Alice Winn: Inside In Memoriam — Love, War, and the Making of a Modern Classic
In this episode of Best Book Forward I was delighted to be joined by Alice Winn author of In Memoriam. If you know me you will know how much I love this book, I’ve probably tried to force a copy on you, so having the opportunity to chat to Alice was incredible.
The five books that Sophie picked as the books that have shaped her life are:
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Other books mentioned:
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller
Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves
Journey’s End by R. C. Sherriff
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
The Blind Spot & Other Stories by Saki HH Monroe
The Lord of the Rings by JRRTolkein
Authors mentioned:
Vera Brittain
Rudyard Kipling
F. Scott Fitzgerald
If you would like to hear more from Alice Winn, please do keep an eye out as there a bonus episode coming where we discuss more about Alice’s life as a reader and a writer and she shares a bookish secret with us!
For more content from me you follow me on Instagram or visit my website www.bestbookforward.org.
This episode was produced by Decibelle Creative
Transcript
Welcome to Best Book Forward, the podcast where I talk to authors about the books that have shaped their lives.
Speaker A:Think of it as like the bookish version of Desert Island Discs.
Speaker A:Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Alice Wynn.
Speaker A: el, In Memoriam, published in: Speaker A:While maybe slightly less prestigious, it also won Best Fiction and Best Historical Fiction over on the Best Book Forward awards on Instagram.
Speaker A:In Memoriam is the epic tale of forbidden love, friendship, war, class, loss and hope.
Speaker A:It is a deeply affecting novel which when I finished, I felt had left a mark on my soul.
Speaker A:Alice joins me today to talk about In Memoriam as well as the five books that have shaped her life.
Speaker A:We are also joined by one of Alice's canine neighbours who unfortunately barks throughout, which I hope you find too distracting.
Speaker A:Alice, welcome and thank you so much for joining me on Best Book Forward today.
Speaker B:Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker B:I'm really excited.
Speaker A:I have been so excited to chat to you and I wanted to start by saying a huge thank you for your beautiful, beautiful book, In Memoriam.
Speaker B:Oh, thank you.
Speaker A:I read it at the beginning of last year and I know that when I read it, I remember putting it down being this will be my book of the year and nothing could top it.
Speaker A:It's so special.
Speaker A:So I'd love if you could start by telling our listeners a little bit about In Memoriam and we are going to keep it spoiler free as well.
Speaker A:So if you haven't read it, don't worry.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:That's so kind of you to say.
Speaker B:I, I really love your, your Bookstagram, I think, I think you do a great service because it's, you know, it's.
Speaker B:I run a little tiny bookstagram.
Speaker B:I put up little, you know, reviews of books I've read and know I was writing one this morning and I was really surprised.
Speaker B:It takes a long time to write a book review, right?
Speaker B:I mean, minimum 45 minutes and it can be a bit thankless.
Speaker B:And you know, I, I don't know, I think, I think, I mean, I do it because I kind of ultimately enjoy looking back on what I've read and others I forget.
Speaker B:But no, I think you really kind of foster a spirit of community and I think it's really lovely to see how, how engaged the people who follow your account are.
Speaker B:They really seem to, to, to have found each other and not just have found your reviews.
Speaker B:But also each other, which is really lovely.
Speaker B:People talking about books.
Speaker B:It's a really nice vibe over there.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, I do.
Speaker A:I mean, I love it.
Speaker A:And I think people say to me, like, why do you do it?
Speaker A:And I just think.
Speaker A:I do think books bring people together, but also, I just love when you recommend a book to somebody and they come back, oh, my gosh, I loved it.
Speaker B:I know.
Speaker B:I love that feeling.
Speaker B:It's a real sense of power, isn't it?
Speaker B:It's an ego trick.
Speaker A:It is.
Speaker A:I told you so.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And then conversely, when you get it wrong, that's a horrible.
Speaker B:When you're like, you tell someone, like, told my husband to read the Secret History.
Speaker B:I was like, I don't think anyone in the world can read this book and not like it.
Speaker B:And then he got halfway through, and he was like, there's another 200 pages.
Speaker B:I can't.
Speaker B:I can't keep doing this.
Speaker B:And I was like, what do you mean you can't keep doing it?
Speaker B:It's perfect.
Speaker B:So, you know, sometimes you.
Speaker B:You're humbled by book recommendations.
Speaker A:Well, we can't get it right all the time, can we?
Speaker A:But I know whenever I've recommended your book, people have come back and told me how much they love it.
Speaker A:So I know that that is always a winner.
Speaker B:That's good, because I think if a book reaches enough people, it starts to reach the people who it is not intended for.
Speaker B:So once I start seeing this is what I'm looking for, this is how ambitious I am.
Speaker B:I want to start seeing Instagram reviews of people hating the book and being like, this is so overhyped.
Speaker B:And I'm like, that's how you know you have enough hype.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's the way, you know, you have to reach the people who definitely don't want the book.
Speaker B:If you haven't reached those people, you haven't reached enough people.
Speaker A:But what happens if there aren't those people?
Speaker A:Because your book is so damn good.
Speaker B:That's not.
Speaker B:Think about the Secret History.
Speaker B:I thought that about the Secret.
Speaker A:I haven't read it.
Speaker B:Oh, you know, it is really.
Speaker B:It is good.
Speaker B:I mean, look, I mean, I. I guess now that I.
Speaker B:Now that I recommended it to my husband and he hated it, I'm like.
Speaker B:I'm like, oh, double thinking.
Speaker B:But no, I think it's really.
Speaker B:I mean, it's not my favorite book in the world.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But, you know, I just.
Speaker B:I. I think it doesn't matter how good a book is.
Speaker B:You can find some pretty Scathing one star Goodreads reviews.
Speaker B:So they're out there.
Speaker B:Everyone, every book has a hater, has to find its haters just as much as it has to find its readers.
Speaker B:Anyway, I should tell you, listener who has not read or heard of my book, what it's about a little bit.
Speaker B: ung men in boarding school in: Speaker B: s love is unrequited and it's: Speaker B:Then World War I breaks out and the.
Speaker B:They both end up joining and going to the front and the, the question of the novel changes and instead of being a kind of will they, won't they?
Speaker B:It turns into a question of will either of these young men or any of their friends survive the war.
Speaker B:So that's the kind of press of the, of the book I think it is, is quite romantic.
Speaker B:I've seen people compare it to a Song of Achilles, a little bit of Bride's Head.
Speaker B:When Saltburn came out, people were like, oh, like, it's like you're.
Speaker B:I was, I watched Salt, but I was like, I don't think this is like my book, but that clearly, you know, there's overlap in that.
Speaker B:It's like good looking rich people having drama.
Speaker B:So, you know, there's that.
Speaker B:But yeah, that's the kind of vibe.
Speaker A:I think I can totally see the Song of Achilles and that's actually a really good sort of comparison in their love story, you know, obviously not.
Speaker A:Well, there is a war, isn't there, for Achilles?
Speaker A:But, oh, it's just such a special read and I love them both so much.
Speaker A:So let's start by talking about the inspiration behind the novel.
Speaker A:I know you did a huge amount of research and I found something saying where you had looked at the newspaper articles from your old school, which forms a lot of the basis for the novel.
Speaker A:So I'd love if you could start by talking about the inspiration behind In Memoriam a little bit for us.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:So basically what happened was I was trying to not write a novel because I had written three and they had not gone anywhere.
Speaker B:I had sent them out to agents.
Speaker B:You know, I would send out each novel to like 100 agents and I wouldn't hear back from anyone.
Speaker B:And I was just giving up the dream of ever being published.
Speaker B:And so I was I was sort of trying to focus on other things.
Speaker B:And I was reading Robert Graves, Goodbye to All that.
Speaker B:And he, in it he mentions his friendship with Siegfried Zissy.
Speaker B:And Siegfried Zissy went to my old school.
Speaker B:He went to Marlborough College.
Speaker B:And I kind of, you know, this is very true to my sort of procrastinating spirit at the time.
Speaker B:I didn't want to do what I was supposed to be doing.
Speaker B:So I was like, you know, I wonder if he went, I wonder when he was there if he wrote any poetry in the school paper.
Speaker B:And so I looked it up and he didn't, he actually didn't really enjoy his time at the school.
Speaker B:So he kind of tried to like not think about it.
Speaker B:And he didn't seem to publish anything.
Speaker B:But what I found was that the school had uploaded all the school student newspapers from the early part of the last century.
Speaker B: eading all of the papers from: Speaker B:And they were these incredible documents because.
Speaker B:So they were written by the students of the school for the, the students.
Speaker B:And to begin with, you know, they were these funny, irreverent, snobbish, elitist, you know, group of schoolboys writing these, these articles.
Speaker B:And it was like witty depictions of the debating society and write ups of cricket matches and, and you kind of will get to know them.
Speaker B:And they were funny, really.
Speaker B:That was, that was the thing.
Speaker B:And then the war breaks out and they are so excited to go and enlist and they start like writing patriotic war poetry and writing.
Speaker B:You know, the second they go off to the front, they'll write letters back to the school paper because, you know, which I think it almost shows how kind of young they are, right?
Speaker B:They have these three worlds.
Speaker B:They have school and home and the war.
Speaker B:And that's the extent of the world for them because that's, that's how old they are.
Speaker B:And they'll write these letters back and they talk about the front and they're like, oh, it's great, no one's making me bathe, you know, and it's, it's all kind of fun and games and then they start dying, dying.
Speaker B:And it falls to the young men at the school, these sort of teenagers to write the obituaries.
Speaker B:The immemoriums of their older brothers and their older friends.
Speaker B:And these obituaries also kind of change in texture throughout the war.
Speaker B:And at the beginning of the war, it's a lot of really euphemistic language and a lot of like, you know, we envy him his gallant death.
Speaker B:Any one of us would die for England kind of thing.
Speaker B:And then, and then they just, you know, it just keeps going right.
Speaker B:It becomes harder and harder for them to have this sort of hearty gun ho spirit about it.
Speaker B:And they just became, you know, very quickly they became just the most raw and heartbreaking pieces of writing I had read in a really long time.
Speaker B:Because a lot of war literature is sort of written by people who've had time to process what they've gone through.
Speaker B: 's written mainly in the late: Speaker B:That's when you get a really big boom in war literature.
Speaker B:And that's written by people who like, went through this awful trauma 10 years before and then like spent 10 years kind of thinking about it and writing different drafts.
Speaker B:Like, I think Robert Grays and Vera Britton, they both tried to write novels first and then they ended up having to like, kind of compost those novels and like start again out of the, the mess of, of the, you know, unwritten novel and then they wrote memoirs.
Speaker B:So the result is that what you're getting is something that is processed and that has been processed by the person and that is being written by someone who has kind of had time to slightly recover from a grief, to explain to people who weren't there what it was like.
Speaker B:So there's a lot of distance in a way, whereas these newspaper articles are not being, they're being written by someone who's going through the tragedy for other people in that same tragedy with them.
Speaker B:So there is no distance.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:This is a, you know, this as a teenage, it'll be a teenage boy, like writing about his dead brother to be read by his dead brother's best friends.
Speaker B:So that there is, there is no creative distance, no emotional different distance.
Speaker B:And so it was just, it was so, you know, hard to read, but also compulsive, like, you know, like walking past a car crash or something.
Speaker B:You couldn't, you couldn't stop reading, especially because they were so desperate to be remembered.
Speaker B:And, you know, you'd have some long, long immemorium about some, you know, 18 year old boy who had died.
Speaker B:And then at the end it would be like, and no one shall ever forget his name.
Speaker B:And you know, of course we can't go on remembering the dead of various wars for all eternity.
Speaker B:You know, new tragedies happen and the old tragedies become very distant.
Speaker B:But there was something so sad about the fact that, that you Know, these, these boys had died and I had no idea, you know, that they.
Speaker B:They had been forgotten.
Speaker B:And, and the idea that they would be remembered was sort of the one thing that was comforting their loved ones.
Speaker B:So there was something inherently distressing about that.
Speaker B:And meanwhile, I was living in la and in America, people don't really know much about World War I because it's, you know, it wasn't really their war.
Speaker B:They showed up at the end and.
Speaker B:And people just didn't.
Speaker B:I was.
Speaker B:I was really, really upset reading all of this.
Speaker B:And I would kind of go to parties and be really distressed and be.
Speaker B:People like, what are you up to these days?
Speaker B:And I'm like, well, let me tell you about some of these terribly sad In Memoriams.
Speaker B:And people would be like, you're, you know, being kind of a downer and they didn't get it.
Speaker B:And so I think I wrote the novel honestly because I. I felt really alone in this sort of ancient grief.
Speaker B:And I, I wanted other people to understand, like, what I had felt reading those In Memoriams.
Speaker B:And, you know, I.
Speaker B:A, I went to this school, so I had an inn in that sense.
Speaker B:And then B, I had.
Speaker B:I grew up reading not only a lot of World War I literature, but war literature in general and also a lot of the children's books and everything that people from this time period would have read.
Speaker B:So I felt like I had a huge amount of context that the average person wouldn't be able to get unless they, like, could sink that much time into it.
Speaker B:And I sort of wanted to provide, like, almost a shortcut so that someone could sort of feel the whole scale of the tragedy without having to do all the.
Speaker B:The reading and work that I had done, if that makes sense.
Speaker B:I wanted to shrink down all of my research so that it.
Speaker B:It was accessible to people who hadn't done that.
Speaker A:It's really interesting.
Speaker A:I'd love to talk about the format that you use, because throughout the book you've used, obviously, alternating timelines, but you do use letters and poetry and the role of honours.
Speaker A:And I found it made for a really powerful reading experience.
Speaker A:I know when I turned a page and I saw the clipping of a newspaper and I saw a roll of honor, I could feel myself hold my breath and then scan the list of names to see who had been killed in action.
Speaker A:And as you.
Speaker A:As the book progresses, they add a section that died from their wounds.
Speaker A:And it's really powerful to sort of see that because it's an experience, isn't it, of what those at home would have been getting.
Speaker A:And I just wondered, once you'd seen those newspapers, did you always know that you were actually going to lift them?
Speaker A:Not lift them, but use that sort of format in the book?
Speaker B:Well, the first thing I did was I was reading these newspapers and every, you know, every newspaper would have a sentence that would just kind of blow me away with its pathos.
Speaker B:And so the first thing I did before I had ever thought of writing a book really was I just like mocked up up my own newspaper where I collected all of these in one place because a lot of the newspaper will be quite boring.
Speaker B:But then there'd be this one sentence.
Speaker B:So I just, I just, I don't know why I, I again, it comes back to the fact that I didn't want to do my work.
Speaker B:I was procrastinating anyway.
Speaker B:But yeah, I just mocked up.
Speaker B:I mocked up a pre war paper with all the funny things.
Speaker B:And I kind of post the beginning of the wallpaper, you know, after they started going to war, because these, because they were just blowing me away, I just couldn't stop thinking about them.
Speaker B:I was, I, I just, I just had, I had to collect them in some way.
Speaker B:So I just mocke papers and those, those papers ended up in the final draft of the manuscript.
Speaker B:And I think what you're saying about kind of scanning through the lists looking for a name, that's absolutely what I wanted to get across because I, I started to feel that way when I was reading these papers because I would get to know these different boys because, you know, maybe because one was particularly funny when he wrote his cricket match reports.
Speaker B:And then you would see that he had lost a friend and he had written two in memoriams or whatever.
Speaker B:You started to kind of feel for him.
Speaker B:And then he would go to the front and he would start writing letters from the.
Speaker B:And you'd be like, oh, okay, it's interesting to see how he's doing at the front.
Speaker B:And then his letters would get sadder and then you'd see his obituary, you know, and then you would.
Speaker B:It was that moment of seeing a name you kind of recognized of someone you had grown fond of, even just in this small, small way.
Speaker B:And another time, you know, I just remember Sigfried Sassoon had this brother called Hamosessoon.
Speaker B:And the only thing I know about Hamo Sassoon is that when Sigfried Sassoon came out to him, Hamo said, yes, me too.
Speaker B:And that was the only thing I knew about him.
Speaker B:And then I remember one day I was just scanning through the lists of the dead, and Hammer's name was in the list, and it was like.
Speaker B:It was like his name just jumped out as if it was much more important than all the other names.
Speaker B:Like, his name just, like.
Speaker B:Just like, stood out and it gave me this jolt where I was like, oh, my God, it's Hammer.
Speaker B:And then you, you know, then I had that feeling of like, but all of those names jump out to someone, you know, that they're all meaningful to someone.
Speaker B:And that was.
Speaker B:I don't know, that was one of those moments that, you know.
Speaker B:Do you remember the end of that Indiana Jones film where they, like, go put the Ark of the Covenant away into this massive warehouse filled with.
Speaker B:With things.
Speaker B:So the hot.
Speaker B:You.
Speaker B:Do you know what I'm talking about here?
Speaker A:I do.
Speaker A:I can't remember the end of it.
Speaker A:It was a long time ago for me.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So the Ark of the Covenant.
Speaker B:And I think this is the Ark.
Speaker B:Yeah, it has, you know, it's just like magical properties and blah, blah, and it causes load, destruction and disaster.
Speaker B:And then they, you know, at the end of the movie, they, like, put it in a box and bring the box and put the box into a massive warehouse filled with things.
Speaker B:And there's this realization of like, oh, my God, this warehouse, every single box in this warehouse is filled with something as dangerous as the Ark of the Covenant.
Speaker B:Like, oh, my God, what terrifying warehouse.
Speaker B:And I had sort of had that realization about.
Speaker B:I mean, not that I was thinking of Indiana Jones at the moment that I had this realization, but I. I'm thinking about it now.
Speaker B:You know, every name is so meaningful.
Speaker B:But when you just look at, you know, if you're in a small village in.
Speaker B:In Anywhere in the UK, you'll see a World War I monument with names on it, and they kind of.
Speaker B:They're just sort of part of the countryside.
Speaker B:You don't really.
Speaker B:They don't feel real.
Speaker B:And I don't know.
Speaker B:I. I did want to get across.
Speaker B:I wanted to make it feel alive to people, the.
Speaker B:The reality of those names and what they meant.
Speaker A:I think you certainly did.
Speaker A:I mean, as I say, I think it was a very powerful experience.
Speaker A:I've spoken to a few people recently who have listened to the audiobook, and I was really intrigued.
Speaker A:I was like, how did you get that sort of sense?
Speaker A:And they said, there's some.
Speaker A:It's beautifully done.
Speaker A:But you do have that sort of sense of a name will jump out at you, and you're like, oh, no.
Speaker A:And then you're like, hang on, who else was on there?
Speaker A:Because you've looked for your, your character.
Speaker A:So I think it was a very powerful way and I say it made for an experience of sort of having some empathy of what the character, the people these characters are based on, if you like, would have gone through.
Speaker A:So I thought that was, and I don't think I've seen it done before either like that.
Speaker B:So I don't know.
Speaker B:I'm not sure I have either.
Speaker B:I have heard some people say of the audiobook, you know, if they didn't know anything about what they were getting into, that the, the first three, you know, newspaper articles that open the book are a little bit challenging to get through.
Speaker B:You know, as a, you know, if you're reading the novel, I sort of wrote them on purpose so that all, all of the newspaper articles you can skip because I was like, people are going to skip them and that's got to be just fine.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:But what I usually find is that what people will tell me is they're like to begin with, I skipped the newspaper articles.
Speaker B:And then as the book grew on, I like went on, I started wanting to read the newspaper articles.
Speaker B:But with, if you're listening on an audiobook, you can't very easily skip those first few newspaper articles.
Speaker B:And I think they can be quite daun on an audiobook.
Speaker B:So I don't know, I'm curious about that.
Speaker B:But I, I, I, I was really, really pleased with the audiobook.
Speaker B:I think Christian Carlson did the reading and he just has the most perfect voice.
Speaker B:It's like slightly, I think it's a little bit scornful.
Speaker B:I don't know, I think he's just got a really, he's really done it very well.
Speaker B:And then the, the way they did the newspapers was very clever with the, they kind of overlapped the names, otherwise it would have gone on for a thousand years.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker B:I haven't listened to the audiobook all the way through myself.
Speaker A:Well, the reviews I've heard from people I spoke to, they loved it.
Speaker A:Should we move on to talk about the two main characters then?
Speaker A:Gaunt and Elwood?
Speaker A:It's such a beautiful pairing, beautiful story.
Speaker A:There are so many layers to them both, both individually and in their relationship.
Speaker A:You know, they're both from very different backgrounds and they have very different opinions.
Speaker A:How did you go about crafting their characters and allowing their differences to bring them together at a time when they really weren't allowed to be together?
Speaker B:So I think they find their DNA in Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, although in no way are they based on Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon.
Speaker B:And I'm in no way implying that Robert Graves and Sigfurt Sassoon, like, had a romance.
Speaker B:But I think the thing that I was thinking about when I first started writing, which I did really kind of feverishly, right, like, it kind of fell out almost.
Speaker B:It didn't.
Speaker B:It didn't feel like there was a whole lot of forethought going into it, because I wrote.
Speaker B:I wrote most of the first draft in about two weeks, and it was just really, like, really manic.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And then I edited it for a year and a half so that.
Speaker B:Because the first draft didn't make a whole lot of sense and was quite silly in places, but.
Speaker B:So Robert Graves and Sassoon had this very intense friendship, which later.
Speaker B:One of them, I can't remember which one said was.
Speaker B:It always had a heavy element of the sexual in it, sort of beneath the surface.
Speaker B:And I. I just.
Speaker B:I got really interested reading their letters to each other.
Speaker B:And so the very.
Speaker B:The very first thing I wrote was a letter exchange between two characters that were neither Gaunt nor Elwood and neither Siegfried nor Robert Gray.
Speaker B:Just like.
Speaker B:Just two men who were writing each other letter letters.
Speaker B:And there was some kind of drama underneath the surface.
Speaker B:And I couldn't.
Speaker B:But, like, you couldn't quite see what it was.
Speaker B:You just could see that there was tension, but they were being polite to one another.
Speaker B:And then the next thing I did was just write the novel.
Speaker B:So I. I don't know, I'm almost like, you know how, like, native speakers sometimes don't know how to explain the grammar.
Speaker B:But Henry Gaunt has a lot of the same traits as Robert Graves in that, you know, he's a classicist.
Speaker B:He's really interested in Ancient Greek, although he's more.
Speaker B:He's less interested in the myths.
Speaker B:He's more interested in Thucydides, who was this great writer, great historical writer who wrote about the Peloponnesian War, very unromantically wrote about the Peloponnesian War.
Speaker B:And he's also a boxer, which is like Robert Graves, and he's also half German, from a German aristocratic family.
Speaker B:And those are all traits I took from Robert Graves.
Speaker B:And then Sassoon was really good at cricket and was very romantic and obviously wrote this beautiful poetry and is Jewish, but culturally Christian.
Speaker B:So those were all traits I took from Sassoon, and I kind of planted them into Elwood, but then they grew into, you know, incredibly different characters and, like, Elwood is, you know, he's one of the.
Speaker B:He's incredibly popular.
Speaker B:Like something that they often talk about both gotten Elwood together is that Elwood is sort of charmed.
Speaker B:He somehow has managed to be.
Speaker B:To kind of thrive in this environment that is.
Speaker B:Is inherently, you know, quite white supremacist and hostile towards.
Speaker B:Towards everything that he is.
Speaker B:But somehow he has found a way survive in it.
Speaker B:And I think something that's interesting is that Elwood, you know, who is, you know, he's a bit of a misogynist, especially at the end of the book.
Speaker B:And he's absolutely classist.
Speaker B:And I think a lot of people when they first read the book have a bit of a hard time with Elwood because Gaunt has.
Speaker B:He shares more of our sensibilities, right.
Speaker B:And I think he's much more relatable to us.
Speaker B:And you know, he already at the beginning of the novel has some sense that the world in which he lives in isn't perfect, you know, and he.
Speaker B:He can kind of.
Speaker B:He can't really put a finger on it.
Speaker B:But his sister is very, very feminist and political.
Speaker B:So he has some sense that.
Speaker B:That there's something not quite right about how sort of elitist and.
Speaker B:And exclusive their environment is.
Speaker B:So I think that's much easier for a reader to get on board with.
Speaker B:Whereas Elwood, you know, is.
Speaker B:Is.
Speaker B:He loves the world of the boarding school.
Speaker B:It works for him.
Speaker B:He's really happy there and he doesn't want.
Speaker B:He doesn't want to be a part of it.
Speaker B:He's.
Speaker B:He's kind of thriving in the exclusivity.
Speaker B:And he.
Speaker B:He doesn't.
Speaker B:He likes the exclusivity.
Speaker B:But I think something that, like if there was ever a film, something that I think would be really interesting is if it is.
Speaker B:Is if you could get an actor who looked Jewish because Elwood looks Jewish.
Speaker B:And I think that that's something that's missing when you read the novel.
Speaker B:He kind of just seems to fit in with all the other schoolboys.
Speaker B:But I think if you could really see more clearly and maybe this is like a flaw in the book, maybe I would change this if I was writing it again now if you could see more clearly like that this is a sea of white faces.
Speaker B:And then this one man who like we, you know, we think of Jewish people as kind of passing for white.
Speaker B:But I think in.
Speaker B:In his context he really kind of wouldn't have.
Speaker B:And that I think would explain a little bit of his sort of bombing bombastic snobbery because you would See, like, you're, you know, you're kind of being more snobby than the snobs because that's the only option you have to not be.
Speaker B:To not be targeted.
Speaker B:And I think that can kind of get a little bit lost in the book, maybe.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I mean, he is, he is in many ways an incredibly unlikable character.
Speaker B:So I think I'm always quite.
Speaker B:I'm always quite proud when people say, like, oh, I really hated him to begin with, but I ended up liking him in the end.
Speaker B:I'm like, yes, won him over.
Speaker A:That's how I felt with him.
Speaker A:I know when I first met him, I say that I met him, that's how real they are to me.
Speaker A:When I first met him, I was like, is he really obnoxious?
Speaker A:Is he a cocky teenager?
Speaker A:What's going on with this kid?
Speaker A:But I think one of the many great things about the novel is how when he is with Gaunt, you get to see him for his truer self coming through, how he is allowed to be himself.
Speaker A:He's accepted and it was.
Speaker A:It's beautiful.
Speaker A:But I did struggle with him because I was like, I really want to love you.
Speaker A:You're not making it very easy.
Speaker A:Yeah, but, but at the end, definitely, definitely.
Speaker B:He's a bit of a pratt, for sure, but I think that, I think, yeah, I think he doesn't feel like he needs to show off in the same way with Gone or if he is showing off, he's showing off in a way that feels more secure, perhaps.
Speaker B:But, you know, he's a little bit, he's a bit of a bully, but I think, you know, he's trying to survive in, in a very hostile environment.
Speaker B:I mean, this, this, this school is a school where, you know, everyone is bullied and, you know, how badly you're bullied sort of depends on how you react to the initial bullying.
Speaker B:So I think, you know, Gaunt just is very, very strong and he grows very tall and so that becomes his way of managing things.
Speaker B:But Elwood just sort of has to stay on top of the pile.
Speaker B:That's how he manages it, by becoming, you know, part of the institution almost.
Speaker A:So interesting.
Speaker A:I think one of the things that's really hard hitting in the novel as well is when you keep remembering we're talking about boys.
Speaker A:I think before reading a memoriam, if I were to think about the war and the men, I would say the men on the front line, but actually some of them were as young as 16, maybe younger.
Speaker A:I think there's One that was younger, wasn't there?
Speaker A:Yeah, but I think at the beginning you do see them as.
Speaker A:They're sort of all fresh face and they're excited to go off.
Speaker A:They have no idea of what lies ahead for them.
Speaker A:And it's, it really does make you stop and think.
Speaker A:And I just wondered.
Speaker A:They also do seem very much like teens of their time, you know, the boys that you write about.
Speaker A:Whereas I think it would be very different now for them.
Speaker A:I just wondered what that was like for you to write those young boys.
Speaker B:How do you think it would be different now?
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker A:But teens are different, aren't they?
Speaker A:Well, we know more, we know more now.
Speaker A:We've got the benefit of the hindsight of seeing how terrible this war was.
Speaker A:I don't think they, they knew.
Speaker A:They didn't have a clue, did they?
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:I do think it's interesting.
Speaker B:I, I think, you know, we've had films now, anti war films, so many anti war films, and they are incredibly vivid and boys go and see them and I think that that surely has an impact.
Speaker B:And I, I don't know, I, I can't think.
Speaker B:To me, I. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker B:I can't think of a war in the west that I have seen where, except for the current ongoing war in Ukraine, where it has felt as if people are joining up with that level of patriotism that you see in the two world wars.
Speaker B:And I think it is.
Speaker B:I do think it's part of the legacy of World War I, which I think is.
Speaker B:Is I'm so grateful for, is that I think that the people who fought In World War I, men and women, you know, fought in different ways.
Speaker B:They came away from that war with this determination that, that no one should ever go into a war as ignorantly as they did.
Speaker B:And they, they really, you know, they really, really worked at it.
Speaker B:And I think, you know, especially in, In England and in France, you can see the sort of monuments that they have built everywhere that make it part of the kind of structure of the country and make it really, really impossible to ignore, or at least for me.
Speaker B:But I don't know.
Speaker B:I don't know how long that kind of thing lasts.
Speaker B:You know, I'm sure after the Napoleonic wars, people felt pretty anti war, but then eventually they kind of forgot, didn't they?
Speaker B:So I, I don't know.
Speaker B:But, yeah, these, these young men, these boys, they have grown up on a kind of diet of Rudyard Kipling.
Speaker B:And so to them it seems.
Speaker B:It seems like a chance to prove your worth And I think, you know, no one realized how bad it would be when it comes to the ages, the age of conscription age and at the beginning of the war was 19.
Speaker B:So theoretically you had to be 19 or older.
Speaker B:You also had to be, I think, 5 foot 1 or taller, which is really short.
Speaker B:But in London, like half the men in certain boroughs were not tall enough.
Speaker B:I mean, it just shows how incredibly malnourished a lot of these men were.
Speaker B:And you know, people used to grow, when they joined the army, they would grow taller because they were young enough so that they still had the potential to grow taller, but also because the army was the first time they had been given proper food.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I mean, it really shows you.
Speaker B:And there was this huge disparity between the heights of the upper class men and the heights of the working class men because basically because of the malnutrition of the working class, they were just radically shorter.
Speaker B:So Gaunt, for instance, is 6 foot 2.
Speaker B:At one point in one of his letters he writes about how he's at.
Speaker B:He's at a training camp and all the men are like a foot shorter than him.
Speaker B:He writes he feels as if he's stolen six inches off them by force, which, you know, he sort of has in a way by virtue of the fact that he's part of this quite oppressive upper class regime.
Speaker B:But yeah, I think it was more common among the working class and the kind of privates for people to enlist at a younger age.
Speaker B:Because obviously if you are going to be enlisting as an officer, you have to get a commission.
Speaker B:And it's all a bit, you know, it's not quite as anonymous.
Speaker B:So you can't really just rock up and lie about your age in the same way.
Speaker B:But obviously people did pull strings and get in when they weren't supposed to.
Speaker B:For instance, Rudyard Kipling had a son called Jack, or John, I think he called him Jack.
Speaker B:And Jack had really bad eyesight and so he kept failing his medical.
Speaker B:He was 18, he was raring to go, he really wanted to go fight.
Speaker B:And Rudyard Kipling was very well connected and basically pulled some strings with a general that he knew and got Jack to the front.
Speaker B: idn't find his body until the: Speaker B:So, you know, you.
Speaker B:There are these stories all over the shop of people kind of going to the front when they really weren't supposed to.
Speaker B:And yeah, I think, I think another tension in the book is that the privates were often, you know, grown men and the junior officers especially who were kind of, they were, they were the people who would be the first to go over the, the top, right?
Speaker B:They, they're leading men over the top.
Speaker B:So they got killed at higher rate than almost anyone else in the war, except for maybe the, the people in aviation, the pilots, they actually the miners also died at a very high rate anyway.
Speaker B:They were often younger than the men, which I always think must have been really sort of hard.
Speaker B:Like if you're a sort of hardened 30 year old man who's been in the front for two years and now the person who's calling the shots on whether you're going to live or d this like fresh out of eaten 18 year old, you know, who granted has had a lot of military training because these, these public schools were doing military training from the, you know, from the beginning.
Speaker B:All the same, you know, no experience and young and it must have just been very, very galling.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker A:So I'm just having a moment of like just taking that in.
Speaker A:I mean it's, it's this, it's funny.
Speaker A:I, I mean I, I love historical fiction.
Speaker A:I don't read like I'm not so big on my knowledge of history.
Speaker A:So these sorts of books that lead you to learn more just.
Speaker A:It's so fascinating.
Speaker A:Terribly sad, but absolutely fascinating as well, given that at times In Memoriam is quite a harrowing read.
Speaker A:Like the scenes in the trenches are brutal as you would expect.
Speaker A:Of course I was surprised at how quickly I read it.
Speaker A:I found myself really torn between wanting to fly through to find out what happened, but being too afraid to go too fast and in case something happened that I wasn't quite ready for, if that makes sense.
Speaker A:I feel like every page, every scene was so planned for you in that you kept it compelling and there's balance.
Speaker A:So I did always feel that there was hope, even when you were, you know, leaving me feeling devastated.
Speaker A:And I just wondered how did you balance it all from the trauma to the emotion and the pace.
Speaker A:How difficult was that for you?
Speaker B:Well, I really wanted it to be a fun, quick read because I love fun, quick reads.
Speaker B:And I have to say I think, you know, what I think of as sort of peak writing is people who can write beautiful literary sentences, but it's also a page turner.
Speaker B:And yeah, I don't know, there's a F. Scott Fitzgerald quote.
Speaker B:I can't remember exactly what it is, but the sort of gist of it is, you know, write Write for your.
Speaker B:Like, Write for, like, the readers of your own generation, the teachers of the next generation, and the critics forever afterwards or something.
Speaker B:But the, the vibe I get is you don't want to write something that is, you know, a bit of a slog that people are going to read to feel worthy.
Speaker B:You want to write something that people are going to read because they can't help themselves and they can't stop reading it.
Speaker B:And also, you know, apart from that, when you're reading World War I literature, like, it is actually very Moorish, a lot of it.
Speaker B:Because a lot of it's very funny.
Speaker B:You know, if you read Journey's End, it's a really funny play and Sassoon was very darkly funny and Robert Graves are very darkly funny.
Speaker B:And, you know, I think, um, that that tracks with just, you know, if you're, if you are in a terrible experience like that for a long period of time, humor is a very good way of sort of surviving.
Speaker B:And then I think that the romance between Gordon Elwood proves a pretty.
Speaker B:A pretty compulsive propulsive, I think is the word propulsive engine.
Speaker B:Because you just want to find out if they're going to be okay.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker B:I definitely, I definitely cut a lot so that I could cut away anything that wasn't really contributing to making the reader want to read on and on and on.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Because that really mattered to me.
Speaker B:I didn't want it to feel, as I said, like a worthy book.
Speaker A:Such an incredible read.
Speaker A:I absolutely loved it.
Speaker A:And it is when I say to people, oh, it's a really quick read, they're like, really?
Speaker A:It is.
Speaker A:Because you won't be able to put it down.
Speaker A:And it sounds weird.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:It doesn't sound what you would picture as a quick, quick read, but it, it is.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I, I also try and emphasize that because I feel like.
Speaker B:I think in the UK I've sort of crossed some sort of nebulous barrier and I'm now being read by people who sort of have faith that it's going to be fun to read, but I think in America, people are still like, well, it looks very serious.
Speaker B:And I'm like, okay, it is.
Speaker B:I'm not, you know, I'm not saying it's a sort of love walk in the park, but I, I think it is.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I, I would not.
Speaker B:Not call it necessarily hard to get through, which is a. Yeah.
Speaker B:A relief to hear.
Speaker B:I was, I was glad that that worked.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, it was fabulous.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:I think the timing of us getting together to talk about In Memoriam is quite interesting.
Speaker A:So we're recording this at the end of January, and here in the uk, over the last few days, there's been a lot of talk in the media about UK reintroducing conscription and volunteer armies.
Speaker A:And obviously there's a lot of conflict throughout the world.
Speaker A:And it makes me wonder, Alice, looking at your beautiful novel In Memoriam, what is it that you would most like readers to take away from it?
Speaker B:That's a very.
Speaker B:That's a tough one, isn't it?
Speaker B:Sorry, I don't know for sure if I, If I have an answer for that.
Speaker B:I think, think it, you know, it can be so personal, what you take from a book.
Speaker B:I mean, sometimes the only thing I take from a book is some sort of tiny, tiny little thing.
Speaker B:Like, for instance, in Sense and Sensibility, the main thing I took away from that book is there's this one moment where Jane Austen remarks that no matter how immune someone is to flattery, if you flatter them about their children, they.
Speaker B:No one, no one can withstand that.
Speaker B:And I have experimented with this throughout my life.
Speaker B:And it is true, true.
Speaker B:Like, no matter how suspicious someone is, if you start praising their children, they're like, that's true.
Speaker B:Thank you for being so insightful.
Speaker B:So, you know, that's what I took from Sense of Sensibility.
Speaker B:So I, I can't say what people will take from A Memoriam because it might be some tiny little, little throwaway sentence, you know, But I.
Speaker B:Obviously it is an anti war book, although I'm always careful to say this.
Speaker B:I'm not anti.
Speaker B:I'm not a pacifist in that.
Speaker B:Like, for instance, I wouldn't have been against fighting World War II.
Speaker B:I don't think.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:I don't think it's anti all war, but I think it is.
Speaker B:It's anti the glorification of war and anti.
Speaker B:Kind of forgetting about the, the dreadful cost that, you know, that gets carried forward.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I think something that I've been thinking about a lot is how it is a little bit about, about how young people so desperately want to be important and glorious and, and have some kind of beautiful meaning and for their lives to, to be beautiful and glorious and have meaning and how that makes them very susceptible to being used by older people.
Speaker B:And I think that that can happen in so many different ways and, and, you know, being drafted into a war is just one of them.
Speaker B:But, you know, you can see that in, in lots of different ways.
Speaker B:Like, if you're a young girl and you start dating a 35 year old man who makes you feel like your life is glorious and beautiful and has meaning.
Speaker B:I feel like that's almost the same kind of impulse.
Speaker B:So I, I don't know, I. I don't have an answer to your question, in short, because I sort of almost don't feel like it's my place to say it really is up to the readers what they take from it.
Speaker A:I feel like it's a book that I will look back on and see different things as I sort of move on and I can totally see myself reading it again one day and picking it up.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean I'm just a huge fan of it, so.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Well, In Memoriam is shortly about to be published in paperback.
Speaker A:So if you haven't read it yet, it's exciting.
Speaker A:I can't believe how quick that feels.
Speaker A:Actually, it doesn't feel like.
Speaker B:I'm gonna be in the UK for the paperback tour.
Speaker B:So I'm going to be speaking.
Speaker B:Is that all right?
Speaker B:Can I plug that?
Speaker A:Yeah, of course.
Speaker A:Plug away.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:I know I'm going to London.
Speaker B:Piccadilly Waterstones.
Speaker B:This Is in the second half of March, 19th of March is Piccadilly Waterstones.
Speaker B:Then backstory books in Balham, Winchester, mostly books in Oxfordshire and that's.
Speaker B:And then something in Brighton.
Speaker A:Lovely.
Speaker A:So yeah, I would really encourage people to pick it up because it is fabulous.
Speaker A:I'm constantly recommending it to people and even if it's not the sort of thing that you would normally pick up, give it a try because I think you would be very, very happy with it.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:So before we move on to talk about your, the books that have shaped your life, just want to remind listeners that all the books we're talking about will be linked in the show notes.
Speaker A:So don't worry, you'll be able to find them, them easily there later.
Speaker A:So Alice, how did you find choosing your five books?
Speaker A:Was it difficult for you?
Speaker B:It was really, really hard.
Speaker B:I'm definitely going to do a cheaty thing where I'm going to try and incorporate other books that didn't make it onto the final, final list.
Speaker B:As I'm answering my question.
Speaker A:I've got you.
Speaker A:Okay, shall we start talking about your first book then?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So my, my interpretation of the question, you know, you asked books that have shaped your life.
Speaker B:I tried to think of books that I took something from that I feel like is still something sort of in active use in my day to day life, if that makes sense.
Speaker B:So these are not necessarily my favorite books.
Speaker B:Very honestly, I think I probably have 50 favorite books.
Speaker B:And I hate when people ask me for, like, even my top five, because I'm just, like, in picking five, I'm sort of not doing justice to the other 45 that I really think are equally sort of primary in my heart.
Speaker B:So it's.
Speaker B:It's very hard to choose.
Speaker B:But I. I thought I would start with talking about two books on the list together because, okay, basically I chose these two books because when I was a teenager, I used to carry these two.
Speaker B:And actually a third book that I'm gonna throw in there, even though that's cheating, that I used to carry around with me everywhere I went.
Speaker B:So it was Bridget Jones's Diary, Catch 22, by Joseph Heller.
Speaker B:And then I didn't tell you.
Speaker B:Is this as my list?
Speaker B:But also the complete works of Saki/HH Monroe, who was a writer from the turn of the century.
Speaker B:He's kind of.
Speaker B:He writes in the Edwardian period.
Speaker B:He writes these brutal little short stories.
Speaker B:So I'll talk more about Bridget Jones and catch 22 because those are the ones I told you on my list.
Speaker B:So I thought I'd begin with catch 22, which is quite a long book.
Speaker B:And it is a book.
Speaker B:A book about.
Speaker B:It's where we get the phrase, oh, that's a catch 22.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:You've heard that phrase, right?
Speaker B:And the phrase means, like, oh, you're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Speaker B:And what it comes from is it's it.
Speaker B:In the book, there's this whole cast of characters.
Speaker B:They're all pilots in World War II on this tiny island in Italy.
Speaker B:And the guy in charge of their division is insane.
Speaker B:And you're supposed to fly, like, I don't know, 15 to 19 missions.
Speaker B:And then you get leave to go home.
Speaker B:But he wants to be the biggest, most important, important, like, best guy in the Army.
Speaker B:So he keeps just raising the number of missions you have to fly before you can go home.
Speaker B:So every time it looks like people are going to be nearing the number, he just raises it again.
Speaker B:So everyone has just been trapped on this island flying limitless missions and just being killed in missions, and they just want to go home.
Speaker B:And he just keeps changing.
Speaker B:There's this rul.
Speaker B:Missions, catch 22.
Speaker B:The rule is, if you are insane, you don't have to find the missions and you can go home.
Speaker B:However, if you try and go.
Speaker B:If you try and go to a doctor and say, I'm insane, please can I go home.
Speaker B:That the very fact that you want to go home is proof that you are actually sane and therefore cannot go home.
Speaker B:But if you are insane, then you want to fly in the missions, so then you won't go home.
Speaker B:So it's a catchphrain, too.
Speaker B:You can't go her.
Speaker B:And the protagonist is this guy called Yasarian, who is.
Speaker B:Is just like, everyone here is crazy except for me, and I want to get out of this war in any way I can.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:But, I mean, it has all these different characters.
Speaker B:Like, there's this one character who he wants to live as long as possible, and he's noticed that when he's bored, life seems longer.
Speaker B:So, you know, whenever you meet a boring character, that other character is always right next to him.
Speaker B:Like, saying, like, yes, tell me more about your boring story.
Speaker B:Because then his life feels long.
Speaker B:So there's just tons and tons of characters like this.
Speaker B:There's a Native American character who, wherever his family move, they always find oil on their land.
Speaker B:And so every time his family move to a new piece of land where they're going to hopefully be undisturbed by white people, they find oil.
Speaker B:And they're like, no, not again.
Speaker B:And they.
Speaker B:Then they are moved again.
Speaker B:It's like they're on wheels, you know?
Speaker B:So it's just.
Speaker B:It's so many characters, and they.
Speaker B:They all have a sort of game almost.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:It's so incredibly funny and yet so incredibly dark.
Speaker B:And especially towards the end.
Speaker B:Like, the book is like this kind of hilarious jaunt through the war.
Speaker B:And then you start occasionally having these little upsetting, poignant moments, but then it'll go back to being funny.
Speaker B:And then you kind of slowly start realizing that all the ways in which all the characters are funny are actually just them being traumatized, and it's their weird coping mechanism.
Speaker B:And then you slowly start to realize that it's.
Speaker B:It's just a complete hellhole and that they're all so damaged, and it's so, so sad.
Speaker B:But the result is this book that is.
Speaker B:I mean, it's one of the funniest books I've ever read, and it's also one of the saddest.
Speaker B:And I think, you know, when I was a teenager, I would read it.
Speaker B:Weirdly, I would.
Speaker B:I never read it in order as a teenager.
Speaker B:I would just open the book at a random page and read a few pages, and then I'd close it.
Speaker B:And so it actually took me until I was in my early 20s and I was writing an essay on it.
Speaker B:I think that I read it all the way through, and I had never actually read the ending.
Speaker B:And I was like, oh, my God, this is brutal.
Speaker B:But I. I don't know.
Speaker B:I think the reason I count it as a book that shaped my life is that I think it's.
Speaker B:It's had a very big influence on the way I write and what I value in writing.
Speaker B:That.
Speaker B:That balance of light and dark that I think he just gets so perfectly well.
Speaker B:He does so perfectly well is.
Speaker B:Is something I strive to achieve.
Speaker B:And I think I've always been interested in war.
Speaker B:But I am sure that that was partly, you know, an influence.
Speaker B:The fact that that was this book that, like, if I was traveling, I'd be like, well, I'll make sure I have catch 22 with me in case I get bored for a second, you know.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I think it had a really big influence on me.
Speaker B:And now that I've had a little bit of success and obviously I'm freaking out about whether I'll ever write another good book, another thing that has shaped me is that Joseph Heller, you know, he wrote this book.
Speaker B:It was a huge, huge success.
Speaker B:Everyone loved it.
Speaker B:Critical and financial success.
Speaker B:And then he kind of never really had another book that did that well.
Speaker B:And there's this story of a journalist asking him, saying quite rudely, I think something like, well, you know, you've never written another book as good as Catch 22.
Speaker B:And Joseph Heller apparently sort of lent back and said, well, who has?
Speaker B:I'm trying to.
Speaker B:I'm trying to sort of cultivate that approach in myself, or if it turns out that I never write anything good again.
Speaker A:I'm sure you will.
Speaker A:I'm sure you will.
Speaker A:I'm embarrassed to say I've not read a.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker A:It's one of those books that I feel I should have read, and I know it would be.
Speaker A:I always get intimidated by big books.
Speaker B:Me too, massively.
Speaker B:Well, that's why I read it in little bits.
Speaker B:I read it, you know, not out of order.
Speaker B:The other thing.
Speaker B:Well, yeah, that's actually kind of.
Speaker B:I would recommend it.
Speaker B:It's fun.
Speaker B:But the other thing is, you know, it is sexist.
Speaker B:And it's sexist in a way that I'm okay with in that, like, I don't approve of the sexism, but, like, there's certain kinds of books, even from the past, where it's a kind of sexism where I just.
Speaker B:Like, it makes me too angry and I can't enjoy it.
Speaker B:And then there's other Kinds of sexism where I can just be like, well, all right.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:That's how I feel about this.
Speaker B:But you might.
Speaker B:You know, I don't.
Speaker B:You know, people have different kind of trigger points for sexism, and you might have a different feeling.
Speaker A:I will try and push myself to read it, and then we can talk about our thoughts on the sexism in it.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:That'd be good.
Speaker A:Okay, perfect.
Speaker A:So are you sneaking in a cheeky extra one, or are we going?
Speaker B:No, I just wanted to mention.
Speaker B:I wanted to name check Saki because he's really, really funny and he wrote.
Speaker B:He wrote mainly short stories, so.
Speaker B:And because.
Speaker B:And because those were the three books I would bring with me everywhere.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And Saki is brilliant and I think also very influential on my writing.
Speaker B:But no, I'm going to talk about the next book.
Speaker B:Book that I had given.
Speaker B:I gave you five books.
Speaker B:Saki is a sort of little bonus book.
Speaker B:He died in World War I, Saki.
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:His last.
Speaker B:He's actually.
Speaker B:His last words made it into the book.
Speaker B:His last words were.
Speaker B:Allegedly, he was.
Speaker B:He was standing.
Speaker B:He was a sentry.
Speaker B:Like, standing sentry in the.
Speaker B:In the trenches.
Speaker B:And his last words were, put out that damn cigarette.
Speaker A:Oh, that wasn't the.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:So that's the little cheeky sake reference for everyone.
Speaker B:Very sad.
Speaker B:He also has such an.
Speaker B:He has a very appealing face.
Speaker B:I really.
Speaker B:I really like looking at photographs of him.
Speaker B:Anyway, not because he was handsome.
Speaker B:He just looks.
Speaker B:He just looks interesting.
Speaker B:He just looks like he'd be fun to talk to.
Speaker A:Google Pictures.
Speaker B:Yeah, but.
Speaker B:So Bridget Jones.
Speaker B:Bridget Jones was the third of my books that I would bring with me everywhere.
Speaker B:And I first read Bridget Jones when I was 11.
Speaker B:And I think it.
Speaker B:I think it had quite a negative effect on me, actually.
Speaker B:I feel conflicted about this book.
Speaker B:I think it's absolutely brilliant.
Speaker B:I think it is one of the funniest books I've ever read.
Speaker B:And I think as a character, she is so, like, real feeling and she's so uniquely Bridget.
Speaker B:And she's also become so massively famous that it's like, you know how, like, Lord of the Rings came out and put, you know, maps at the beginning of books.
Speaker B:And now loads of books have maps at the beginning.
Speaker B:And so if you were to read all of those first, you'd be like, ugh, Tolkien.
Speaker B:He just has this.
Speaker B:This, you know, map at the beginning of the book.
Speaker B:Like a classic fantasy novel.
Speaker B:Like, how cliche of him.
Speaker B:But it's like, no, he began that cliche, right?
Speaker B:That cliche comes from him.
Speaker B:I feel that way about Bridget Jones.
Speaker B:There's so many elements of like, feminine culture that I feel like you can trace back to Bridget, which is just like, kind of incredible.
Speaker B:On the other hand, like, I read it, as I said, when I was 11, and it gave me this, this intense panic about not getting married.
Speaker B:I was like, 11.
Speaker B:I was like, what if I'm left on the shelf?
Speaker B:And I was so frightened of aging.
Speaker B:And there's a lot of subtle things that Helen Fielding does to show that Bridget is like, completely kind of wrong in the head.
Speaker B:Like, at one point she gets really panicky.
Speaker B:She runs into this old friend from school who always says nasty things.
Speaker B:And oh yeah, it's not even from school.
Speaker B:She, she, yeah, she runs into this woman and the woman always makes these like, drive by nasty remarks.
Speaker B:She says something to her, to Bridget, like, ah, I love Magda.
Speaker B:Magda's so pretty.
Speaker B:Remind me, were you six or seven years ahead of her in school?
Speaker B:And Bridget's like, no, she's two years older than me.
Speaker B:And then there's this awkward pause and then the woman goes, well, Magda's lucky.
Speaker B:She has such good skin.
Speaker B:And then Bridget freaks out and goes home.
Speaker B:And like, she's like frantically looking at pictures of Susan Sarandon.
Speaker B:And then she like puts a thousand meters of makeup on her face.
Speaker B:She just like cakes her face in like foundation, trying to cover up her hideous aging ways.
Speaker B:And then she goes to a party and everyone at the party's like, you look insane.
Speaker B:What are you doing?
Speaker B:And she's like, I'm old.
Speaker B:And they're like, you look 16.
Speaker B:Like you're being crazy.
Speaker B:Crazy.
Speaker B:But the thing is that at 11, I didn't really interpret like the, her friends reactions as the correct one.
Speaker B:I kind of just interpreted her reaction.
Speaker B:She's 32 or something, right?
Speaker B:And I was just like, oh, no, I have no time.
Speaker B:I've got to get married instantly.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And then, yeah, I don't know, it's.
Speaker B:It's a weird one, I think.
Speaker B:I think stylistically I definitely learned a lot about writing, like humor and how to be funny from Bridget because she's so funny.
Speaker B:But I reread the book recently and the fat phobia was just insane.
Speaker B:I mean, out of this world in a way where, I mean, she just has a full blown eating disorder.
Speaker B:Like she just is anorexic and, and it sort of played for laughs.
Speaker B:And I think, you know, I, I don't really blame Helen feeling for this because I think the 90s were a really toxic time for Body Image.
Speaker B:And I think she was writing a character that kind of parodies how normal it had.
Speaker B:It had become to essentially have like a.
Speaker B:A little pet eating disorder that everyone knew about.
Speaker B:But I read it when I was young and I think a lot of people read it and don't realize what she's making fun of.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:So it's a.
Speaker B:It's a weirdly sort of dangerous book in some ways, I think.
Speaker B:But the other thing I took from it, because those are sort of two bad things I feel like I took from it.
Speaker B:And then there's the humor that I also was very inspired by.
Speaker B:But I. I think the other thing I took from it was that something I really admire about the character of Bridget is that whenever something bad happens, she sort of is funny about it, right?
Speaker B:So she doesn't really actually fall into a serious.
Speaker B:A serious frame of mind about it.
Speaker B:Like, even when she's feeling heartbroken over a breakup, you know, she'll never just actually start talking about her feet.
Speaker B:She'll be like, you know, oh, I'm terrified of now I'm just gonna.
Speaker B:I'm gonna age all by myself, alone in a.
Speaker B:In my house, and be found dead, eaten by Alsatians and that.
Speaker B:That way she has of turning a genuine feeling into a bit of a joke, you know, I'm sure it's not a healthy coping mechanism 100 of the time, but I. I actually do.
Speaker B:I do think it is healthy.
Speaker B:Quite a lot of the time she sort of doesn't really take herself seriously.
Speaker B:And I have a problem with taking myself much too seriously.
Speaker B:And I. I do find that quite inspirational.
Speaker B:And I. I try to sort of click the world into humour when I can, when I'm having a hard time with something rather than sort of wallow in difficult feelings.
Speaker A:It's really interesting, isn't it?
Speaker A:Because I was obviously a lot older than you when it came out.
Speaker A:And I remember reading it and just being like, oh, it's all me and my mates.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's all what we're doing, doing.
Speaker A:I didn't sort of think of, as you say, like, the.
Speaker A:The weight in there.
Speaker A:The way they talk about her weight is like.
Speaker A:I read it recently, I think.
Speaker A:I can't think what year it was.
Speaker A:There was a special anniversary edition that came out and I read it and I was thinking, gosh, that was really normal to talk like that.
Speaker A:And, you know, just didn't.
Speaker A:It didn't occur to us that it was a problem.
Speaker A:I think when you say about Bridget's humor.
Speaker A:Something I take from her is I get myself into all sorts of silly scrapes.
Speaker A:I mean, I'm constantly doing something silly.
Speaker A:And I always love the way she bounced back from things she has just.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I just think, because I would.
Speaker A:I would take things that I've done and be like, mortified for years about it, but I tried to be like, you know what?
Speaker B:Well, I think she is mortified for years, but she just describes her mortification in such a humorous way.
Speaker B:She's resilient in a way.
Speaker B:I don't.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I. I also never can quite forget this in the second book, and I think it's also in the second film.
Speaker B:I think of this quite often.
Speaker B:There's this moment when she's in prison in Thailand because she's accidentally smuggled some drugs out and she.
Speaker B:She's just had a big breakup with, with her boyfriend.
Speaker B:And so she's like, very sad.
Speaker B:And the women in prison are like, are you very sad as well?
Speaker B:Like, do you.
Speaker B:Have you had a bad experience with a man?
Speaker B:And she's like, yeah.
Speaker B:And they're like, we've also had bad, bad experiences with men.
Speaker B:My boyfriend, like, beat me and forced me to become a prostitute.
Speaker B:What did your boyfriend do?
Speaker B:And she's like, he.
Speaker B:He didn't like it when I called him during.
Speaker B:When he was watching Foot.
Speaker B:He found it annoying if I talked to him during the football match too much and they're like, oh, it doesn't seem that bad.
Speaker B:I think about that all the time.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I find it a very good sort of analogy for, for.
Speaker B:For when you're really kind of getting too upset about a small problem.
Speaker A:Yeah, she's an icon for sure.
Speaker A:Perfect.
Speaker A:Should we move on to book number three, then, Alan?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
Speaker B:So this one's a little bit of a boring thing to talk about, I feel like.
Speaker B:But basically, Marcus Aurelius was emperor of Rome.
Speaker B:He was emperor of Rome in this kind of banging sort of 150 year period when they had five good emperors in a row.
Speaker B:He was the.
Speaker B:I believe he was the last of the five good emperors, anyway.
Speaker B:Yes, he is.
Speaker B:He's the emperor in.
Speaker B:In the beginning of Gladiator, if you've seen that, who gets killed by Hurricane Phoenix?
Speaker B:And he, you know, while he was being emperor, sort of whenever he had a free time, a little scrap of free time, he would sort of jot down sort of.
Speaker B:Of tips for living a good life.
Speaker B:And these have been compiled into Meditations.
Speaker B:Or he could buy.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Point is, my copy of Meditations is really short, and it's like this really little book, and it almost reads like a BuzzFeed list, right?
Speaker B:Like, it's not.
Speaker B:It's not paragraphs of text.
Speaker B:It's literally just like, don't worry about what people think of you if you don't respect them.
Speaker B:Because if you don't respect them, why would you respect your opinion of their opinion of you?
Speaker B:And you're like, good point, Marcus.
Speaker B:And then you read the next bullet point, essentially.
Speaker B:And, you know he's a stoic, right?
Speaker B:He's part of the philosophical movement of stoicism.
Speaker B:And so, I don't know.
Speaker B:I. I read him when I was in my early 20s, and I just think there's a huge amount that he writes that is just really good, solid advice about remembering that, you know, you're going to die and you have to pay attention to the people you love, and you don't spend too much time doing things that you don't actually care about, and try not to worry too much about fame and all this stuff, and occasionally.
Speaker B:One thing that always made me laugh about Marcus Aurelius is that, like, he has quite a lot of.
Speaker B:He talks a lot about, like, how you shouldn't say no to things because you're tired.
Speaker B:And I'd always be like, marcus Aurelius, like, you don't understand how tired I am.
Speaker B:And then I'd be like, although you are literally ruling the Roman Empire, so maybe you.
Speaker B:Maybe you are quite tired.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:But, you know, I don't.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I listened to a podcast with Mary Beard, and she was really scathing about Marcus Aurelius and the stoics in general.
Speaker B:And she said that they were like a bunch of just, like, elitist pigs.
Speaker B:And they were just like.
Speaker B:They were like, everyone should behave.
Speaker B:The way I think behaving well is, you know, behaving.
Speaker B:God, that's not good grammar.
Speaker B:Anyway, the point is, she kind of made me doubt myself a little bit.
Speaker B:But I.
Speaker B:Whenever I. I think whenever I go back to Meditations, I do always find something that I respect in there.
Speaker B:And I think there's a lot of just really good sense.
Speaker B:And I don't know.
Speaker B:I. I do think it made me happier.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:I think reading that book gave me a couple of tools, just like a couple that sort of made it into the daily toolbox that actually did make me happier.
Speaker B:So, you know, to me, that seems like Worth the read, even if it doesn't end up working for you because it's short and pretty easy to get through depending on the translation.
Speaker B:And, you know, if.
Speaker B:If it makes you happier.
Speaker B:Worth the read, surely.
Speaker A:I have to say, when I saw.
Speaker A:When I saw your list, I was like, oh, goodness.
Speaker A:Oh, oh, panic mode.
Speaker A:And then I went and Googled it and actually looking at the reviews for the books, and so many people are saying it should be required reading of the national curriculum.
Speaker A:It's the one book that everyone should read.
Speaker A:And then I realized I.
Speaker A:That how short it was.
Speaker B:Really short.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I was like, actually, it's funny, isn't it, how you have these ideas.
Speaker A:When I saw his name, I was like, oh, no.
Speaker B:Looks quite, quite serious, doesn't it?
Speaker B:Yeah, but it really is.
Speaker B:It's bullet points, essentially.
Speaker B:And he.
Speaker B:He also starts the book with this exercise that I sometimes used to make my students do, although they didn't really enjoy it, where he.
Speaker B:Because he starts the book where it's just like.
Speaker B:It's a list of people he's grateful for and, you know, and like, what specifically he is grateful for.
Speaker B:And it.
Speaker B:And it varies from like, you know, to my.
Speaker B:I'm making this up.
Speaker B:But like, to my mother for teaching me the virtues of patience and goodwill to all, you know, to my grandfather for teaching me how to be a good man to.
Speaker B:To people that he's grateful for, even though he hated them.
Speaker B:He'll be like, to so and so, like, because, you know, I learned from him how not to speak to people because the way he spoke to people was so incredibly annoying or whatever.
Speaker B:You know, he learns.
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:And it's quite long list.
Speaker B:And it also includes people he doesn't really know very well.
Speaker B:From what I remember, it'll be like, you know, so and so, because, you know, every time I see him, they seem in a good mood.
Speaker B:And that's quite nice, even if I don't really know who they are.
Speaker B:And I just.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:I think that's quite a fun exercise to do, like, go through and really think about all the people you're grateful for, even if the thing you're grateful for is actually like just the realization of a thing that you don't like.
Speaker B:You know, that's a nice approach to life.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:He's very.
Speaker B:He's very grateful.
Speaker A:It's very ahead of his time, isn't it?
Speaker B:Mindfulness is very much based on the principles of stoicism.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So stoicism is very recognisable to people.
Speaker B:Anyone who's into like wellness culture is going to recognize a lot of stoicism.
Speaker A:Well, I think I need to pick that one up then.
Speaker A:I need a bit more mindfulness in my life.
Speaker A:Should we move on to your next?
Speaker B:Yes, I thought I would talk about Passing by Nella Larsen next.
Speaker B:Passing is a book by Nella Larsen written in the Harlem Renaissance.
Speaker B: n, but it's about the kind of: Speaker B:It's about this woman who can pass for white, but she is black.
Speaker B:And I think she lives in Chicago maybe.
Speaker B:And she has made a decision in her life.
Speaker B:She has married a black man who's darker skinned than her, so her children cannot pass for white, her husband cannot pass for white.
Speaker B:But the book begins and it's like a hot day and she like really just needs to sit down and have a cup of tea.
Speaker B:And so she like go.
Speaker B:And she's by herself.
Speaker B:So she just like pops into an incredibly fancy white hotel and goes to the coffee, the tea shop there and has a cup of tea.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And because she's alone, she can be white, but if she's with her family, she can't be.
Speaker B:And while she's there, she sees a girl who she used to know from when they were girls who also can pass for white.
Speaker B:White.
Speaker B:But this woman, instead of marrying a black man, has married an incredibly racist white man who doesn't realize that she is black.
Speaker B:The other woman is called Clare Kendry and she is just such a fascinating character.
Speaker B:And our protagonist, whose name is Irene, I think she is.
Speaker B:She kind of becomes obsessed with Clare Kendry.
Speaker B:There's this tension between Claire and Irene that is really hard to.
Speaker B:To figure out what exactly it is because she sort of hates Claire.
Speaker B:And I love this description she has of Claire Kendry.
Speaker B:She calls Claire, I'm sorry if I've already mentioned this.
Speaker B:She calls Claire a having sort of person.
Speaker B:Someone who, who always has to have what she wants.
Speaker B:Which to me, I'm like, I don't know, I kind of identify with that.
Speaker B:I'm like, yeah, great, go get it.
Speaker B:But to Irene, like, there's this feat.
Speaker B:She just feel outraged by the audacity of Claire Kendry trying to have what she wants.
Speaker B:And it makes Irene angry.
Speaker B: I think it is Chicago in the: Speaker B:So she's like living this elite rich woman life that she's very happy with.
Speaker B:And her husband is just constantly trying to move and like trying to convince her to move.
Speaker B:So she's kind of at risk of losing everything she has.
Speaker B:And I don't know, I think she's just jealous of how.
Speaker B:How.
Speaker B:How sort of recklessly Claire has arranged her life so that she can have what she wants, even though what she wants, she shouldn't even want to have, according to Irene.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And there's also a kind of, you know, a sexual tension between them, maybe.
Speaker B:I think it's.
Speaker B:I think it's interesting to read as a sort of bisexual book because there's an ambiguity there because she certainly spends a lot of time sort of lavishing descriptions upon Claire's face and, like, Claire's body and Claire's hair and Claire's clothes, and she thinks about what she looks like all the time.
Speaker B:And she just kind of.
Speaker B:It's almost like worshipful prose whenever she's describing Claire, but she also hates her.
Speaker B:And it's like it's this very intense obsession that she feels.
Speaker B:And I don't know, I just think that it's.
Speaker B:It's such a beautifully written book.
Speaker B:I mean, it's one of these books.
Speaker B:It's like a little jewel where everything about it is perfect and it's so short and, yeah, the writing is so good and the characters are so vivid and they just come off the page.
Speaker B:And I just.
Speaker B:I think the reason I put it as a book that shaped me, I think, is that I think Claire is just one of.
Speaker B:One of these characters who has come to feel almost like emblematic of a sort of person.
Speaker B:Person in me, in my head.
Speaker B:Like, I feel like I meet people sometimes and I'm like, oh, you're a having kind of person.
Speaker B:You're like Clark Hendry, and it's.
Speaker B:It's a kind of recklessness where you kind of admire it and wish you could have it in yourself, but at the same time, it's terrifying.
Speaker B:And you're like.
Speaker B:You are playing with fire, like bad things are going to happen to you, unless they don't, in which case I'll be mad.
Speaker B:You know what I mean?
Speaker B:Like, you're like, I'm.
Speaker B:I'm jealous that you're risking this much.
Speaker A:Much.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I. I think it.
Speaker B:It embodies that.
Speaker B:The whole book embodies that.
Speaker B:Not only the person Claire Kendry, who.
Speaker B:Who is this having kind of person, but also the feeling we all have when you're around someone who is a having kind of person where you kind of judge them and.
Speaker B:And want them, and want to be them all at the same time.
Speaker B:So, I don't know.
Speaker B:I just think it.
Speaker B:It's a book that I think about a lot.
Speaker B:I've.
Speaker B:I've reread it a couple of times.
Speaker B:I've taught it several times, and it always goes over really well with teenagers when I teach it.
Speaker B:Because.
Speaker B:Because it's just so.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:It's fun.
Speaker B:And it's also, like, they're so, you know, everyone in the.
Speaker B:I think it's fun to have a book written in the past by a black woman in the past, but everyone in it is, like, rich and beautiful, and it feels kind of Gossip Girlish because there's a lot of trauma porn, especially, you know, in black American literature.
Speaker B:Trauma porn?
Speaker B:Sorry, that's a judgmental term, I guess.
Speaker B:I, I.
Speaker B:What I mean is, like, because of the reality of the position of black people in America throughout history, it's kind of rare to find a novel that feels this frothy.
Speaker B:And that's just.
Speaker B:It's a real pleasure to read.
Speaker A:When I saw this on your listener, I went to Google it.
Speaker A:I was like, oh, that sounds like one.
Speaker A:Oh, I really like the sound of that.
Speaker A:It went to my basket, and I was like, I'll wait till I hear what Alice says.
Speaker A:I'm buying it straight after this.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think it sounds brilliant.
Speaker A:And I love that it's short as well.
Speaker B:Love a short book.
Speaker B:Book.
Speaker A:I do.
Speaker B:I do.
Speaker A:Okay, so time for your final, final book choice.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, I thought this seemed like the most on brand.
Speaker B:All Quiet on the Western Front.
Speaker B:So All Quiet on the Western Front, obviously, is this seminal World War I book by Eric Maria Remarque.
Speaker B:And I never.
Speaker B:I'm never sure I'm pronouncing his name right.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:It's just a classic, you know, story about this.
Speaker B:This schoolboy in Germany who ends up going to the front and fighting.
Speaker B:And, you know, it's just a tragic story about how war is hell.
Speaker B:My copy sort of histrionically proclaimed itself the best war novel of all time.
Speaker B:And I was like, all right, okay.
Speaker B:And then I read it, and I was like, no, it's fair.
Speaker B:Actually, it is probably the best war novel of all time.
Speaker B:It's really just.
Speaker B:It's classic.
Speaker B:The reason, I think that rather than just being a book that I, you know, read as research for memoriam, that it's a book that I think of as shaping my life is because of this thing that happened or that happens in the book.
Speaker B:So Paul, the protagonist, at one point, he goes on leave, so he Goes home to Germany and he's just been like, through absolute.
Speaker B:The horrors of war.
Speaker B:And he goes home and he's sort of sitting in this beer garden and, and all the old men are drinking beer and like talking about how to win the war.
Speaker B:And he kind of looks at them and he feels this sense that he, he's just like, you don't understand that the purpose of life is not winning the war.
Speaker B:The purpose of life is sitting in a beer garden and having beer.
Speaker B:Like, that's the purpose of life.
Speaker B:And he feels able to see this and he feels like no one else can see this.
Speaker B:And I remember I was, I was reading this book and I.
Speaker B:That like in that time period I, I was walking home.
Speaker B:I was living in la.
Speaker B:I was walking home from a Pilates class and it was like sunny and I like nothing in my body hurt and I was very like, I wasn't sick or anything.
Speaker B:And I just was walking home and I was just like.
Speaker B:I think I, I just felt like I understood it.
Speaker B:Suddenly there were planes flying overhead, like delivering people and cargo to their destinations.
Speaker B:And I was just like, oh, the purpose of life is like right now.
Speaker B:Right now is walking home from Pilates.
Speaker B:That's the purpose of life.
Speaker B:There is no greater meaning.
Speaker B:Like the purpose of life is just going through your regular day to day life and it not being upsetting and hard and, and violent and.
Speaker B:I don't know, it sounds so mundane when I say it out loud.
Speaker B:I, I don't know how to describe it except that it was this really like profound moment when I was just like walking home from this Pilates class, which is so like, like basic and embarrassing to say.
Speaker B:But I, I've never really forgotten that.
Speaker B:And I kind of like with meditations.
Speaker B:I credit this book for making me sort of fundamentally happier and more appreciative because there's something about Paul's experience that it made me feel as if I was learning, almost as if I'd had a life experience, even though the life experience was simply reading the book and, and it made me just appreciate sort of peace and prosperity and normality in a way that I, I always used to find a little bit abstract and hard to do.
Speaker B:And, and now I really do.
Speaker B:I often feel that I, I feel a gratitude for, you know, having beer in the beer garden really, really regularly.
Speaker B:And that makes me happier.
Speaker B:And I also think is something that you have to do.
Speaker B:Otherwise if the bad times come, you'll be, you'll look back and be like, God, why did I squander all the good times, times.
Speaker B:So I'm really grateful to that book for that.
Speaker B:And it's such a surprising takeaway, I feel like, because it's such an incredibly harrowing, unbelievably, horribly sad book.
Speaker B:And yet I feel like the takeaway that I have had from it is.
Speaker B:Is so positive.
Speaker A:Isn't that amazing?
Speaker A:That's one of the things I love about hearing people talk about books that are special to them.
Speaker A:Because I haven't read this.
Speaker A:I know.
Speaker A:It's been recommended to me many times.
Speaker B:It's hard going, honestly.
Speaker B:It really is.
Speaker B:It's not an easy read.
Speaker A:I don't.
Speaker A:I. I think I'd struggle with it from what people.
Speaker A:And actually, somebody just said to me, watch the new Netflix movie.
Speaker B:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:Not.
Speaker A:No, I don't.
Speaker B:Oh, no.
Speaker B:I mean, it was.
Speaker B:It was, you know, it was brilliant, but it was brilliant.
Speaker B:Like a horror film or something.
Speaker B:Like.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker B:Yeah, it was really, really hard to watch.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I don't think it's for me, but I love that it has given you that experience.
Speaker A:And I think, you know, that's one of the things I wanted from this podcast is to hear about, you know, how books can have such a huge impact.
Speaker A:I think as readers, we're very lucky that we can have, you know, you pick up a book and you just don't know that that's not going to be the one that will give you something that will help you or make you feel happier or teach you something.
Speaker A:I think it's really incredible.
Speaker A:So thank you for sharing that story with us.
Speaker A:I think it's really special.
Speaker B:It's a bit.
Speaker A:I'm going to hit you.
Speaker A:No, I don't think it's at all.
Speaker A:I think it's really special.
Speaker A:Like, you know, how brilliant that.
Speaker A:To have that realization.
Speaker A:I think it's wonderful.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Paul on the road to Damascus.
Speaker B:Except just Alice on the road home from Pilates.
Speaker A:Hey, whatever.
Speaker A:Whatever works, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I'm gonna hit you with the hard question now, Alice.
Speaker B:I know.
Speaker B:I'm prepared.
Speaker B:Go on.
Speaker A:Oh, are you okay?
Speaker A:If you could only read one of these books again, even the sneaky one that you snuck in, which one would it be?
Speaker A:You're not expecting that.
Speaker B:No, I wasn't expecting that.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:I actually.
Speaker B:No, no, I think I do have an answer to this.
Speaker B:I think catch 22 do.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:I think it's because it's so long, because it's so funny and bitty.
Speaker B:It's almost sort of episodic.
Speaker B:So, you know, Some books, they have a brilliant plot and then you read it and it's, you know, you read it twice and now you know the plot and so you kind of, it's, it's harder to enjoy it again.
Speaker B:I think comedy really, really holds up to reread read.
Speaker B:And maybe I would have picked Bridget Jones for that reason, but Catch Me Two are longer.
Speaker B:So then you get more reading.
Speaker A:I'll let you have, I'll let you have both because I'm so nice about that.
Speaker A:Thank you very much, Alice.
Speaker A:It has been an absolute pleasure to chat to you this evening.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker A:I've loved every minute.
Speaker B:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker A:Oh, thank you.
Speaker A:Alice's incredible debut In Memoriam is out now in paperback.
Speaker A:It is such a special book book that I would highly recommend, so please do pick it up.
Speaker A:As always, all of the books we have talked about today are in the show notes with links to buy.
Speaker A:I really hope that you enjoyed this episode as much as I have and I hope that Alice's canine neighbour wasn't too distracting for you.
Speaker A:Legend has it that he is still barking in New York.
Speaker A:And if you'd like to hear more from Alice and that barking dog, do keep an eye out as there is a bonus episode coming soon.
Speaker A:In the meantime, I would be so grateful if you could take the time to rate, review, subscribe and most importantly, tell your friends all about this podcast.
