From Inspiration to Publication: Catherine Kurtz on Her Debut Novel 'Feast'
In this week’s episode I am joined by Catherine to talk about her brilliant debut novel, Feast which is out now (link below) and absolute must read. As always we also chat about the five books that have shaped Catherine’s life (and a few others as well)
Catherine’s Book Choices:
- Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson
- The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson
- Cheri by Collette
- Persuasion by Jane Austen
- Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden
Books by Catherine Kurtz
Other books mentioned
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See you next Tuesday for our next teaser episode which will be followed with the main episode on Thursday.
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Transcript
Welcome back to Best Book Forward.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Helen, and this is the podcast where I talk to authors about the books that have shaped their lives.
Speaker A:It's basically a bookish version of Desert Island Discs.
Speaker A:Before we get started on today's episode, I have a quick question for you.
Speaker A:Did you know that hitting the follow button on your favourite podcast really helps the show to grow?
Speaker A:If you want to go one step further, leaving a rating and a review also makes a huge difference.
Speaker A:So if Best Book Board is one of your favourites, I'd be so grateful if you could hit that follow button.
Speaker A:Now.
Speaker A:On today's show, I'm joined by author Katherine Kurtz, who joins me to talk about her debut novel, Feast, which is out now in hardback.
Speaker A:It's a brilliant read and I am just a little bit obsessed with this cover.
Speaker A:Sorry for those who are listening and not watching on YouTube, but go check it out.
Speaker A:It is beautiful and a great read too.
Speaker A:So Feast is a delicious historical novel that brims with intrigue and sensory wonder.
Speaker A:It's a dark fairy tale set in a castle that is alive with secrets and a woman who can taste the truth.
Speaker A:This is one of those books that causes serious hunger pangs.
Speaker A:So make sure you have your reading snacks ready.
Speaker A:Today, Catherine and I will chat about about Feast, her inspirations and her writing life and of course, the five books that have shaped their life.
Speaker A:So I think we should dive straight in and give Catherine a warm welcome to the show.
Speaker A:Catherine, hi.
Speaker A:Welcome.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker B:It's wonderful to be here, Helen.
Speaker A:I'm so excited.
Speaker A:We've just been having a big chat as well.
Speaker A:I always find, like, I end up chatting for ages before and I'm like, save it for the podcast.
Speaker A:But we're here today to talk about your brilliant novel, Feast, which if you're listening, you won't see it, but I'm holding up the COVID So do you want to start by telling everyone a little bit about what it's all about?
Speaker B:Yes, of course, I'd love to.
Speaker B:So Feast is the story of Mina, a mixed race girl who is born with an extraordinary sense of taste.
Speaker B:And it's really what it's really about, what the world makes of her and ultimately what she makes of it.
Speaker B: It's set in the late: Speaker B:When she's in her teens and she finds herself her sense of taste, she goes to France really to find a place to belong as an unusual young woman.
Speaker B:She's not always Trusted even within her own family.
Speaker B:And she escapes to France.
Speaker B:She detects poison with her super senses in a dish about to be served to a duke in what appears to be a very sort of fairy tale like Chateau.
Speaker B:And the duke employs her as his poison taster.
Speaker B:And then she meets a whole other kind of cast of characters.
Speaker B:And I won't say anymore, otherwise I'm going to give the story away.
Speaker B:But that's kind of the setup, so.
Speaker A:We will keep it absolutely spoiler free, this one.
Speaker A:So if you haven't read it yet, don't worry, we're not going to have to ruin it for you.
Speaker A:It is such a great read.
Speaker A:I absolutely loved it.
Speaker A:We're going to talk about Mina, we're going to talk about some of her gift and characters as well.
Speaker A:But let's go back to the beginning because I always love.
Speaker A:It's a bit of an obsession of mine to find out where the ideas come from.
Speaker A:I feel like with Feast, which is seeing some sort of reflections of your life and your work in there as well.
Speaker A:So I'm really curious, what was the starting point for you for Feast?
Speaker B:Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker B:I'm so pleased you loved it.
Speaker B:That that means a lot.
Speaker B:Yes, it does reflect.
Speaker B:It does reflect things around my life.
Speaker B:I'm mixed race.
Speaker B:And that kind of exploration of the mixed race experience and sort of search for belonging and where you are at home and where you are accept is a key part of it.
Speaker B:There was also sort of a journey that I've been on with with my own reading and often things, I think for most writers, an idea for a novel is sort of layered and it's often things that you've been thinking about for a very long time and then one or two other things will sort of fall into place and you suddenly think, oh, that makes a whole story.
Speaker B:And this one for me was a book that I read when I was very, very young, which is Patrick Susskind's novel Perfume.
Speaker B:And I'd been thinking about having the courage to write about my mixed race experience and the business of being an unconventional woman.
Speaker B:I'm an artist.
Speaker B:I went to art school, but I'm writing.
Speaker B:And a lot of the people around me were maybe people who had read English literature degrees and, you know, working alone a lot and being myself in the world as witches, each of our journey.
Speaker B:But I decided to try and go back to college and do some writing.
Speaker B:I'd had an awful lot of almosts with getting published and I applied to a master's degree in creative Writing at West Dean College, which is an art school.
Speaker B:So it was very much kind of the right place for me, which is a long way to say that.
Speaker B:In my interview for that Master's, I was talking about the piece of writing I'd submitted, which had a kind of magical element to it.
Speaker B:I wouldn't necessarily say my work is magic realist, because I think that evokes a very particular kind of Latin American tradition.
Speaker B:But I like the uncanny.
Speaker B:I like the.
Speaker B:I like being able to, because it's fiction, play with something, amplify it, make it a little bit twisted or bent or bigger.
Speaker B:To tell a truth.
Speaker B:To tell a bigger truth.
Speaker B:And this piece of writing I'd written had that.
Speaker B:And my tutor, who became my tutor, Mark Radcliffe, asked me if I'd read the novel Perfume, and I said, oh, yes, I have.
Speaker B:That was a very important book for me.
Speaker B:It really resonated with me.
Speaker B:And I'd read it when I was much younger.
Speaker B:Before starting the course, I went back to reread Perfume and had a very visceral reaction to it.
Speaker B:And in the way that a book that we have read a long time ago and reread, it strikes us or lands very, very differently.
Speaker B:And so the young woman who read it and the woman that I am now who read it just was flooded with questions, largely being, but what if this child born.
Speaker B:Sorry to preface.
Speaker B:Perfume is about a child born with an extraordinary nose, an extraordinary sense of smell in early France, and what he then does with that.
Speaker B:But what if this child born was a girl?
Speaker B:What would she then?
Speaker B:What would the world make of her?
Speaker B:What would this unconventional person experience in the world?
Speaker B:And also, what if a woman wrote it?
Speaker B:And that was really the genesis of the idea.
Speaker B:So, sorry, long story, but that was my.
Speaker B:That was where I got to.
Speaker A:No, I love that, Katherine.
Speaker A:So I also.
Speaker A:I'm just really.
Speaker A:I love what you're saying about going back and doing your Masters and how you found the right place.
Speaker A:It's something I really sort of believe in, you know, you have to find and might be at a different time than you're expecting or not quite what you're expecting to be, but I think that's so important.
Speaker A:And I'm really glad that you sort of mentioned Perfume, because we were talking about this before.
Speaker A:So when the Proof for Feast landed, it had a press release and said, you know, it mentioned perfume.
Speaker A:I was like, oh.
Speaker A:Because I remember reading Perfume and I didn't get on with it.
Speaker A:I didn't finish it.
Speaker A:I found it sort of not too it was.
Speaker A:It was so well written that I found it a bit too much for me.
Speaker A:So I didn't.
Speaker A:Maybe I should go back and read it now as a, you know, older woman myself.
Speaker A:But that's so interesting that, you know, to pick the character and take her as a woman and make her as a, you know, young girl as well put in this situation.
Speaker A:So I think that's really interesting that that's your.
Speaker A:Your spark.
Speaker A:I love.
Speaker B:I love that it's a very, very different book.
Speaker B:My book is a very different book.
Speaker B:Perfume is very dark in many ways.
Speaker B:My book has its darkness.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:It became its own thing.
Speaker B:That was its generating spark.
Speaker B:But my purpose for writing it, which was initiated by those questions, was my purpose to tap was.
Speaker B:Was the desire to tell some truths about what happens to women.
Speaker B:Something about what it.
Speaker B:It feels like to be a woman in the world and in our world.
Speaker B:And in many ways it's.
Speaker B:It's getting worse at the moment, you know, which makes it sound bleak.
Speaker B:It really isn't.
Speaker B:I think my.
Speaker B:I think what I was trying to explore was something that was a kind of.
Speaker B:A kind of passionate ode to the resilience and glory of female life and experience in all its mess and all its beauty and its sensuality.
Speaker B:So I don't think I've written a dark book, but it was in conversation with that darkness.
Speaker A:I would agree.
Speaker A:I don't think it's a dark book.
Speaker A:And I also wanted to touch on what you were saying about the sort of magical element to it.
Speaker A:When people say magical realism to me, I always sort of think, oh, you know, I'm not really in sort of fantasy and things, but I love it when somebody does something that sort of feels different but so believable to me.
Speaker A:Like, I mean, whenever I picked up your book, I felt like I was sort of melting into it and just totally there, understood it.
Speaker A:All that for me, if it's too jarring and sort of, you know, that's not for me.
Speaker A:But this all feels just so believable to me.
Speaker B:What a wonderful compliment.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:I think that by using magic, for want of a better word, I mean, it's not magic in the magic wand type of a sense.
Speaker B:One can say a thing that is real and just make it bigger.
Speaker B:The way we each experience something, you can invest a response with, the big emotional response or what it means to a person, how it can operate for them in their life, what the impact of a thing might be by literally just sort of amplifying it on the page.
Speaker B:Somebody who I heard speak and very much in awe of is Deborah Levy.
Speaker B:And she.
Speaker B:In a lecture that I went to, somebody addressed her with the term magic realism.
Speaker B:And she said, no, no, I don't think so.
Speaker B:I would say I'm negotiating reality.
Speaker B:And I thought that was just such an incredibly classy response.
Speaker B:I really like that.
Speaker B:And I would say similarly, I kind of, you know, I'm trying to tell something super real in order to tell its emotional weight at the same time as telling the things that happen in the story.
Speaker B:It's bigger than.
Speaker B:In order that it becomes the kind of.
Speaker B:The fable it serves, its purpose.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:If that makes sense.
Speaker B:It's certainly not fantasy.
Speaker B:It's certainly not sort of magic realism in terms of ghosts and spirits, but has emotional truth in addition to the.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:The truths of the facts of the story.
Speaker A:Yeah, that is a great response as well, isn't it?
Speaker A:I kind of feel that's what we're all doing in life at the moment.
Speaker A:Just trying to negotiate it all.
Speaker B:Negotiate with reality.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Okay, let's talk about Mina then.
Speaker A:Because I absolutely loved her.
Speaker A:I thought she was such a great character.
Speaker A:Really interesting as well.
Speaker A:So as you said, she doesn't quite fit in.
Speaker A:She's mixed race.
Speaker A:But she also has this extraordinary gift as well.
Speaker A:So I'd love to know, if you could just tell us, you know, tell our listeners a little bit about her and how she came to you on the page.
Speaker A:Did she.
Speaker A:Did you know her journey from start to finish?
Speaker A:Or was she somebody that sort of.
Speaker A:Sort of guided you along the way as you wrote?
Speaker B:Oh, that's an interesting way of putting.
Speaker B:I haven't been asked this question yet.
Speaker A:Sorry I didn't tell you about this before.
Speaker A:It just came into my head as we were.
Speaker B:No, no, no, no.
Speaker A:This is great.
Speaker B:This is real, real time conversation.
Speaker A:She.
Speaker A:She.
Speaker B:Both in the sense that when I write, I am.
Speaker B:I have a very strong sense that I'm living the thing that I'm writing.
Speaker B:You know, it feels very visceral to me.
Speaker B:I'm very embedded when I write, very immersed.
Speaker B:I definitely knew her extremely powerfully before I began because she was so strongly part of the idea.
Speaker B:The idea wasn't, oh, a plot, and then how will I populate it?
Speaker B:The idea was this.
Speaker B:This child who becomes a woman.
Speaker B:The idea was her.
Speaker B:And so I knew who she was.
Speaker B:I felt really strongly before I put.
Speaker B:Before I wrote a word.
Speaker B:But I think that inevitably when I was there inside her, the ways that she reacted to things and what I wanted for her and the way that she might experience things that happen later in the novel, I. I couldn't have written on day one, which is to say that I write.
Speaker B:I write my way through a novel from start to finish.
Speaker B:I don't.
Speaker B:I've never really understood how people write a later scene and then hop them back and forth because I'm telling myself the story as I'm writing it.
Speaker B:It's sort of like an act.
Speaker B:It's almost like reading a novel.
Speaker B:Writing a novel.
Speaker B:It's a kind of super write, super reading, where it's coming.
Speaker B:The story is coming to me as I go.
Speaker B:So, yeah, she got.
Speaker B:She got more and more known to me.
Speaker B:I grew.
Speaker B:I grew up with her, as it were, if.
Speaker B:If that makes sense.
Speaker A:Okay, so Mina, you're saying you felt that you knew her as you wrote.
Speaker A:You know, she's somebody who became really important to you.
Speaker A:And as we said, I think there are reflections of your life in her as well.
Speaker A:So she obviously has this gift and she finds herself as a poison taster for the Duke, which I just thought was absolutely fascinating.
Speaker A:It was such a clever place to slot her in, to sort of use this gift in sort of, you know, see how it would play out for her.
Speaker A:But I'm really curious, you know, where this idea came from for the.
Speaker A:From the poison taster.
Speaker A:Was it sort of historical research or was it based more on your own experience?
Speaker B:That's a lovely question.
Speaker B:I've never been a poison taster.
Speaker A:However,.
Speaker B:I am a taster, which is to say that I have a palette like most creatives, like most artists, because I am an artist.
Speaker B:I'm a painter and a writer of fiction.
Speaker B:First and foremost.
Speaker B:Those are my life's work.
Speaker B:But I have other jobs because we have to make ends meet.
Speaker B:And things like exhibitions and book advances are erratic, and I don't like the erratic.
Speaker B:So I work as a taster.
Speaker B:I judge chocolate internationally.
Speaker B:We'll talk about that more later.
Speaker B:So the business of research is quite an interesting one for me because I know novelists.
Speaker B:I've heard both Sarah Waters and Tracy Chevalier speak about their research process.
Speaker B:And I'm just in admiration and awe because they do this evolved sort of research process.
Speaker B:They seem to both really, really love research.
Speaker B:I don't love research in the sense that once I've got an idea and something is pressing at my temples, I have a purpose.
Speaker B:I have something I really can't bear to leave unsaid or unexplored, I really want to start writing the story.
Speaker B:I have adrenaline around it.
Speaker B:I Have nerves as to whether I will be able to tell this story and also how necessary it is to me.
Speaker B:So I don't feel comfortable to spend sort of months sitting, reading about how a particular type of historical role functioned or whether there were or weren't certain things at a certain time in history.
Speaker B:It's more that I.
Speaker B:So the research for this novel was largely embedded in my own experience.
Speaker B:I've had family who lived in France for most of my life.
Speaker B:I know French chateaus and French countryside well in a.
Speaker B:In a deeply loved way.
Speaker B:All the locations in the book are fictional.
Speaker B:I'm not telling historical fiction in a sort of literal sense.
Speaker B:It's more of a sort of fable or something of that nature.
Speaker B:So my Chateau de Bellefalaise is a composite of places that I really love.
Speaker B:But in terms of the tasting, I have this amplified taste in that I have a palate that I use professionally and people pay me to taste things and advise them on their product.
Speaker B:And I judge chocolate at a very high level, which I've done for.
Speaker B:I'm on the grand jury of the International Chocolate Awards, which I've been doing for the past sort of 13 or 14 years.
Speaker B:So tasting things and the mechanics of tasting, quite a bit of which is in the novel, are things that I do and that I have taught many people.
Speaker B:So I didn't need to research it.
Speaker B:They were already there.
Speaker B:In terms of poison tasting, I think for me, it was almost, it occurred to me, as a way of Mina sort of ending up within a place where she's in a system where she has these very privileged men who are in charge of her, who have singled her out for her very difference, who are interested because of the very thing that makes her unconventional and different.
Speaker B:And that, as a dynamic, means that she both has a role and a place, but it's also an unusual one, an uncommon one.
Speaker B:She's not of the upstairs, she's not of the downstairs.
Speaker B:She's not one of the regular maids or servants.
Speaker B:She's also not part of the Ducal family.
Speaker B:And in a way, it puts her in, again, another position of being unusual, being other, being unconventional.
Speaker B:It's yet another difference in a way.
Speaker A:That's fascinating.
Speaker A:I mean, the palette and your judging work just fascinates me.
Speaker A:Like, I mean, I am terrible.
Speaker A:Like, I think I just don't have.
Speaker A:I have a good sense of smell, I think, but not my palette, so.
Speaker A:But you're saying about the creativity as well.
Speaker A:My daughter's really creative and she.
Speaker A:She paints and draws and makes things but if you.
Speaker A:If I make something differently, she will say, like, if I make a dinner and I try something different, she'll.
Speaker A:She can quite often pinpoint what's in it.
Speaker A:And I'm like, oh, that's really interesting.
Speaker A:I wonder if it is that sort of creative mind that's sort of able to do that more or.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I think there are two different things at play here.
Speaker B:I think it's worth saying that what we think of as flavour is actually largely in our nose.
Speaker A:Oh, really?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So if you have a good sense of smell and a lot of this, a lot of tasting can be taught because we eat all of every day.
Speaker B:I mean, we.
Speaker B:Hopefully not all day long.
Speaker B:I do quite a lot, but, you know, we eat.
Speaker B:It's one of those things that we do on autopilot, even if we're savoring a meal that is a special meal out.
Speaker B:So paying really detailed attention to flavour and a flavour journey is something that we often don't do.
Speaker B:So in a way, teaching taste is.
Speaker B:Is breaking taste is breaking flavor down and then just attuning oneself to pay full attention to all the points on the flavor journey and then developing a language to express it.
Speaker B:Yeah, if that makes sense.
Speaker B:But our mouth is tongue tastes and they are very simple.
Speaker B:There are five tongue tastes.
Speaker B:They are, you know, salt, swee, sour.
Speaker B:I'm going to forget them on think bitter and umami.
Speaker B:Those are our five tongue tastes and they're quite simple.
Speaker B:All the nuance, which is, you know, an infinite number of references and reference points and exciting extra things.
Speaker B:They're all in our nose and it's the two together that create flavour.
Speaker A:So Interesting, isn't it?
Speaker A:I don't know, random thought that I was thinking when we had Covid, like when you lost your sense of smell and taste as well, I was like, that was.
Speaker A:To me, it was just the worst thing.
Speaker A:It was just like.
Speaker A:Like the enjoyment of, like, even if it's something simple, it's like you realize how much of it is sort of tied up in, you know, absolutely what you're putting in your mouth.
Speaker A:It's the whole sort of.
Speaker A:I mean, I actually love cooking as well, so I find it's the sort of making of it, not the shopping part, not the planning, not the shopping and all that.
Speaker B:Someone el.
Speaker B:Someone.
Speaker B:Someone else can do this, someone else can shop and someone else can wash up.
Speaker B:I think it's very interesting because I had Covid and I lost my sense of taste, which is what everyone was saying.
Speaker B:But actually, unless My experience was different than other people.
Speaker B:I would say that my interpretation of the loss of sense of taste that everyone was talking about was actually a loss of sense of smell.
Speaker B:It certainly was in me, because I know about the mechanics of flavour well enough to understand.
Speaker B:Because during that period of time, which luckily was very temporary, and I also retrained my palate afterwards, I could taste.
Speaker B:I could detect salty, sweet, bitter, sour.
Speaker B:So actually, if something.
Speaker B:If I had something that was very salted, I could taste it, but it wasn't faint taste, it was just the salt.
Speaker B:And it was my nose that was whacked out.
Speaker B:I think that's probably what Covid did for people and they felt.
Speaker B:They.
Speaker B:I mean, a doctor may correct me here, but my experience of it was very definitely that I. I know that flavor is in my nose and so I. I sort of tried it out and there were still tongue tastes available and not flavour.
Speaker A:So interesting.
Speaker A:I took us on a really little wild tangent there, didn't I?
Speaker B:Sorry about that.
Speaker A:That's me.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So food is obviously a huge part of the book, and I'm not gonna lie, it triggered some real hunger pangs for me when I was reading it because it's so beautifully descriptive.
Speaker A:But what I really loved about it is how food is so tied up in so many other things.
Speaker A:It's like in our family, our culture and our memories.
Speaker A:There's a restaurant that I sometimes walk past in London, and if I walk past on the right day, it's.
Speaker A:It can take me right back to my nana's kitchen.
Speaker A:It smells exactly.
Speaker A:And I can remember so much more.
Speaker A:So I think it's incredible the sort of triggers that you can have from it.
Speaker A:So obviously you know, your food and your tasting and that sort of side hustle you talk about is also important.
Speaker A:But I'd love to know, you know, was it sort of drawing back into your own memories of childhood and culture as well for you?
Speaker B:Yes, it was.
Speaker B:I. I mean, as I said, I've spent a lot of time in France in my life, and so there were things like the strawberries in the market and the certain types of strawberries which are anachronistic because they weren't there at that period, but they're so special.
Speaker B:I wanted them in my book.
Speaker B:And particular dishes.
Speaker B:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker B:I think that.
Speaker B:I think that being able to evoke memory instantly in that way is something that's very powerful to our sense of smell.
Speaker B:In the same way that you walk past someone in the street who's wearing a perfume of your best friend.
Speaker B:And your best friend's the other side of the world, they are there.
Speaker B:It's visceral.
Speaker B:Scent has that power, and therefore taste has that power.
Speaker B:And because food is the thing that we communicate with in many ways, it's many people's love languages, definitely my dad's love language.
Speaker B:We have.
Speaker B:We have dishes that bring up family, we have dishes that bring up aspects of our culture.
Speaker B:You know, each of my grandparents is from a different continent, and so I grew up with very different foods, different foods necessarily, than my schoolmates, and also things that were very evocative for me of particular times of year and felt particular to me.
Speaker B:So I think that the power, the evocative power of food for us is so great that if you can feel it, taste it on the page, you know, if in reading it really comes alive for you, then it becomes something kind of in the way that the very particular becomes a kind of universal experience in reading, if you.
Speaker B:The more particular you go, the more it speaks to people.
Speaker B:And I think that some of these experiences are very particular to Meena, but some of them are also obviously important because of me and myself.
Speaker B:There's Indian spices that are her father.
Speaker B:The particular tart that the baker makes, which is a good thing, is something I've eaten in the Touraine and kind of love.
Speaker B:And for me, that spelled friend and home rather than the more grandiose dishes that are being made by the chef in the castle.
Speaker B:So I don't know if that answers your question.
Speaker B:There are many different things I want to say.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:No, it's so interesting.
Speaker A:And obviously we were talking about this before, and I was saying, you've got your work as a taster, you're an artist as well.
Speaker A:And I said to you, when I was reading Feast, I felt like you were an artist of words almost in that, as I say, like, there are points where I felt like I could smell freshly baked bread wafting off the pages.
Speaker A:So do you think your background as an artist helped alongside the taster to sort of bring those descriptions to life and make it such a sensory read for people?
Speaker B:That's such a beautiful compliment.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:I have.
Speaker B:I mean, I've.
Speaker B:I've been doing interviews lately, and a recurring theme is don't read while hungry or make sure you have snacks.
Speaker B:Yes, I think, but, yes, absolutely.
Speaker B:And in fact, this particular book is infused with food because it's.
Speaker B:It's baked into the subject of the book and.
Speaker B:And Mina's particularity, her particular difference, the particular thing about her that is unusual, along with her race.
Speaker B:But I think that actually me, the artist, is at least as much a part of the writer that I am.
Speaker B:In fact.
Speaker B:More I said I sort of didn't go to uni.
Speaker B:I went to art school.
Speaker B:I think I'm somebody who, not just my palette, my senses are writ very large.
Speaker B:I am that person.
Speaker B:I am a painter.
Speaker B:I have been a painter and remain a painter for my sort of whole adult life since I went to art school.
Speaker B:And I think that I am kind of obsessed with noticing I'm very kind of alive with experience.
Speaker B:And so this book isn't.
Speaker B:Is is not a sort of thought experiment through taste.
Speaker B:It is, in a way, the way I write is kind of the way I experience the world with all the senses very vivid.
Speaker B:Hopefully, if I that was certainly my hope and intention.
Speaker B:I want the reader to feel everything.
Speaker B:And by feel I mean our bodily senses and also our heart, emotions and feelings.
Speaker B:It's interesting.
Speaker B:I just.
Speaker B:I sometimes teach at Westine now, and I teach writing from the senses, which is a complete joy to be able to do.
Speaker B:But I think one of the things that I had to sort of clear with myself as I was invited to teach and thought about creative writing, teaching and the whole received wisdom of show don't tell, I was aware that my approach was a little unusual and a little even sort of beyond that.
Speaker B:Because I understand show don't tell means don't be a narrator at a distance.
Speaker B:Bring your reader with you.
Speaker B:Show them.
Speaker B:But to me, show says two things.
Speaker B:It says show is kind of from the eyes in a way, showing look.
Speaker B:A show is something you look at, maybe, but also to me, it implies I'm over here and I'm going to show you.
Speaker B:Still, there's kind of a barrier in a way.
Speaker B:And I think that when I write, I write for myself.
Speaker B:I write because I must write the thing that I'm writing.
Speaker B:And I want to experience it as profoundly as I can.
Speaker B:And I am bringing it alive for myself with all of my senses and my emotions.
Speaker B:And if I do that well, then it's a satisfying experience for me.
Speaker B:I feel like I've written well.
Speaker B:I feel like I've done what I needed for myself.
Speaker B:But then also hopefully a reader will be feeling that too.
Speaker B:So it's like feel and feel with me.
Speaker B:Does that make sense?
Speaker A:It does.
Speaker A:And I think I can say mission accomplished.
Speaker B:Oh, bless you.
Speaker A:Because it is like, you know, we've talked a lot about the food and her gift and there is all that in there.
Speaker A:But also I Mean, we were not talking too much about the storyline to sort of protect it from spoilers, but there were moments, you know, when I felt really like, you know, I was worried for her, I was rooting for her, and I was really invested.
Speaker A:So I did have that emotional experience and that sort of connection.
Speaker A:So, yeah, so, yeah, definitely.
Speaker A:It's good.
Speaker B:Good.
Speaker B:I mean, if you don't care, why would you.
Speaker B:Why would you carry on reading?
Speaker A:So with that, then let's just talk a little bit about your sort of writing life.
Speaker A:I can see behind you've got your easels there as well.
Speaker A:And I'm just wondering to sort of bring this off the page.
Speaker A:If I imagine a painter sort of trying to do a still life, I can imagine like a bowl of fruit and I'm sitting there.
Speaker A:If I try to imagine you writing Feast, I'm wondering were you baking bread and sort of cracking it open when it was freshly baked to sort of bring that sort of sense to hit the sounds, the smell and everything, or is it purely from memory and imagination for you?
Speaker B:That's such a lovely thought.
Speaker B:I mean, I take breaks.
Speaker B:I write in a very immersed way, but I do take breaks and I usually eat chocolate when I take breaks and I eat decent chocolate.
Speaker B:But I'm.
Speaker B:I think that in terms of literally evoking the recipes and that kind of thing, I. I think that it's my lived experience anyhow.
Speaker B:So in a way, while I was writing, the reason that you can taste and smell and enjoy it and relish it when you're reading is because I was doing that when I was writing.
Speaker B:When I teach tasting, when I teach writing from senses, we do go and taste things and listen to music or smell stuff or that kind of thing, or look at a picture and do it in a direct way.
Speaker B:But that's really also so that when you're alone with your.
Speaker B:When you're alone with your page, you can evoke it.
Speaker B:I already know.
Speaker B:I already know what matters.
Speaker B:And because I've taught how to taste, I know that it's made up of all the senses.
Speaker B:You know, what.
Speaker B:What you can define from the color of a piece of chocolate is quite a lot.
Speaker B:What you define from the sound of it snapping is quite a lot.
Speaker B:What you get as you bring it to your nose before you eat it is a lot.
Speaker B:What you get from the mouthfeel and the melt, which is your sense of touch really is a lot.
Speaker B:So I think I bring all my senses to taste, but I also bring all my senses and very strongly visually to My experience of life.
Speaker B:And so I was looking hard everywhere.
Speaker B:I was walking inside the chateau, but I wasn't there.
Speaker B:But I can see it.
Speaker B:I can see it very vividly.
Speaker B:And I can see Mina.
Speaker B:I know what she looks like.
Speaker B:I know what she moves like.
Speaker B:I know what that sounds like, if that.
Speaker B:Yeah, it was in my head.
Speaker B:It was in my head.
Speaker A:It was fascinating.
Speaker A:It's just like.
Speaker A:It's so.
Speaker A:It's such a beautiful experience to read.
Speaker A:I mean, actually, that is.
Speaker A:You're talking about food.
Speaker A:My stomach is actually rumbling.
Speaker A:I should have had breakfast before we get rummed.
Speaker A:No, that's okay.
Speaker A:It's my bad.
Speaker A:But it's come off the page.
Speaker A:It's, you know, not only is it a great story of the character you're really invested in, I think it's so special in that, you know, it is sort of.
Speaker A:It's alive, isn't it?
Speaker A:It's a book that feels like it's really alive, which I think is really special for it.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Well, that means the world, actually.
Speaker B:But it also wouldn't work if it was just, as I said before, kind of an experiment in writing senses.
Speaker B:It only works because it's.
Speaker B:It's her and her senses and her experience.
Speaker B:So I'm bedded down.
Speaker B:The character comes first, you know, she comes first.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So with Mina, then, one of the things, you know, she doesn't fit in, but there's this sort of.
Speaker A:The duke does seem to value her, obviously, as his poison taster, but she is a bit of an oddity as well.
Speaker A:And I feel like she's used as entertainment a little bit sort of, you know, come and entertain my guests and show them, you know, how clever you are at this.
Speaker A:So on top of her gift, she's mixed race, you know, which you've spoken about as well.
Speaker A:So I'd love to know what was your experience of writing Mina and her story?
Speaker A:How did it feel for you to bring this story to life?
Speaker B:Very precious.
Speaker B:Thank you so much for saying that, for asking about it.
Speaker B:It was a large part of the reason for writing, and my sort of purpose was around exploring being one of those people that our society sort of deems.
Speaker B:Deems different, which it seems to.
Speaker B:Which it seems to do for sort of everyone who isn't one particular type of thing, which is actually very narrow.
Speaker B:I'm.
Speaker B:So I'm.
Speaker B:Yes, as I said, I'm mixed race.
Speaker B:I'm brown, but I'm.
Speaker B:I'm not easily categorizable in multiple ways.
Speaker B:And I'm also somebody who's very vivid in the sense that I'm, I'm an artist.
Speaker B:It's been very clear to me that I had that personality and that need since I was very, very young.
Speaker B:So there are many ways in which I don't sort of fit the mould maybe.
Speaker B:And I think that there's something particular to the mixed race experience which is.
Speaker B:Means that you have different identity even than within your own family because your parents will have a different mixture to you or be different one to the other.
Speaker B:And there is a search for belonging that I have discovered I share with many mixed race people.
Speaker B:But I think we're all also.
Speaker B:And many, many women are searching for a belonging within a society that has undervalued them.
Speaker B:And obviously that's a generalization and we know that there are many women doing amazing things in our world now, but it is a very, very far from unequal world and bodily autonomy and all kinds of things are under threat.
Speaker B:So not to get too political about it, and it isn't a political book in a kind of, in an overt sense, but I think that exploring emotional and lived experience kind of truths around difference were important to me.
Speaker B:There is something else that relates to sort of why it was important to talk about Mina and also particularly with her in this position.
Speaker B:As you say, there are ways in which the Duke values her.
Speaker B:He's quite excited about having a poison taster.
Speaker B:He wants her to perform for his friends, and that's in that word, perform, which is that she's set apart.
Speaker B:And I think that the business of being exoticized is something which is a common experience of women of color and mixed race women depending where they are in the world.
Speaker B:But if you are living in a white country and you are, other than that, being exoticized as a woman is a problematic aspect of it often because it can feel like flattery, it can feel like being special, but it comes with a whole range of difficulties, prominent of which is that it's your appearance or something about your identity as opposed to maybe what your needs are and who you are, that is being, that is being wanted and displayed.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So their exoticism of her is a really important part of that dynamic in the book.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I think also because she's a young girl as well, I think, you know, reading as a mother as well, I felt, you know, I think that's why I felt protective.
Speaker A:But I also really admire her in that, you know, she's not somebody who gives up easily, but she's not afraid to change tack as well.
Speaker A:Which I think, you know, for a young woman who sort of, you know, has these differences and doesn't have the sort of the solid base of like, you know, a strong family around her, I think that's a really sort of admirable character that she is.
Speaker B:I think that her strength is really important in the story for me, but it's also born of really early need because of what and who her mother is.
Speaker B:She doesn't have a.
Speaker B:Her mother doesn't abandon her, but her mother doesn't support her.
Speaker B:Her mother isn't someone who understands her or shares her difference.
Speaker B:And her mother needs a lot of looking after from when she's very little.
Speaker B:So there's a kind of independence of spirit and a strength that is there from the get go with her, which it's a, which it's sort of, sort of a sadness that she has to invoke.
Speaker B:She has to be dynamic and able to pivot and able to kind of rise to the next challenge and the next.
Speaker B:But it's kind of baked into her as well.
Speaker A:She is brilliant and it is a brilliant read.
Speaker A:Feast, which is out now, it's one I would highly, highly recommend.
Speaker A:It is fabulous.
Speaker A:And so I hope everyone will go and grab a copy.
Speaker A:Just as a random thought because that's what I do very well.
Speaker A:I just said to you about like editing and getting some chocolate in.
Speaker A:If you were to do like a food pairing for Feast, what would be the ideal chocolate that would go with it?
Speaker A:That's really random.
Speaker A:Just popped into my head.
Speaker A:I'm sorry.
Speaker B:No, don't.
Speaker B:I actually have a friend who runs a chocolate book club who is pairing as we speak.
Speaker B:I'm going to be doing that.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Gosh.
Speaker B:I think me just now, I think, well, there's some very, very good Indian cacao which sometimes is available.
Speaker B:And my friend's Dormouse Chocolate who are based near Manchester and are one of the best bean to bar chocolate makers in the country.
Speaker B:They, Isabelle, the chocolate maker makes a fantastic dark bar with Indian cacao.
Speaker B:And thematically I would like that.
Speaker B:I'd like it.
Speaker B:And it's kind of got some fruit notes.
Speaker B:So it's really complex and beautiful.
Speaker B:So that's my very nerdy answer.
Speaker A:I love that and I'll link them in the show notes.
Speaker A:So if anyone wants to grab some of that chocolate to, to enjoy when.
Speaker B:They read, they may not have any India at the moment, but everything that they make is fabulous.
Speaker A:It's a great name as well, isn't it?
Speaker A:Dormouse Chocolate.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, so we're going to talk about the five books that you've picked then, just to let listeners know.
Speaker A:They'll all be linked in the show notes.
Speaker A:They're nice and easy for you to find.
Speaker A:But how did you find choosing your 5?
Speaker A:Is it easy for you, Catherine?
Speaker A:Was it.
Speaker B:No, easy.
Speaker B:Do you ever get.
Speaker B:Do you ever get easy?
Speaker B:As an answer, I think that I could happily have given you 10 or 20, which would include as many.
Speaker B:Again, books that I deeply love.
Speaker B:The five that I've chosen, I deeply love.
Speaker B:But there would have been many, many more.
Speaker B:And also, I usually am passionately involved in some book that I'm currently reading, but I wanted to.
Speaker B:So I had a long list.
Speaker B:But then I. I thought, which five?
Speaker B:Maybe allow me to each say a slightly different thing and tell a sort of journey of me as a reader and writer and artist and.
Speaker A:Yeah, okay.
Speaker B:So that's how I chose them.
Speaker A:I haven't read any of these.
Speaker A:I know you're gonna be like, what?
Speaker A:I know.
Speaker A:I know exactly the one you're thinking about.
Speaker A:So should we get started, then?
Speaker B:Should we hear about your.
Speaker B:That's fine.
Speaker B:I mean, honestly, no judgment at all.
Speaker A:I think listeners know.
Speaker A:They're probably like, oh, there's a classic coming up here somewhere.
Speaker B:That's totally fine.
Speaker B:As I said, I didn't do the English lit degree, so I have huge gaps.
Speaker B:I follow my nose, and I don't pass judgment.
Speaker B:So do you want to say the order, or do I.
Speaker B:Do I say.
Speaker B:Which do I start?
Speaker A:Well, do you want me to read out the first one that was on your list, or have you got them there?
Speaker B:I can.
Speaker B:I think I know.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, go then.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:I can even hold it up, actually.
Speaker B:It's right here.
Speaker B:I have all but one right in front of me.
Speaker B:Harold in the purple crayon.
Speaker A:Cute.
Speaker B:So I've had this book since I was small.
Speaker B:As I said, I don't really have English family, and I didn't have Enid Blyton and some of those conventional things.
Speaker B:And quite a lot of my picture.
Speaker B:Picture books were American.
Speaker B:And this was written by Crockett Johnson and illustrated in the.
Speaker B: In the: Speaker B:And there are many picture books that I could choose that I adore.
Speaker B:Ferdinand is another one by Leif Monroe in the Night Kitchen.
Speaker B:Maurice Sendak.
Speaker B:Picture books are important to all of us, I think, not just children, but.
Speaker B:And I retain a great love for the picture books, but Harold and the Purple Crayon is a.
Speaker B:Is an absolutely exquisite work of art.
Speaker B:It is a little masterpiece of.
Speaker B:About creativity and the power of one's own mind.
Speaker B:And it tells a story of a little guy who is in bed and he draws.
Speaker B:He has a crayon and he draws himself off into an adventure and he draws all kinds of things until he becomes hungry and.
Speaker B:And then he draws himself a picnic.
Speaker B:And for his picnic, he draws nine different types of pie.
Speaker B:And my imagination was wild about what the pies were.
Speaker B:And then when he's full with pie and there's pie left, he draws a porcupine and a moose to finish the pie because he doesn't want to waste.
Speaker B:And then he draws until he gets into trouble because the sea gets rough, that he's drawn to sail in.
Speaker B:And he then starts searching for home and can't find home, and keeps drawing and draws until he finds the window and the bed and is back in his bed.
Speaker B:And it's this.
Speaker B:I mean, I've summarised it badly, but essentially, for me, as a child, I was absolutely captivated by this book, but as an adult, I'm captivated by this book because it's all about what we can do with our art and our creativity and our mind and our imagination and how and where story can take you.
Speaker A:I love everything about what you've just said, and actually, I didn't think I read that.
Speaker A:But when you started talking about him drawing, I was like, oh, that is triggering a little memory.
Speaker A:So I don't know whether it's something that I did know or not.
Speaker A:But I think you're so right as well about picture books, Catherine, because I think, you know, when people sort of talk about them, they're young, like, for young kids, they're sort of maybe a little dismissive about them.
Speaker A:So I have twins.
Speaker A:I have a boy and girl.
Speaker A:And when they were little, I would always be fascinated how they'd sit in their sort of, like, little playroom and sometimes they'd want their toys, but they would quite often get a picture book and just sit.
Speaker A:And I was like.
Speaker A:And just look through.
Speaker A:Or they'd want the same ones over and over.
Speaker A:So I think it is.
Speaker A:It's really important, but it's sort of sparking that imagination as well for them as well.
Speaker A:At a young age.
Speaker B:There are.
Speaker B:There are great stories being written by great writers and great artists drawing beautiful things.
Speaker B:Picture books now are being exquisitely made.
Speaker B:This one is that story, to me, because it's just him and his crayon, and that's the entirety of the genesis of it.
Speaker B:And through its Whole arc.
Speaker B:But it's also really simply drawn.
Speaker B:It's a line.
Speaker B:The picture is a line.
Speaker B:It's one purple line.
Speaker B:And, yeah, it's magic.
Speaker B:It's really magic.
Speaker B:And it is the beginnings of imagination for many of us and the beginnings of love of reading and.
Speaker B:Yeah, love that.
Speaker A:Love of food, love of animals.
Speaker A:It's all.
Speaker B:Yeah, everything.
Speaker B:All in there.
Speaker B:Yes, exactly.
Speaker B:And being it.
Speaker B:Being in bed at the end of it, all safe and sound.
Speaker A:Perfect.
Speaker A:Perfect.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:That's a great start.
Speaker A:So do you want to tell us about the second book that you.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:My second book is the Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson.
Speaker B:And Eva Ibbotson wrote for adults and younger children.
Speaker B:And this is one of three books that she wrote for sort of supposedly middle grade, I think, middle grade.
Speaker B:And that age group is the age group of books that are read by most people of all ages.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Have you read Katherine Rundle's essay, why you should read children's books even though you are so old and wise?
Speaker B:It's fantastic.
Speaker B:It's published as a little thin book and it talks about the power of children's fiction for everyone and why it's not age.
Speaker B:It's not age specific.
Speaker B:They're not age specific.
Speaker B:They just can be read by younger, if that makes sense.
Speaker B:But that's a beautiful little book.
Speaker B:But the Star of Kazan, she won lots of awards for Journey to the River Sea, which is in the same sort of age band.
Speaker B:The Star of Kazan is my favourite of those books.
Speaker B:But I love all of her books and her novels for adults.
Speaker B:When I read her, which wasn't as a child.
Speaker B:When I read her, I can't remember when I first started reading her, sort of 10 or 15 years ago, and I recognized something in her voice.
Speaker B:She was an Austrian Jew who moved to England as a child.
Speaker B:And I realized when I read her, her voice is incredibly warm, very funny, full of heart and emotion.
Speaker B:The details are just exquisite.
Speaker B:Her prose is joyous, just joyous.
Speaker B:And there's food and place, but the characters are just.
Speaker B:You love them deeply, or I do anyhow.
Speaker B:But I recognized something about a lot of the other fiction that I was reading at the time, and particularly children's fiction.
Speaker B:I was reading great children's fiction.
Speaker B:I was reading Philip Pullman, I was reading Francis Harding, people like that.
Speaker B:And I realized how English they were when I read this.
Speaker B:And even though she had lived in, you know, London her whole life and married here and everything, that there was something in her voice that I recognized.
Speaker B:From my Russian grandfather.
Speaker B:A sort of Middle European Jewish intonation which had a kind of warmth and humor in it.
Speaker B:And it just somehow gave me permission to not have an English voice, if that makes sense.
Speaker B:Kind of on the page, it seemed to have a generosity that I loved, and I. I love her for that in particular.
Speaker A:I've never read her before, and actually, there's one book on your list that somebody else has picked before that.
Speaker A:I was like, I'm gonna have to get that one.
Speaker A:This is not one that I thought you'd be able to convince me to pick up, but it sounds amazing, and I think I will have.
Speaker B:It's very beautiful.
Speaker B:It's a beautiful story about.
Speaker B:About belonging and family, and it's very magical, and it's very.
Speaker B:It's very joyful.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think that is so important as well.
Speaker A:Like, you know, the diversity of voices as well.
Speaker A:My daughter's a huge reader now.
Speaker A:She's 13.
Speaker A:But I remember when she was sort of like, around the 9, 10 mark, I was like, oh, there's not.
Speaker A:We're not reading anything.
Speaker A:And I forget the author.
Speaker A:It's the girl, the elephant.
Speaker A:I can't think of her.
Speaker A:I'll put in the show notes.
Speaker A:But I remember when she read that, she was just absolutely captivating.
Speaker A:I was like, oh, it's so easy to fall into that sort of trap of picking up what, you know, or what sort of actually sort of expands.
Speaker B:Or what's available.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Or what's available.
Speaker B:And for this, for me, was, like, recognition and made me.
Speaker B:It was a step on the way to accepting the parts of me that don't feel English at all.
Speaker A:That's really important.
Speaker A:Okay, so should we move on to book number three, then?
Speaker B:So book number three is Cherie by Colette, which I have my very old copy here.
Speaker A:Oh, that's gorgeous cover.
Speaker A:Look at that.
Speaker B:It's a good cover.
Speaker B:Very glamorous guy.
Speaker B:Beautiful line drawing.
Speaker B:So I think Colette is rather a kind of magical figure.
Speaker B: Cherie, I think, came out in: Speaker B:So she's a very inspiring figure.
Speaker B:She initially was very successful with books that her husband claimed, and then she sort of left, and she then started to write under her own name, and she also performed, and she had various different kind of rather exciting and interesting relationships.
Speaker B:She was very much her own woman, and so I admire her very much.
Speaker B:But I read Cherie very young, and it was one of those books that sort of spoke to me, which is what all these books do.
Speaker B:And there's a sensuality to it that is, I think, really compelling.
Speaker B:And it's very direct.
Speaker B:It's the story of a beautiful young man and the older woman who he is in a relationship with.
Speaker B:It's really, for me, about.
Speaker B:It's her story.
Speaker B:It's called Cherie, and that's the name of the young man or the nickname of the young man, but Lea, the older woman who is his lover, it's kind of her story and it's really sad, but incredibly beautiful.
Speaker B:And it's a little slim thing, so you're not immersed in sadness for too long.
Speaker B:But it's about love and the ending of love.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:It's just exquisitely drawn, really.
Speaker A:So I haven't read that.
Speaker A:I'm really bad with the classics.
Speaker A:Catherine.
Speaker A:When I looked at this one, it's like 120 pages.
Speaker A:I was like, come on, Helen.
Speaker A:Like, it's 120 pages.
Speaker A:You could do that in an afternoon.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker B:And you'll probably find the copy at 120 pages, probably quite a lot of it notes because it is sort of in the French canon.
Speaker B:But it's not a classic in the sense of its language.
Speaker A:You know, it's.
Speaker B:It's incredibly.
Speaker B:There's nothing fusty about this book.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's all perfume and pearls and glowing skin and the sadness of watching a young man walk away.
Speaker A:Okay, so we have that one, but we need like, maybe I'll read that one in the Star of Kazan afterwards, pick me up.
Speaker A:But that's also.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker B:I haven't given a spoiler really.
Speaker B:That's of obvious in the kind of premise of the.
Speaker B:Of the story.
Speaker B:Yeah, sorry, spoil it for you?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, so let's move on to your fourth book choice then.
Speaker B:So my fourth is.
Speaker B:Is Persuasion by Jane Austen.
Speaker B:And I read Jane Austen very young and have reread her throughout my life.
Speaker B:And Persuasion is my favorite novel, having sort of taken over in the last sort of decade or so from Mansfield park, which was my favourite when I was younger.
Speaker B:They're the sort of quieter of her novels in the sense that their heroines are somewhat overlooked as opposed to the Emma's of this world.
Speaker B:And I have arguments with people about Jane Austen who know of her through her plots which are filmed as opposed to her the feeling and the intimacy and the very, very human stories she puts in her pages.
Speaker B:And Persuasion is an exquisite rendering of kind of yearning and regret and learning to be one's own Self in the face of sort of family pressure.
Speaker B:And it's really, really beautiful and.
Speaker B:And has a resolution that we long for and we get.
Speaker A:So this is the one that you're probably thinking, have you not read Persuasion?
Speaker A:I have literally just started reading Jane Austen in the last couple of years because I've talked about this before.
Speaker A:I found it really hard at school.
Speaker A:I just didn't get what people were studying.
Speaker A:But starting to read them now as books to be enjoyed rather than sort of, you know, studied.
Speaker A:So I did Pride and Prejudice, but this perspiration was picked by Jenny Godfrey.
Speaker A:And I remember her saying it's her comfort.
Speaker A:Read and just listen to what you were saying then.
Speaker A:I think, you know, I'm really trying to sort of start to view them more as books rather than things to sort of be intimidated about.
Speaker A:Just try things.
Speaker A:So it's something I will try and read at some point, but I just need to sort of get over that little sort of stumbling block in my head of like the.
Speaker B:Maybe put a different.
Speaker B:Put a different cover on it and.
Speaker A:Yeah, I quite like listening to them on audiobook as well.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:It's quite a good way to sort of bring it to life and sort of help you.
Speaker B:Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker B:Just make sure you have an unabridged version.
Speaker A:Yes, yes.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, so.
Speaker A:And then your final choice.
Speaker A:This is another one.
Speaker A:This is the one that is in my basket because somebody else has picked this book and I will read it and then I'm so pleased.
Speaker A:So let's see if you can be the one to make me hit the buy button.
Speaker B:Oh, you will definitely hit the buy button.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:It's Mrs. Death.
Speaker B:It's Mrs. Death.
Speaker B:Mrs. Death by Selena Godden.
Speaker B:I have to hold my hand up and say, selena is a good friend of mine.
Speaker B:However, I read this book and had watched her and seen her speak and perform before I met her.
Speaker B:And I was a mega fan when I met her.
Speaker B:She just happens to also be an incredible human being who has subsequent befriended me.
Speaker B:It's an extraordinary piece of work.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:How can I summarize this book?
Speaker B:It's utterly unconventional, totally powerful, beautiful in its use of words and rhythm and the subject matter, which is an encounter between Death, who is cast by Selena as a sort of old black woman on the street, in direct opposition to how Death is cast in, you know, in art and history.
Speaker B:Well, history, but, you know, in literature otherwise.
Speaker B:And a young man who is writing and Death tells him her stories.
Speaker B:And Death has infinite stories and some of Those stories are really difficult.
Speaker B:But there's an energy to this book that is the literal opposite of bleak.
Speaker B:And it, for me, as someone who went to art school, has never read a book about how to write, didn't know the conventions, but could sense that I sort of didn't meet them or wasn't.
Speaker B:Was trying to do something different.
Speaker B:I was trying to write in the way that I paint, which is that I go and I go and I'm following my own rigor.
Speaker B:Does that, does that please me?
Speaker B:Does that appeal to me?
Speaker B:I want it to.
Speaker B:I want to hear it in this way.
Speaker B:But that didn't seem to be what necessarily maybe other people were doing.
Speaker B:I've learned so much from the brilliant poets, unconventional poets like Selena, like Joelle Taylor writing novels.
Speaker B:And, you know, Selena's poetry is.
Speaker B:Her is also kind of incredible.
Speaker B:She's a very successful and award winning poet and performer and performance poet as well.
Speaker B:Go see her.
Speaker B:Her voice and her freedom with form are just completely inspiring.
Speaker B:And it lands.
Speaker B:You will feel everything, but you will be brought along in this kind of energetic performance.
Speaker A:Sold.
Speaker A:Ilona Bannister picked it, who wrote Five, and I remember her, I said to her, I just think the title alone, I just love the title.
Speaker A:It's so clever.
Speaker A:Is it.
Speaker A:Is it one?
Speaker A:How dark is it?
Speaker A:Is it sad?
Speaker A:Is it.
Speaker B:I think because death, the character of death, has seen a lot of death and is preoccupied in particular with some unjust deaths.
Speaker B:I mean, Selina weaves poetry with prose, with storytelling, with newspaper accounts.
Speaker B:You know, it's got a lot.
Speaker B:It's got a lot in there.
Speaker B:So there are some things in there that are very, very dark.
Speaker B:But as a poet, it's not an accident that she wrote.
Speaker B:Pessimism is for lightweights.
Speaker B:It's not an accident that she wrote with love, grief and fury.
Speaker B:You know, that kind of energy infuses it.
Speaker B:So it's an incredibly life enhancing read that is about a dark subject.
Speaker B:Does that make sense?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I will probably not one for me right now, but it's one I will read.
Speaker A:I think you have to be maybe in the right place for.
Speaker B:But it's also because of its.
Speaker B:Because of its formal, informal.
Speaker B:It's neither formal nor informal because of its unconventionality of form and the different kinds of pages that it has.
Speaker B:It's not a big book or one that has blocks of text that you have to, you know, it's not a heavy read at all because of its energy, because of its page structure even sometimes you look at a page and this one's a poem, or this one's a kind of broken up account of something.
Speaker B:Or this one is taking you into this particular flight of imagination, so it kind of brings you along in the way a performance by her does.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:Okay, well, I'm definitely gonna give it a try then.
Speaker A:So I know you said that you found it hard to pick those five, but if I said to you could only read one of those again, which book would it be?
Speaker B:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:God.
Speaker A:I know.
Speaker A:I'm sorry.
Speaker B:That's an impossibility.
Speaker B:Can you give me the complete works of someone?
Speaker B:Can I have the complete works of Eva Robertson?
Speaker B:That would keep me happy and comfortable.
Speaker B:Gosh.
Speaker A:I guess Cherie's only.
Speaker A:Yeah, probably 120 pages.
Speaker A:It's not going to keep you going, is it?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:Well, then Persuasion for the length.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, good, fine, yes.
Speaker B:But honestly, all of them.
Speaker B:But probably.
Speaker B:Probably Eva Ribbotson, because she feels like me in a funny kind of way.
Speaker B:I mean, she's totally not, but it's like being with a friend.
Speaker A:Oh, that's so lovely, Catherine.
Speaker A:It has been so wonderful to chat to you.
Speaker A:I've absolutely loved it.
Speaker A:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:Oh, I've loved it, too.
Speaker B:Thank you for having me.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:So tell me, how strong were your chocolate cravings during that conversation?
Speaker A:Isn't that so interesting?
Speaker A:I loved hearing Catherine talk about her work as a chocolate judge, as well as, of course, her writing life, Feast is Doubt now in hardback.
Speaker A:It's a brilliant book, one that I would highly recommend.
Speaker A:So do go grab a coffee.
Speaker A:As always, all of the books that we've talked about today are linked in the show notes with links to buy, so do go check those out as well.
Speaker A:I'll be back with our Tuesday teaser next week.
Speaker A:And of course, the main episode will follow on Thursday.
Speaker A:And I really hope that you will join us for those episodes as well.
Speaker A:In the meantime, thank you so much for listening and see you next week.
Speaker A:Take care.
