After a short break we’re back! Kate and Rob fill you all in on their move to London plus discuss two of the books from the 2015 Man Booker Prize Longlist.
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After a quick catch-up on our big move to London, we discuss two books off the Man Booker Longlist, with Rob reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara and Kate reading A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler. Then it’s on to what we’re currently reading with Rob catching up on Goldfinger before reading Trigger Mortis and Kate raving about Asking For It by Louise O’Neill.
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Episode 138. An Adventures With Words production.
I’ve had mixed luck with the Man Booker longlist so far. Out of 5 that I’ve started, 3 have been DNFs, all for completely different reasons. The Chimes had characters that didn’t behave with internal coherence, I didn’t like the Anne Enright’s writing and The Year of The Runaways was really good right until an attempted rape scene that was portrayed in a way that I found really vile and offensive and made me lose all trust for the author.
Of the remaining 2, I liked The Moor’s Account. Interesting story and setting and protagonist, but I didn’t think there was much more to it beyond that. A Spool of Blue Thread was the other book, and I adored that. I thought Kate was spot-on in what she said on the podcast. Why can’t a novel about domestic matters be good? This one absolutely is. I loved how it made me change my view of characters and events again and again, depending on how I was looking at them. And so many little moments of truth that cut right to the bone! Loved it.
Listening from the U.S., the publishing imprints are so confusing. It seems A Little Life is published by Pan McMillan in the U.K. but by Doubleday in the U.S. which is actually owned by Random House. And of course Penguin and Random House have merged so I thought it was interesting that Kate didn’t claim A Little Life for her employer.