your mind for what you're wanting to create.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:32

Yeah, definitely. Um, but of course, this makes me want to ask about your novel because it's like, oh, Chiara now, tell me. I'm not gonna do that to you, but obviously, there is a sense in which I mean I I find there's a female friendship here, um, you know, uh in this book, and um the idea that we hurt the people that we love is Also, I think in this book and potentially and in Night Shift, um you know how relationships influence our growth and the ways in which we go on to choose what happens next in our life path, you know, they have a big impact, don't they? Uh and that feels like territory that's shared with Nightshift. Do you do you feel that that's true, or or were you thinking about that at any point in reading that book?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:30

Yeah, and I mean with Night Shift, the this the setting is real. It's a setting I worked in. Um, and then um, yeah, I never had a Sabine, but you know, obviously I've had different relationships with different people and different obsessions with different things. And you know, and the Night Shift people that I worked with, I have I had an incredibly warm feeling towards them. And I don't know if that would have come across or not in the characters I created. So it's fiction, but it's it's with with Night Shift, it was leaning into my my my question of you know what do you do if you don't want to be yourself, or what do you do if you meet someone who you want to be, or who you know, I I was interested in obsession, I was interested in that. But having done that job gave a nice kind of um it wasn't it was nice to be able to lean authentically on that and how that felt within which to place my story.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:37

Um of the things I remember loving about Night Shift was also the idea of translation, which kind of in a way is is sort of hovering underneath a lot of these choices too. How we uh and around this idea of the what is real true life and what is fiction, um, that in a sense we're always translating. There's a part in I remember reading it um where your main character is from South Africa, uh, and she the the woman Sabine that she becomes obsessed with is from Belgium, and there's this idea in which she writes at one point about how there's some kind of there's a translation issue that you kind of you never really understand fully. So, for example, what Sabine's Belgian might give away about her, you know, like to a native, what would they understand about her accent, for example? What would it tell them about her social background, all that stuff that you cannot have access to when you meet this person in a different language, um, coming from a from not knowing the country in that way, then you're kind of getting them in a different context. Um, and I think that's interesting, and I think, you know, in a sense, we're we're always doing that, aren't we? A little bit. We're in the books that we read, we're kind of reading through these layers of we're sifting through, we're coming at it from our our place in the world, and we're getting what we can from this other thing that you know it's just an interesting meeting, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:31:10

Absolutely. I love that you picked up on that. Um, you're such a good reader, but um yeah, I think and I think this again, you know, I think another theme with all of these books is that you can't but translate because in the end we are all alone, you know. Um that's my my my thinking. Um you die a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:44

Let's let's have let's have the last book, which uh in its title is reminiscent of that. Uh Too Loud a Solitude. Um, and again, I'd love you to give me the names because I'm sure you've figured out how to say it correctly. But it's translated from the Czech, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:32:01

Yes, yes. So it's Too Loud a Solitude by Bahumil Hrabal, and I might be saying it wrong, but I've been saying it for so many years, I didn't even think to check. Um yeah, and this book I I adore. Um, I read it in the 90s. I rewritten reread it again and again and again, and I just um it's just been a favorite of mine for so long. Um, I I I just adore it. And um partly it's about books. Um it's it's about Hunter, who is um uh a worker um whose job is to compact books. Um and um he adores books and he salvages as many of them as he can. Um and when at some point he can't salvage them, then he will get a classic and and open it up like hot and put it at the center of the pile that he has to destroy. Um and uh I I yeah, I mean, I just um it's again, I suppose what Hunter has in common with um a lot of my other protagonists is um a life that's defined by lost, um, and and an inability to fit into the normal world. But what I love about each of these books so much, and I and I think back now I'm particularly staring at Audrey Lord's Zami, is where there's this in these books the inability to fit into the normal world makes the normal world feel so arbitrary, cruel. Um it it makes that feel what is abnormal, and these characters in their very human responses, um and each in their loneness, to me that feels that becomes the thing that is alive, that becomes the thing that sort of matters.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:26

Um let's hear the beginning, because I think you've picked have you picked the opening of this? Um because I think this gives a really good sense of of what's of what's going on and and what he does.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:41

So um I think every chapter begins almost exactly the same. Um and yeah, so yeah, I'm reading from the beginning. It's a very skinny book, it's like only 98 pages.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:53

Um and um very contemporary in that way, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:58

Yeah. And um, I'm not leaving any words out of this one. Um for 35 years now I've been in waste paper, and it's my love story. For 35 years I've been compacting waste paper and books, smearing myself with letters until I've come to look like my encyclopedias, and a good three tons of them I've compacted over the years. I am a jug filled with water, both magic and plain. I have only to lean over and a stream of beautiful thoughts flows out of me. My education has been so unwitting I can't quite tell which of my thoughts come from me and which from my books. But that's how I've stayed attuned to myself and the world around me for the past 35 years. Because when I read, I don't really read. I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves into me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel. In an average month I compact two tons of books, but to muster the strength for my godly labours, I've drunk so much beer over the past 35 years that it could fill an Olympic swimming pool, an entire fish hatchery. Such wisdom as I have has come to me unwittingly, and I look on my brain as a mass of hydraulically compacted thoughts, a bale of ideas, and my head as a smooth, shiny Aladdin's lamp.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:47

Oh, yeah, I kind of want to rub on that smooth, shiny head of his. Um what magic might come out. Um I I I love the way that for me, uh, I mean, again, this is a book I have not read and I feel quite excited to read. Um, because I feel like a lot of this is doing a lot of what we've discussed about how you can be affected by books in this way. But also he is living in the middle of a time in which he's being asked to get rid of banned books, right? So there's a kind of sense in which these are books which are doing all of those wonderful things that we want to read books for. They are speaking out against uh, you know, a kind of totalitarianism. Um yeah, tell me more about why why this book for you.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:41

Yeah, well, again, it's all of those things that you have said, and and also this book, again, it doesn't ve it's it's it's it's it's got this tragic comic element, which I really love, which you know, uh um that's also in Sabbath's theatre, um, very much. Um and there's a beautiful humor in Audrey Lord, but I wouldn't say it's tragic comic. But Bahumal Rabal has this tragic comic aspect to it. Um but he doesn't avoid the darkest issues. Um and again, again, the ending I find unbelievably moving. It's yeah, it goes where it goes. Um and and there's also even a a a kind of I'm not sure whether to say this or not. I don't want to give away the ending, but there is a a sort of conversation between the ending of this book um and the ending of Bahum al-Habal's life.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:59

Um and um there's also and I suppose this is another thing that that's that that I love that all of these books have in them is is a sense of transgression um as well and and and a sense of um irreverence. Um I mean here uh the you know Hunter reveres um um books, absolutely. But you know, um yeah, I mean, you know, you you you could tell even from that extract how much he loves beer. Um and you know, it's it's it's it's sort of it's a book that that that that is is anti-Puritanism as well. Um it's um you know the the the the these young workers are brought in who wear pristine uniforms and drink milk instead of beer, um, and kind of feel no emotional or intellectual connection to the books that they destroy. I'm not saying you have to drink beer too, but you know, it's it's it's it's it's just it's there's something wonderful about this sort of there's a kind of both a fatalistic attitude and and also a transgressive one and also one that rescues what is of most value and is able to take that out as if yeah, in in a in a way that I don't know that that makes it it the message is so strong.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:44

I'm interested in in the way that you know you described um him putting books that he loves in the centre of these kind of squashed, you know, pulped barrel things that he makes from squashing it all down in his press. And there's something, isn't there, about this idea that in if you it's exploring the idea that loving something as you destroy it is quite different to destroying something without caring about what you're destroying, and and in that destruction is a recreation, like he's recreating his own mind, you know, the learning that comes from reading these books before he pulps them. But there's also this idea that he makes something new out of that by creating these weird artistic kind of pulped bits. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's lots of other things going on in there, but in order to make something new, you do have to kind of dismantle what's already there. You know, you have to the recreation is also a destruction. You know, there's a there's those two things are happening at the same time to some extent. I don't know. Do you feel that that's working through this book that that you know that's an interesting idea?

SPEAKER_02 1:42:02

I probably I feel he more that he is he is salvaging something, he's salvaging the heart of something. He he he saves all the books he can and his flat is is is is filled with books. He uh has books kind of right above his head on his uh on his bed. He he's his flat is just uh just it couldn't fit like another book in. That's the impression one gets. Um and my sense was that a new world is taking over that he can't relate to and he can't uh be a part of, and he is salvaging everything he can um for as long as he can. Um and there's definitely a sense, even in the ending of the book, of him what's the how can I put it, him being having integrity, having integrity and how he lives the whole of his life. And I think actually that word again, I think could be applied to all the books that their protagonists have integrity, they live, they they live like they they burn purely as themselves, whatever that kind of self is, and and it doesn't feel like a selfish thing so much as them being so alive, being so alive to how a life needs to be lived, how how you know, rather than taking on the the stretches that come their way or or kind of bowing to whatever's squashing them into whatever whatever shapes society tries to put us in, you know, whether those shapes are good or bad or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:59

Hmm. So I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you a sort of endy question now, which is if you had to pick one of these as to be the only one, if we if we were to kind of you know extrapolate that you were being forced to go onto an island, although I don't really think this is quite desert island discs, but you get the idea. What which one would you say, okay, that's the one that's really that sits there as the one that I keep returning to, that feels like a kind of the biggest shining beacon, as it were, when you think about writing and how you create and what matters to you as a reader and a writer.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:41

Yeah, so I mean, I know which one it is going to be, but I have to say, when I was like, you know, reading through these books again in preparation for for today, or just you know, like looking through them again, the one I kept wanting to just dive into, to just immerse myself in was Zami. Because but that's that because because it's a big book and it's a beautiful book, and it's it is so immersive. It is so everything. I mean, she's a poet too, and everything is just described in a way, you know, that is intellectually exciting, but also is is really sensual, you know. So that that that that was the book. If you if you had to today just, you know, say I'm locking you in this room with one of these books for a week or whatever, that would be my one, because I would just, you know, because I've forgotten lots of it and I would just want to re-enter it. But my my my desert island book would have to be Too Loud of Solitude. I've just read that and read it and read it and read it and and sucked it like a lozenge in my own mouth. And it also speaks to it, it feels to me like it brings everything together and also speaks so magnificently to the power of reading um and of words and and and and of them being kind of sometimes being what can almost feel like everything in one's consciousness. Um and so yeah, even though I have read it so many times, I would, I would, I would want it to come with me as my little friend.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:21

Well, I think it makes a great friend. Um, and I just want to say thank you so much for you know taking the time to to chat with me and really engage with the idea of which books have spoken to you so so loudly, you know, and feel like they are your friends, they're on your journey. Um, and for listeners, they will be able to see all of those books, they'll be in the description. Um, and you can go and hopefully click on those and read them for yourself. Uh, and then engage again. Who knows? You might come up with different thoughts uh and listen again. Uh, but thank you very much. Thank you so much, Chiara, and um it's been a joy to talk to you.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:02

Thank you, thank you for such interesting questions. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:09

You have been listening to the hypothetical bookshop with me, Rebecca Luton Rotron, and Guest Kiara Lab. New episodes of more fantastic guests are released every two weeks, wherever you get your podcasts. Do subscribe. You can also become a supporter of the show if you head to the podcast website or follow the link on Instagram. For as many of the books as are available, head to the podcast bookshop page on bookshop.com. Thank you for the next one.