Whether you are in a book club or fancy starting your own, we have the book recommendations and conversation starters to make it a success! Plus we talk to Merky books author Yrsa Daley-Ward about her first novel The Catch.
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Episode 4 transcript
Rhianna Dhillon:
Hello, I'm Rhianna Dillon, and you're listening to the Penguin Podcast and another episode of Ask Penguin. Welcome back. Regular listeners will know that Ask Penguin is your go to podcast for answers to all of your book-related questions, hearing directly from the people who write and make them. We cover a different topic or genre every single time, so there's always something new to discover. And this week's episode is no exception. We're thinking about book clubs and what makes a good book club read.
The only time that I've been in a book club was at uni and we called ourselves the Shaky Club because we all did English Literature and studied Shakespeare. It wasn't pretentious at all… and we mainly drank wine. Maybe you, though, are part of a book club that was more successful than mine, and you need to suggest the next title to get the conversation flowing, or maybe you've always wanted to join one. Perhaps you became part of one to make new friends or just wanted a chance to expand your reading habits. But how do you choose which book to discuss and what should you look for in a book club book? Never fear. Ask Penguin is here with some suggestions.
I think the best book club book is the kind which sparks never-ending questions with a million different answers where no one can agree. So we thought that this writer's debut novel would make the perfect conversation-starter at any book club. I'm speaking with author and poet Yrsa Daley-Ward to find out more about her first fictional book, The Catch. It's so rich; it's complicated characters, shifting perspectives, twists that you definitely do not see coming, and as you'll hear, it is jam-packed with talking points. Yrsa is a writer, poet, and actress whose lyrical memoir, The Terrible won her the prestigious PEN Ackerley Prize in 2019. She's worked closely with artists including Beyoncé, with whom she co-wrote Black Is King. Now her first novel has landed, and as you'd expect, it is a gorgeously written, complex, and thrilling ride.
Yrsa, thank you so much for joining us on Ask Penguin. First of all, have you ever been part of a book club yourself?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
You know what, I'm an aspiring book club member. I've never, you know, because I've travelled so much in my life or like just not been in the same place for long enough to get any footing. I've never had that, but I want, you know, it's an aspiration of mine. Maybe I'll run one, maybe I'll need to start it.
Rhianna Dhillon:
You would be such a great host. So where do you get your book recommendations from then if it's not necessarily a book club?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
Friends, honestly, like sometimes I mentor people and I have a lot of mentees who are just avid readers, so they direct me to a lot of books. BookTok. I'm chronically online, so Instagram as well, just anywhere I can feel it and on Audible as well. I'm just like a, yeah, I love audiobooks too, so just from all sources.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Let's talk about The Catch, your debut novel, which is just as I said at the top, just such an engaging, complex read. You've come from writing poetry, you've written a memoir. Was fiction always in the works? Did you always know that you were going to write in fiction as well?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
100%. It was, fiction is the thing that I started with and the thing that I thought it would always be, but because I had such a story and so many things in the way of that, I had to kind of write those first to kind of clear them and then I could do what I think I was always supposed to be doing, which is fiction writing. So yeah. And also my early reading was all fiction books. It was all this escapism and yeah, I love fiction.
Rhianna Dhillon:
What kind of stuff were you reading then?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
Oh my God. I read everything. So, you know, I had a Jamaican immigrant mother. So, the way that they teach you to read, first of all, I, I was taught to read really young and my mum would give me free reign of anything that was in the house. So I didn't understand the concept of something being too advanced. So not having that meant that I got this love and affinity for language earlier than most. And that is what I attribute the whole, like, just my hunger for words from. So when you say what books, it's everything, everything.
Rhianna Dhillon:
You've already mentioned your own mother in the interview. But also when reading The Catch, there is such a theme about mothers and daughters, it's the heart of the book. So, tell us about that and how you wanted to explore that theme of motherhood and identity and how the two are intertwined.
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
I mean, I really can't imagine that this will ever be solved, you know, in my life. And, you know, my mum passed away, it's a while now. But she's ever present in, you know, the soul of her, something of her, the essence is ever present in my life and I dream about her a lot and there's just no relationship like it. And it fascinates me, this mother-daughter thing. It can be so deeply complex, it is so layered and I didn't start out, I never start out knowing what this book is gonna be about. It's about, it's always a discovery. It's always about what finds you. And this is obviously just on my heart, so I just let it be.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yeah. And the twins, we've got to talk about Dempsey and Clara, who they are so brilliantly distinct and then there is this kind of blurring throughout not only with each other but with their mother. So, can you describe both of them, how they came to you, who they are, introduce them to the audience, to the listeners who might not have met them yet?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
So Dempsey and Clara at the time of meeting them, are two twins, they just turned 30 and so much happens with them. Essentially they are estranged because when their mother went missing, presumed dead, and they were told that she was dead, not long after their birth. They go to different houses and they're adopted by different people, so they grow up estranged and resentful of each other and they are so different. Clara is the one perceived as more successful, she's beautiful, she has money, and Dempsey is the one I guess if anybody was looking at them, you might, you could be forgiven for saying that she's sort of drawn the short straw. And it's all about that and what happens when the world perceives you as having something, as the one that, you know, the cat that got the cream. However, they both have this very similar psychology because they both have a joint trauma. And they went on to have separate traumas inside of their homes for very different reasons. Are they the closest to each other that you could ever hope? You know, and it inverses and it's just something that I wonder. I'm not a twin, but it's something that I wonder, and having known twins, it's very interesting to me.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yeah, that duality is fascinating. My dad is an identical twin, so that has always, it's, you know, it's always been there in my life and I've always found it quite fascinating. It did kind of get me thinking about how that sort of sense of identity and how we always think it's so sweet when we dress twins the same and identical, but then that means that they're losing out so much of being an individual and we just, as people who aren't twins, you can never really know what that must be like?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
I can't imagine it at all. I, you know, when I was growing up, I thought that would be nice and I now I just, yeah, I feel differently about it, but the thing about life and experiences is you don't, you never know what the other side of the coin is, you never know what it would be to be anything else.
Rhianna Dhillon:
You mentioned as well that this is kind of like happening all around them turning 30, and then there's a theme of something happening with their mother when she was 30 and when she is 30 because there are kind of, the timeline is non-linear, but why 30? Why was that such a significant age?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
I wanted to have this mirroring. Of course they're both the same age, and then the mother was that age when she disappears and when they think she's reappeared, she's that age. And again, I often think about it, it's almost like a wish fulfilment. I think if my mum was to walk the earth again and she was the same age as me. That would be something, wouldn't it? Would I, would I like her? Would we be friends? All of those things. So it's not so much that it's the age. It's not so much about 30, but them being the same age. Yeah, and I just wanted a round number.
Rhianna Dhillon:
So as I've kind of like alluded to it is a very meta book. So tell us about, first of all, just kind of regarding the timeline, how did you sketch this out? How did you keep it clear in your own mind?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
Like, I wish I could tell you that I have a scaffolding a sketch, but really I just go, I'm just writing the pages day by day, and I don't have, OK, with this happens and this happens. I will say with this, I knew how it would end. And it was just getting there and the and the book was taking me on the loops on the way like a helter skelter, but I definitely don't plan it. And this is gonna sound probably terrible for a writer, but I think if I planned and I was like, well I'm going here and here, I think I'd be bored because I don't, it's not how my brain works and I need it to surprise me as I'm going or I probably won't finish it.
Rhianna Dhillon:
How does it surprise you? I'm so interested in your method.
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
Yeah, well, I'll be sitting down. Let's say I'm on chapter 4 and I'm like, OK, what's gonna happen in chapter 4, and I just start writing and then the characters are talking and then it's like, oh, that was a weird thing that they said. And so it's like I'm catching it up and there's no plan, but I don't really know how to do that because I would lose interest and everything for me has to be like exciting as I'm doing it.
Rhianna Dhillon:
That actually makes so much sense reading it because everything is so unexpected and it's unpredictable and I love that it's unpredictable as much as for you as it is for the reader.
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
100% it is. It's the only thing that would keep me coming to the, sitting in this room on my own for day after day after day writing this. I don't want to wrangle the characters into anything that's not true of them. And so they have to inform it and you've got to trust it. It's like, it's almost like trying to be some sort of psychic. You kind of have to trust that whatever's coming through and informing you just knows what your characters are going to do and that they're like breathing beings at this point. So you're just kind of shepherding them into a place and watching them play out the scene and then taking the note. Which, as I'm hearing it now I'm like that sounds that sounds so ludicrous, but that's the way it works for me.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yeah, Dempsey says at one point she's thinking about her life and she talks about what I could have done if only the shame hadn't held me under. And I was like, oh my God, that line like broke me. Just what we all could do as women if shame wasn't holding us back.
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
This is why I love writing because you really get a chance to like use your stuff like your really difficult stuff and give it to something else and then you're like wow, did I, but it's like what you feel about something it's very, it's very odd but it's just something that I'm gonna do forever because I think it's the way, I think it's healing to do it.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I also noticed that smell and scent comes up a lot in The Catch. It's a very, you know, there are a lot of very like tangible scents. Is that, did you know that about yourself, that that's something that you kind of write with, that you pick up a lot on?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
No, I didn't, but it makes sense because the whole thing about it is we, you know, we're sensual beings. So inside of a scene, especially when something traumatic or difficult is happening, you are taking in layers and layers of information. The colour of things, the shape of things, how someone smells is really important. Even in its offensiveness or it's softness or there's just, it gives you so much information. So it just, yeah, it just comes as part of the essence of everybody and what they're dealing with.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I sort of maybe feel like I know the answer to this, but do you sort of anticipate readers' comments, when like for example, in the book, one of the characters like Sunny claims not to understand the work of Clara because Clara is an author. And there are also moments when Clara is being interviewed on stage about her work, which I presume you've also, I've interviewed you on stage before, like you're very familiar with that kind of medium. So are you sort of anticipating the sorts of conversations that might come out of people reading The Catch?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
You know what, I haven't really thought about it yet because I've just been in a, I did it and then, because it takes so long once you've done the book, for this book to come out, I kind of almost for my own sanity, put it somewhere else in my head till I'm on tour. It's like, you know how it has to be. It takes so long, you have to, there's a dissonance until I'm on stage talking about it, and I will be, but that'll be June and July, so, no, I haven't thought about it, and I guess I'll just deal with it then.
Rhianna Dhillon:
It's such a specific experience being on stage talking about your work, which writers have to do, actors, directors have to do constantly, and also, yeah, kind of answer these really sort of deep questions about their work that they might never have thought of, and I really love in this that Clara gets frustrated when she's so derisive about the fact that people are just applauding any old thing that comes out of her mouth.
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
Yeah, yeah. And I think she's got to a specific place with it as well because of her visibility and because she's depressed. So it's like, you know, when you feel like that, it doesn't matter where you're going. It's not impressive to you. You're just over it.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Something that I feel like we're talking about at the moment, I think maybe I'm talking about with people because of White Lotus, is there's this line between sort of desiring somebody sexually and wanting to be someone, to be that person. And reading The Catch, I really, I sort of felt that come through with some of your characters. Do you, am I on the right track? Do you think that's true? Is that something that you, yeah…
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
Yeah, I think it's all a strange soup, isn't it? I think that, yeah, sometimes maybe you don't know which is which or you mistake one for the other. But it would make sense, because the things we desire are often things that we would like to be in some sense.
Rhianna Dhillon:
How do your characters deal with self-hatred as well, like that that element of shame that I mentioned? Do you think that they find a catharsis through their actions in the book, or is that something that will be with them forever?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
I think that you. I mean, life is a series of attempts to write your way out of these things. And when I say write, I just mean act your way out of it, behave your way out of it. I don't know, cheat your way out of it, lie your way out of it. And yeah, I think my, what I like about the characters is I think they're always trying, they're always trying to do something so they don't suffer or so that they suffer less. And I mean, both Clara and Dempsey, I think that they get some relief and then something else happens and yeah, maybe what they need is not what they're going for, but I know Dempsey wants to be well, she wants to be healthy, she wants to be light. She wants love, she wants to be popular, you know, Clara, her needs are like more enigmatic, I think, but she, she knows where she's powerful and she flexes that.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And how did you feel when you finished writing The Catch once you could finally put it to one side.
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
I wish I could remember because I think. Oh my God, you know, my big thing, and I really have to get better at this. I did not celebrate it. And I, I was like, I'm gonna celebrate when this book is, and of course it happened. I was like, yeah, whatever, I'm gonna do something. I was doing, I did something silly like that and now I can't remember what the feeling was, and it's just something that I told myself for like a couple of years ago, I am going to start celebrating, even if it's an event and just cooking and having people around the house and you know, just putting the pin in it. Because this matters. These things matter and we have to celebrate.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Are you kind of happy…do you like the idea of like readers bringing their own interpretation to it, even if it's so different from yours?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
Oh, I love that. I love that. Because it's all, it's…When you think about it, it's all true because when I read a book written by you, it's my experience of your words. It's happening in my body. So it's, and I think that's so special about books. It's never the same for any two people, even if they're reading the same text.
Rhianna Dhillon:
It's just such a fascinating ending, and if you kind of leave it with more questions than answers, then where would you recommend that they go to next to kind of find more of your work?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
So I have a Substack that, I write on it twice a week. I'm always there. And it's called The utter, but it's just yrsadaleyward.substack.com. And this is my twisting, shifting book of dreams. It's my corner of the internet where I just like say whatever's on my mind and I keep it going because I think books are wonderful and it's important to keep it going. I don't want to disappear off for two years and then it's like, oh, I've got a new book. I like to keep this dialogue going. I want to keep doing what I'm doing and talk to my readers and have this relationship with them and get on, you know, I voice note on there all the time and hear my voice and be like, you know, all the time. And I just think that that's, it's just a new way of doing things, which I think is kind of important too.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yeah. So what is the thing at the moment that is getting you out of bed that you're like the most excited to do day to day currently?
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
One of the things I do a lot is tour with poetry and with electronic music. So I'll go, especially, so in New York and LA and sometimes London, although we haven't done London for a while, I'll do gigs, which I love. So it's basically, I don't just like to read poetry, I like to perform it. So there are those. And I would say, yeah, my Substack is really important to me because it's a journal and it's all of these findings of being in the world and like weighing the perils and the difficulties of being awake in the world. Now with the light, the joy and the everyday miracles of it. So it's, I like doing it because I think having this kind of, sort of archival diary is important, is important for us. We need to talk about the things that are really going on, you know, I don't want to be like a fiction or a mystery. I want to be like, no, this is hard, you know. So yeah, so those things are really important to me. And I'll be able to talk more about some projects that are upcoming that I would like to talk about but I'm not allowed to. But that, yeah, just as much as possible.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yrsa, thank you so much. It's been really lovely to chat to you.
Yrsa Daley-Ward:
Thank you!
Rhianna Dhillon:
And The Catch is going to be released on the 10th of July and it's available to pre-order now, and you can find a link in the show notes, make sure you check it out.
One of my favourite things about Penguin HQ is the amount of people here who live and breathe books. So if you are thinking of joining or starting a book club, we have pulled two perfectly placed members of Penguin to offer you some pointers. To help us with that, I'm really pleased to welcome Cameron Watson and Louise Jones to our podcast studio. Hi both, how are you doing?
Louise Jones:
Hi, nice to see you.
Cameron Watson:
Nice to see you.
Rhianna Dhillon:
So Louise, your title is Creative and Communications Director for Ebury, which is one of the publishing houses at Penguin. Can you explain what that involves and do you have a sort of normal day?
Louise Jones:
Oh, if only I had a normal day. Yes, of course, I can explain. So my role is, I work with lots of different teams. So Ebury is, as you've just mentioned, a part of Penguin, and we do only non-fiction. So we work on lots of different books for lots of different people. So whether that's kind of cookery, whether that's kind of personal development, thinking about how you can improve your life, whether it's how to help you solve something, whether it's kind of you need to find a solution, you know, all different things from smart thinking, to business, to history, to your favourite celebrity memoir. So it covers a huge range of different types of books. And my role is to work with all those different teams to make sure that we are really finding readers in the places they want to be found. So how can we help you solve that problem when you most need it? So is it 3am when you can't get your baby to sleep? We have a perfect solution booked for you. Do you have your friends around for dinner and you really want to impress them? What is that perfect dinner party? You know, where are people trying to find answers, where are people trying to find entertainment, to find joy? To find new ways of living, to kind of, improve parts of their life that they're exploring. So we're really trying to find those readers, and my role is really guiding the teams into finding those readers and sending really brilliant books their way.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And Cameron, you also work at Penguin, at Merky Books, publishing books like Yrsa Daley-Ward, who we've just had a chat to. So tell us a bit more about Merky and also what you do there.
Cameron Watson:
Yeah, sure, so my role, I'm a Marketing and Audience Executive, which means I guess half my role is marketing books, like that's getting books into readers' hands and sort of be in that that port of call for where readers see books in the world, whether it's adverts, maybe, you know, you see an advert on the underground or on a bus or on the train and that's what we do, but we also advertise on social media. We do organic things with authors. We create POS which is a technical term, point of sale, it just means like bookmarks and tote bags and stickers, all the sort of extra things that can make a book feel really special. The audience side is, we do a lot of work on the Merky Books brand, so we do initiatives, we do partnerships, we do events and some of our initiatives are really amazing. So a bit about Merky Books. It was founded in 2018, as a collaboration with Stormzy and Penguin Random House and with a purpose to sort of own and change the mainstream. So we really wanna publish books that reflect our readers and people who may not have had their voices and their stories reflected in publishing previously. So yeah, we publish a wide range of books. I know you just chatted to Yrsa and she's absolutely amazing, isn't she? But we publish books like that, we publish literary fiction, non-fiction, especially books that challenge sort of our perceptions of events or stories or how to even, our perceptions of ourselves even in relation to those groups that might not have always sort of found themselves reflected in publishing. And we do so many amazing events where we run the something called the New Writer's Prize where if you're an underrepresented, un-agented and unpublished writer and you submit to us and you win this prize, you win a publishing contract with us and we've published 5, well, we've had 5 winners through that now and published 3 of their novels already, so we have some really just great activity going on.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Some of my favourite books that I've been picking up recently that have really been pulling me in, I've noticed are Merky.
Cameron Watson:
Which ones have you read?
Rhianna Dhillon:
Well, Yrsa’s, we've had, because Derek is Derek published through Merky, Derek Owusu, who was in one of our very early episodes, and his writing is just so beautiful. Yeah, and some really, really kind of special voices coming through. So as I said, you are both really perfectly placed to talk about book clubs, and we've got some specific book club questions, listener questions about being part of book clubs.
So Rebecca asks, how do you cater to everyone in a book club, especially if they have different tastes. I guess, is that the point of a book club? Cameron, what do you think?
Cameron Watson:
Sort of the purpose of a book club is to read things that you wouldn't, otherwise why would you join if you just want to read what you wanted to read, then you may as well, you can do that anyway. But I mean the book club that I'm in, we have some like sort of tactics to do this. So, we have like a voting system. So yeah, well it goes round in an order of who gets to choose the books, so we all get a choice, but when it's your turn to choose, you have to suggest two books and the rest of the book club vote on those. So that means everyone sort of feels like they have a bit of an input into what book we read. And then wider than that, every time we do a full revolution of everyone in the in the group, we change the theme. So our current rule is it has to have been a book that was published within the last 12 months because we wanted to read some really modern, current reads. So I think there's techniques to get around that.
Louise Jones:
I love that that you have rules, book club rules. Charter!
Cameron Watson:
Yeah, I mean it's because we found initially that we just read a lot of like old men, and then we were like, oh, this isn't great. So how do we how do we change that?
Rhianna Dhillon:
So someone else has asked, which I think is a really interesting question; we typically think of book clubs as everyone reading the same book, but are there any other ways that you could switch it up?
Louise Jones:
The book clubs I've been, I'm not currently in a book club, I've been in many book clubs, and I've always found them very frustrating for myself because everybody expects me to be the expert, which I generally am because I've read all of the books, so, you know, it's kind of always skewed a little bit and actually we did mix it up and I said everyone bring a different book, because then it gave me the chance to get something out of it as well, because we gave themes, so maybe it had to have something in it or it had to be set in a certain time or the lead character had to be a certain type of person, so it had a rough kind of guideline to it, that really worked for us, but I don't know if it works for everybody.
Rhianna Dhillon:
OK, so the big question is, what do you think makes a good book club book?
Cameron Watson:
Gosh, that's so tough. I think, I mean, to your point of what you've been saying this, this whole session I guess is it's that emotional response. I think it needs to be a book that sort of challenges you in ways, you need to be able to talk about it because the whole point of a book club in my opinion, is to sort of gather a group of people to discuss the literature and I think if these books have big ideas or they change your worldview or they're about people and places that you might have never interacted with or ever have been, I think that's really important.
Louise Jones:
You know, what are interesting points you can discuss? Are there any complex characters? Are there any themes that you want to kind of really pick apart? Is there something that you can hugely disagree on? But equally, just having something that is maybe doesn't have a big discussion point, but again, can make you, I keep saying make you feel something, but actually to give someone the gift of a book that will cheer you up.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And also, how do you kick off discussions because there's that sort of, you know, you don't want to just be like, so what did you think of the book?
Cameron Watson:
I mean, my book club, as you might have sensed is quite regimented. So we have rules, but essentially whoever has suggested the books that people vote on, they'll ask questions and we always end with what is your rating of the book? That's our last question.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Out of what?
Cameron Watson:
We do out of 10 because I think 5 is just too, like the difference between a 3 and a 4 is huge. But I love to ask questions initially about the context behind a book or about the time the book was written. We recently read Glorious Exploits, which is a really great book, and that's set as the Athenian soldiers have invaded Syracuse, but we don't know what happened really. We just see these soldiers in prison. And I asked my book club, so did you know any of the context before reading this and no one knew. And then I sort of told them the context and that's changed some of their answers or how they even felt about the book because there's like elements of revenge in the story that are sort of, it's amplified when you know how deep the betrayal that led to this point was. So I think that's a like context, especially if you read books that are set in different places or around historical moments.
Rhianna Dhillon:
What about you Louise? Any kind of like good kicker offer recommendations?
Louise Jones:
Well, I think I cheat slightly because one of my questions is always, who would you share this book with? Because I think I do that more from a work perspective, you know, a little bit of in world market insight. But actually, no, I think that's always really interesting, like, who, when you read a book, who do you then want to give it to when people don't want, because I think it's really important in book clubs to understand that not everybody wants to be vulnerable and not everybody wants to share information about themselves. So sometimes by talking about it through the lens of somebody else, it allows you to see a little bit more inside them as well, because you have to be respectful and not everybody wants to talk from an inner level. Sometimes you just want to talk about the plot or talk about something that happened in there or kind of something that was surprising or different. But actually to open it up to get a little bit of sense of a personal connection is good.
Rhianna Dhillon:
That's really nice. I literally, this week, gave my best friend from school, Jodi Picoult’s By Any Other Name, because we learned about Shakespeare together when we were like 11 and this was just kind of giving a new perspective and I kind of wanted her to share that with me because we'd learned together the first time and I was like, here's an extension of that. So yeah, who you want to share it with is a really nice, really nice one.
Watson:
I will be stealing that one, its going straight into my question list!
Rhianna Dhillon:
All right. OK, so let's get on to some book recommendations for our listeners who are part of a book club.
Dear Ask Penguin, our book club reads a book, then watches the film. Are there any recommendations of what's being adapted for the big screen this year?
Cameron Watson:
One that actually just came, it's already out but Conclave by Robert Harris.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Who we had on the pod.
Camerion Watson:
Oh he's amazing, isn't he? Well, I think it was just a great adaptation. I mean it did so well at the awards and the level of acting in it was incredible, but the book itself, Robert Harris has this real gift for really transporting you to a time and a place. And at this time you're in the Vatican with some scheming cardinals and it's so interesting to see how power corrupts in any space, so yeah, I'd recommend that for everyone and every Robert Harris book really especially if you like historical fiction.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I feel like with that especially, you're expecting it almost to become repetitive because they're doing the same thing over and over again with their voting and it never does become repetitive, it's so brilliant, the way it's so nuanced.
Louise Jones:
That was on my watch list. It's just been pushed very much to the top, so thank you for that. Mine is actually, it's coming out this year. I'm excited about it. It's a book called The Salt Path. I don't know if anyone's read The Salt Path. It's a gloriously rich, beautiful piece of nature writing; part memoir, part kind of just intimate story, and it follows the author Raynor Winn and her husband who had a series of difficult situations happening in their life, they lost their home, there was some illness and they were made homeless, which is just unbelievable, you know. They're in their later stages of life and they decided to take this incredible step and make a big decision and just do this huge walk, and they walked, I think it was 630 miles down the South West Coast Path. You just follow them on this journey, and it's just amazing because you're listening to their inner voices of what's been going on in their lives and you're following their story, but at the same time it's overlaid with this incredible, as I say, nature writing where you see their feelings and their thoughts and their struggles coming out in the landscape around them. And of course it's such a stunning part of the world anyway, but I can't describe how much you really feel that comes to life through the book, and I just know in a film their characters are so strong, their story is so, it's so real. It's like it's so born in the everyday that it could just happen to everyone, and I think you can connect with that. But I should say one of the most important things about the film, it's going to have Gillian Anderson in it, which means it's gonna be brilliant, full stop. I mean, what's not to like?
Great book club book because there's themes of nature, there's themes of self-discovery, there's themes of loss, grief, and, you know, there's so many topics that you can really explore. So actually I would recommend that for any book club, pre-film.
Rhianna Dhillon:
It's perfect. Yeah, you do always have to do it that way around, don't you? Book and then film. OK, we have another question; Our book club focuses on big ideas based on exploring current topics from culture to politics. So what are some interesting nonfiction titles coming out this year? Louise, I feel like this is very much your bag.
Louise Jones:
Yes, so this one I think is gonna really just hit home for a lot of people. It's called Intimacy by an author called Ita O'Brien. She's an intimacy coordinator, and an intimacy coordinator is an incredibly important member of all film sets and not all film sets or television series do use them, but actually they're there to help coordinate kind of any intimate scenes, obviously, the clue is in the name of the role, but it's there to kind of make it feel, to make the actors feel more connected, to make it feel a safe environment, crucially, and to really kind of make it feel natural and authentic and realistic. And it closes the set a little bit so that gives that the actors the privacy and Ita is the best of the best…
Rhianna Dhillon:
She’s the original almost.
Louise Jones:
Yeah, she's really kind of set the scene and she's really done a lot of the hard work that's needed in that area. Another huge piece of work that she did was I May Destroy You, the Michaela Coel series, if anyone's watched that, then you should definitely check that out. That that was such a raw and vulnerable series that needed such expertise. So, this book is, it's kind of a look at the work that she's done. It's not just talking about the kind of work on the actual set, it's actually talking about the work that she's done in that space for the entertainment industry, but it's also kind of a practical guide to help you in your own relationships, to really think about how you can bring deeper connection with your partner or friends, or kind of people in your lives. There's some tools, there's some exercises, you know, there's some real kind of practical elements to it, it's kind of part field guide, part memoir, part everything, but I think this is a topic that's kind of becoming increasingly important in not just the entertainment industry, but it's an important topic for the younger generation coming through, that kind of intimacy and how to kind of be respectful of your own intimacy, and I think that this book will be a very big cultural agenda setting book.
Rhianna Dhillon:
That's a fantastic recommendation. Thank you. Cameron, do you have one?
Cameron Watson:
Yeah, I do. So it's a Merky Books book which we're really excited about called Reframing Blackness by Alayo Akinkugbe. And she actually, so she's an art historian, but she also founded Black History of Art, which is like an Instagram page and a movement that sort of as it says on the tin, it documents a Black history of art and especially in relation to Western art. And what this book does, it not only talks about black artists and how they intersect with our perceptions in the west of art and what you see in galleries and whatnot, but it also looks at the black figure as a subject in Western art. So obviously, you'll see black figures in the backgrounds of certain paintings and stuff and it's about who these people were, why they're there and how they're portrayed and sort of how we can break out of the ideas that we've built up about these people or about the artists themselves and it's really about challenging your world view about art and we’re really, really excited about that one and she's just absolutely amazing, like this is sort of her life's work and, and we're really happy to sort of be celebrating this and championing it and it feels like such a Merky Books book.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And I bet brilliant as well for book clubs because you can, if you're prepping, if you're the one bringing the book to the table, then you can pull out some of the art and get discussions around the art pieces that she talks about in the book as well.
Cameron Watson:
Yeah, for sure. And also, you could go and visit some of these pieces they're in museums and galleries. Not just in the UK but especially in the UK if you can. It's so amazing to be able to read something and then go and experience it in real life and also experience where in the museum or the gallery, for example, this art's located. That's a big part of it or who sponsored the wing that this is located or who paid for this piece of work and it's a story of, I mean, a lot of it harks back to colonialism and a lot of these things, but yeah, it's a really wonderful book that I'd recommend to absolutely everyone.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Brilliant, thank you both. Excellent suggestions.
OK, we have another question; My fantasy book group would like to tackle a new series together - which I think is really brave, to do a series in a book group - are there any good fantasy series that you would recommend? Who wants to take this one?
Cameron Watson:
I do have one. I'll be honest, I've not read it myself, but it's a recommendation from a colleague, my friend Izzy.
Rhianna Dhillon:
They still work at Penguin.
Cameron Watson:
They do work at Penguin, and it's called A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jensen.
Rhianna Dhillon:
OK, this has come up on the podcast before.
Cameron Watson:
OK
Louise Jones:
And I've been recommended that one as well
Cameron Watson:
So shout out to Izzy, thank you. So it's a romantasy, that's the word, right? It’s a romantasy novel about a shield maiden and it's set in this world that's based on Norse mythology and obviously we had such a, I feel like we had so many Ancient Greek mythology retelling novels and that was a real sort of trend for a while…
Rhianna Dhillon:
Thanks Stephen Fry. Haha
Cameron Watson:
But yeah, this one's about Norse mythology, which is so fascinating, Vikings and their runes and their gods, and I can't tell you too much about the plot, but she also recently recommended me a book called Silver Elite which isn't out yet. I feel very lucky to, she thrust a proof into my hand and, it's not the same, but she said I'd enjoy it and I loved it. I devoured it in a weekend, so I'm gonna say I really trust her recommendation, so go out and look up Danielle L. Jensen, and the first one's out and the second one's coming out very soon, so it's one that can sort of grow with your book club. I do think reading a series in a book club is really brave.
Louise Jones:
Well, see, I disagree. I think that fantasy series in book clubs are actually are kind of, they're very, it's very on trend to read the whole series, and everybody that I speak to at the moment is just obsessed by fantasy and obsessed by romantasy and actually they just want to read the series and they want to read it with the book clubs, and I have a lot of messages, especially with my team of people kind of taking days off to start them and then wanting people to catch and I think that's kind of part of a book club, isn't it, that you kind of want it all read it at the same time and get the next one in, so I think that kind of levelling up next to each other. I think it's kind of quite fun and you can really get into that world and then explore that world. So, brave if you haven't got much time, but if you've got, if you have got lots, then it's really fun.
Cameron Watson:
I think that's why it scares me because my book club takes so long to read every book like Glorious Exploits, it's like 240 pages or something like that. It took us about 6 months to read that. So if we were reading a fantasy series, each one…
Rhianna Dhillon:
What?! You could read that in a day Cameron!
Cameron Watson:
No, I know, but everyone's busy. I mean, I also picked it and I read it like a day before the meeting, so it's bad. Yeah, life gets in the way sometimes.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Somebody has asked; We like to read books based on real lives. What are some interesting stories we could delve into? So I guess this could be like completely nonfiction or just kind of maybe fiction based on real life people. So Louise, have you got any suggestions?
Louise Jones:
I've got a couple of good ones. I've got a couple of good ones actually. So this one, I found incredibly interesting because it just taught me about something that I didn't know very much about, or kind of gave me a lens on something I didn't know very much about. It's a book called More by Molly Roden Winter, and it came out last year. To give a little bit of background to it, Molly is a mother of small children, and a husband, often worked late and felt that she was doing a lot of kind of the care in the house and was kind of maybe being taken advantage of in her family and didn't have a lot of time for herself, and it all kind of started with one evening, her husband missed the bedtime again and didn't come home, and she felt very kind of resentful to this. And when he did come home, she stormed out of the house and went to a bar, and at the bar she met a younger man who was quite flirtatious and got to chatting and he asked her out and then she went home and spoke to her husband about it. Who was like, why didn't you go out with him? And there started their open marriage. And, so this story then is essentially a story about her exploring polyamory with her husband and how together they kind of navigate having an open marriage as a very committed and loving couple, and that is very clear through the whole book is how committed and loving they are to each other and how strong their relationship is. But it really talks about that kind of world where you can exist in a loving marriage, but also have other partners, and it was fascinating to see a different version of a life and how they navigated that together and what it meant for their family and what it meant for their children and their lives. And it's just so interesting and she writes so incredibly emotionally and deeply and you really kind of can see every part of how she's thinking and feeling and I just love kind of getting into other people's lives and seeing decisions that people make and how that impacts kind of how they move forward really. So I would recommend that.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Top tip Cameron?
Cameron Watson:
The first one that I have is a fiction. It's a novel. And I guess it's not an autobiographical novel, but it's called The Road to the Country by Chigozie Obioma who is I think one of the greatest living writers. And it's a book about the Biafran war, and it's a war that not many people know about. It was the civil war in Nigeria, East versus West Nigeria, and it was absolutely brutal and it's one of the bloodiest wars since World War II but like, no one knows about it and I remember Chigozie speaking about it saying even he didn't know much about it as a Nigerian man because it's this sort of shameful part of Nigerian history and there was a point where one of Chigozie's father's friends was round and sort of just dropped casually that he'd fought in this war and his father had fought in this war, so this sparked something in Chigozie where he sort of had to investigate more and found out that all of these people in his life had been a part of this war and just sort of suppressed it and not talked about it. So he spoke with his father and his father's friends and got this picture of what this war was like and wrote this really amazing war novel about a soldier who ultimately finds love which I think is like really sweet, but just the trials of being in war and I mean I personally love a war story. I think it's, especially when it's not a glorification of war, which this book doesn't at all, you come out of it, it's really harrowing, it's awful like it's not a place you want to be, but I think the way humanity endures in these situations and the hope that things can get better, I think, yeah, this book's really amazing. The fact that it was like this collection of, this group knowledge of people who hadn't really talked about it and he did the digging and put this in a novel. I just, yeah, it's a really, really great novel that I would recommend. It does also have a sort of supernatural element which is really, really interesting and relates to like Nigerian sort of beliefs.
And then the nonfiction one is by Lyse Doucet, it's called The Finest Hotel in Kabul. And Lyse Doucet, she was the BBC's Chief International Correspondent and for decades she was in and out of Afghanistan, and this book is about her time staying at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul and how over I guess half a century of turmoil in Afghanistan, what happened to the people who worked there and the people who interact with this hotel. There's times where the US soldiers are staying there, there's times when the Taliban are staying there and it's about a nation that I don't know, Afghanistan's been through so much, but this sort of looks at it through a different lens. And the hotel's sort of like an enclave into, with what else is going on, this hotel sort of remained there for, I think it's since 1998 or something, I think that's the first time Lyse stayed there. So yeah, it's just an amazing story about a place I find so interesting.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Thank you so much. I mean, incredible recommendations. Every time you guys just like bring in hit after hit, and it's really difficult when you haven't, when you don't read 70 books a year or however many to pick and choose, but hopefully that's been really, really helpful to our listeners who are in a book group or starting one. I hope people start one on the basis of this podcast.
Cameron Watson:
They’re really fun!
Louise Jones:
Are they gonna start one with rules? Are they gonna be more free flowing? That's gonna be the real question, isn't it? And are they going to laminate those? Do you laminate your rules?
Cameron Watson:
No, I mean the rules are kind of informal, but I mean if you're breaking, you're getting kicked out, joking, I'm joking. Informal rules.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I love the oxymoronic nature of that.
Cameron Watson:
Guidelines.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Thank you so much to everyone who submitted a question to ask and we do hope that you have discovered something new. If you would like to submit a question, then you can do so by emailing penguinpodcast at PenguinRandomhouse.co.uk or by joining our Penguin podcast broadcast channel on Instagram, and you'll find the group linked at the top of our profile page @PenguinUKBooks. So as always, don't worry, you don't have to memorise everything in this podcast. We link to all of the books mentioned in this episode in the show notes below, perfect for your next book club haul. And if you've been inspired to join or even start a book club, then of course Penguin has all sorts of helpful articles and resources on its website to get you going.
Thank you so much to my brilliant guests, Yrsa, Cameron and Louise. I'm gonna be back in a fortnight with more authors and Penguin pals and Ask Penguin questions. But if you really can't wait until then, you can find all of our previous episodes on our podcast feed to keep you going. Don't forget we've got Henry Eliot on there talking about classics. We've also got Robert Harris talking about book to screen adaptations. So hopefully you'll find something fascinating. We'll see you next time. Thank you for listening.