Hello, and welcome to the Book Club Review. I'm Laura. I'm Kate. And this is the podcast about book clubs and the books that get you talk. Today we feature Charles Pignal who's candid Instagram book reviews are a firm favourite of ours. To the point, opinionated, but always thoughtful and good humoured his appetite for reading and discussing books is something we love.
I met up with Charles in the heart of London's Bloomsbury where we discussed Mrs. Dalloway under the watchful eye of Virginia Woolf herself.
Were Charles and Kate won over by Woolf's modernists classic? D it sparked debate? It seems he may not have been a total fan.
This book is, you know, a lot of semicolons a lot of going back and forth and different points of view different ideas. Yeah.
No, but did I manage to persuade him to change his mind, keep listening to find out, followed by our range of London inspired book recommendations to help you decide what to read next for book club or for yourself? That's all coming up here on the Book Club Review.
You know, when you enjoy watching someone online, and you sort of think, 'Oh, I wish I could actually sit down and talk to that person'.
I do. I do know that feeling.
Well, one day Charles got in touch. So happened that he was in town, and he suggested doing something for the podcast. And because I know his account, and I often thought, oh, he'd be such a great person to talk books with, I was very happy to say yes, but then I thought, oh, what can we do, and I want to do something book club style. So I suggested that we read and discuss a book together. And I thought a good book would be Mrs. Dalloway. And so at quite short notice, he agreed.
A bit of a side note, but I once read and reread Mrs. Dalloway for my master's in English. And I had to write multiple essays on it through the lens of different literary theories. So although that exercise was not very much fun, I know this book incredibly well. And it really holds up to that level of scrutiny. So I am super curious to hear what you and Charles thought of it, not as literary theorists, but as readers.
I also did Mrs. Dalloway for a levels and so it was a really interesting experience. For me coming back to it after all this time, I started rereading it and immediately felt quite bad because I had remembered it for some reason as being quite short, easy read. It's not a super long book, but it is quite an intense read. And so I felt a bit bad for having imposed it on him at such short notice. But he absolutely raised the challenge. He did finish it. And so we met in what seemed to me a good idea, which is Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury, which is where wolf herself lived for many years when she wrote to Mr. Dalloway, her house isn't there anymore, it was bombed in the wall, but you're still in the square where she used to walk, thinking up plots for her books. And in the corner is the bust of her that was done in the 1930s by Stephen Tomlin, which watches over the whole square. And it's interesting, because it's, I think it's the only 3d representation. It's the only thing you can see where you really feel like you're seeing what she was really like. I'm not sure if Tavistock Square was ever a tranquil spot, even in real estate. But I have to say in London in 2022, it is quite a noisy square with traffic going round emergency vehicles. At one point a helicopter even flew overhead. So listeners Apologies in advance for the sound. But before we got to the book, Charles and I did a little bit of time talking about his account and what it's like to be an Instagram influencer. Just like you. Yeah, but he's big time.
Charles, thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for having me, Laura. And I recently celebrated getting 4000 followers. We were very excited to actually do this. Thank you very much. We did a giveaway. It was a big thing for us. So I know what that feels like. You have considerably more than 4000. It feels almost rude to talk about numbers. Can we say the number?
Yeah, sure. It's 59,002. That's
nearly 69. I can't help but be very curious to know what it's like knowing that you've got that following? And has that impacted the way that you're approaching your reviews? Does it affect the books that you're choosing? I'm curious about that?
No, it hasn't impacted at all the books that I'm choosing. The core of my account is diversity, diversity of voices, but also a diversity of genres of eras, fiction versus nonfiction classes versus contemporary. I do choose books that ultimately I want to read. So I don't want to feel beholden to any sort of media agenda or publishing house marketing plan or anything like that is essentially my reading list. What I'm interested in, it is just a number and actually I'm starting to realise that as that number goes up, the engagement is not as powerful as it once was, and So now my latest obsession is actually I've got to focus on the engagement and the connection between me and my followers. One thing that really excites me is when followers start having debates on posts, and it becomes really a platform for people to speak to each other, not necessarily to me, but just to each other and be a space of fun literary conversation. The other
thing that caught my attention that I love is that you're very frank, in your opinions about things. And you will say, if you don't like something, you've justified you back it up. But sometimes it feels like it's quite hard to do that.
No, absolutely. Yeah, very hard to do that. And especially when when he's talking about classics, beloved classics, that are popular and academically and technically successful books. Of course, it becomes difficult to stand up and say, I didn't like it. But I'm reminded of a course I did 20 years ago on wine tasting. And the guy who's running the course, said, you know, the most important thing about wine tasting is, do you like the taste of this wine or not? It's not about the label. It's not about whether it's expensive wine or popular wine or whatever it is, do you like it? And if you're a very lucky person, your favourite wines will be the Tesco wine, that's 599 and you'll have forever great wines at your table that you enjoy. So in that spirit, if I don't like a very popular academic book, I'm okay with that. It's my taste and if somebody disagrees with me, that's obviously fine. Let's have a debate about and there we go.
Now, listeners may have been aware that we're not in the usual very silent environs of my shed we're actually on location we're in slightly noisy Tavistock Square, here in the heart of London's Bloomsbury why are we here? Because number 52. Tavistock Square is where Virginia Woolf lived in 1924 when she wrote her classic novel, Mrs. Dalloway, and there is in fact a life size bust of her keeping an eye on us from the corner. London is enchanting Wolff wrote in her diary on May the 26th 1924, I step out upon a Tony coloured magic carpet, it seems and get carried into beauty without raising a finger. The Knights are amazing with all the white porticoes and broad silent avenues, and people pop in and out lightly diverting the like rabbits. And I looked down South Hampton Roads wet as the seals back, or red and yellow with sunshine, and watch the omnibus coming and going. And here the old crazy organs. One of these days I will write about London, and how it takes up the private life and carries it on without any effort. And so she wrote Mrs. Dalloway, which takes place over the course of one London summer's day, and is anchored around two main characters whose palms never cross, Clarissa Dalloway, who is a wealthy 52 year old woman who is preparing for a society party she's giving that evening and an ex soldier called Septimus Smith, who is suffering from post traumatic stress and feeling suicidal. As their two stories unfold. We meet other characters such as Peter Walsh, a man from Clarissa is past whom she might have married for love, but she settled instead for her dependable but unexciting husband Richard and Sally Seaton, who was once clarice's closest friend. And so it's a story about character in a way about memory and experience. Wolf weaves in thoughts on class, the British establishment colonialism, tradition versus modernity, ageing, and it's all set against the backdrop of what even today is a very recognisable London. Many of the things wolf describes are still here, Charles, I thought it would be fun for us to discuss a book set in London and so heroically at quite short notice, you agreed to read Mrs. Dalloway. How did you get on?
Well, first of all, I thought your idea of reading Mrs. Dalloway, in the middle of June, in London was very relevant and us meeting here in Tavistock Square, we got Virginia Woolf right behind us. I love this situational synchronisation, I think it's brilliant. Unfortunately, I am going to be the contrarian voice today. And I think a lot of your listeners are going to be potentially upset when I say that I really did not enjoy this book at all. This is my third rodeo with Virginia Woolf and I have real trouble connecting with that specific author and with her works, despite the stunning prose, and thank you for that passage, which you just read, because it is beautiful writing, but I really struggled with this, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. At this early stage. I'm still digesting a little bit, but I found the whole thing a bit too atomized, and yes, stream of consciousness and so on. But it really zigs and zags way too often. For me.
We should explain about stream consciousness of people who haven't read it maybe haven't encountered Wolf's writing is the stream of one person's thoughts or a character's thoughts and were in their head and we're following them along.
Exactly. But in this book, it's almost second by Second, so every thought that Flitz into Mrs. Tao always had, or whichever character is really examined in that moment, time is a major element of the book, there's always Big Ben in the back, the clocks are ringing. And so
that means circles dissolved on the air.
Exactly. London's a major character in it. But there's too little plot to keep things interesting. And there is a lot of commentary on the social structures of the day, and the role of women and so on. But I feel like if you want to make all that commentary, the essential first condition two that is you have to keep people's attention. And I really found it difficult to focus my attention on this constant zigging and zagging that's going on in this person's head. And, you know, both characters, Clarissa Dalloway, and Septimus Smith, I really struggled with it.
I have a very interesting addition of Mrs. Dalloway. My addition is called the annotated Mrs. Dalloway. It's been compiled by MERV Emery, who is a professor at Oxford University. What is genius about it is that it has the book, so it has the text. And then there are these wide margins. And in the margins are these incredible notes. And it's beautifully illustrated. So here, it's just fallen open that this gorgeous little map well of Clarissa galleries walk follows these characters as they walk around the streets that we're currently in. Not only that, but you get these wonderful bits of ephemera that are from the day. So here is a view of Oxford Street as Clarissa Dalloway would have seen it. And there's a sketch of the kind of press of the crowds, little details in the text that I feel like, if you were just reading it, maybe would strike you that you might sort of pass over them as we let a worthless now an ambulance pass by Yes, here it goes. So one point, quite early on in the novel, there's this scene of a car driving down and Clarissa sees and that's clearly a person of great importance in this car. And it starts to introduce these ideas of status and power and all different levels and nuances of class in British society. And then everyone is brought together in one moment because there is a plane flying in the sky and it's skywriting. It's creating letters to advertise something and people look up and they're trying to work out what it says. And in this book, there's this extraordinary image of an aeroplane doing this skywriting, which really, I couldn't stop looking at it. I've never seen anything like it before. It's a biplane, you know, and it's suddenly made me think about the engineering aspects of that these are the early days of flying in a book post war when it was they learned all these skills of making these planes that could dot about them, had that manoeuvrability. And there's this amazing little note in the margin that says about when skywriting was first invented. It was a Army Major who conceived the idea that a skilled aerial Acrobat might be able to write smoke letters, and after the war, he perfected the smoke producing mechanism to do it and formed a company to exploit his invention. It didn't go well. At first, the company was about broke with no takers when Lord Northcliffe, British publisher signed the first order to write the name of his London newspaper The Daily Mail in the sky as an advertising stunt. The name of the Daily Mail appeared in the sky in May 1922. During the historic races of ups and downs, the Darby course over the heads of 2 million spectators who loosed a spontaneous cheer. Each letter required flying about 15 miles to make, and the pilot always wants to write into the wind. Otherwise, the already fragile letters would expand and disperse. And then she just says a little note at the end, though, Wolf had planned to use the aeroplane as one of her external sources from a very early stage in the writing of the novel. It was only in revising the full manuscript in October 1924 That she decided to portray it as skywriting. So with this addition, you get all these wonderful historical details that are just fascinating in and of themselves. But you also get Emory's analysis and commentary as she's synthesising all of this academic writing and this incredibly vivid and accessible way. I think this book is so extraordinary is just so
is beautifully. Beautiful, is a great companion to the book. It's published
by liver, right. We're not a publishers I've ever heard of him previously. They seem to have done annotated editions of children's books. And I think this is maybe the first adult novel that they've tackled, but it is just such a tribe. And so I just wonder, I think I'm on the other side of the fence to you. I actually really enjoyed this writing. I really responded to these characters. I love Wolf's own ambivalence about them in a way I'm not sure you're supposed to like the rest of Delray, the anchor character that might Oh, probably
no, no, not necessarily a very sympathetic character. I think she represents something that Virginia Woolf doesn't quite approve of. She's sacrifices a lot in her life, especially marrying Richard Dalloway. He's a bit of a simple, stable guy.
It's amazing how your perspectives changed. Because I first read this book, we did it very levels in school. So I know it from way back when and I think I had a very different experience reading it then and my sympathies were with different people then. All right, this time reading it around as a sort of older woman, I was very sympathetic towards poor old Richard, who I thought seemed very nice,
very nice, but maybe less exciting. Then. Sally Seaton, the real Forbidden Love and all of this.
But didn't you think? Doesn't she do the most wonderful job of evoking that sense of time and the passage of time, and the way that we hold people and memories in our thought? Did she not make you recall your own friends from years ago? Because what I was thinking about was not only the characters that she creates in this book, but my own experiences.
A word to your question, no, I didn't connect all that powerfully as you did to the book. I also feel if I can just come back to your addition. It's a beautiful addition, I love the annotation, I feel that a book shouldn't necessarily require that level of information in reference to be good. And, again, if I come back to Ulysses, a lot of people ask me, Oh, should I read Ulysses? It's too difficult. It's? And my answer is, look, just cruise through it, read it, don't worry about getting every last reference of the mythology of Ulysses and so on. Just read it, enjoy it, a lot of the prose is going to flow and see what you feel when you read it. I tried to do the same here. And it didn't quite connect to me in terms of another author that I think personally does a slightly better job of evoking memories and people and how they evolve and sensations that are brought back. Proust is for me, the gold standard of of that I really enjoyed In Search of Lost Time. It's a huge exercise is slightly longer than Mrs. Dalloway. But to me, it evoked more, and it helped my attention more. And there were more moments in proofs where I could point to and say, Yes, I understand what he's talking about. That's incredible. This is exactly how I feel when I'm thinking of an old friend or a situation in which I've been in bubbles up in my memory. I never got that aha moment here. It just wasn't connecting me to those moments that you seem to be describing around. Yes, this is how I feel about old friends or how I feel, time evolves and memory evolves. And I didn't get that Sorry, sorry, to all the Virginia Woolf fans and Mrs. Dalloway fans out there.
I think the only other thing to say about it is that it's quite an extraordinary examination in a way in quite a kind of frivolous context, the context of this society party that Teresa was giving, and she's worrying about the flowers. They're just worried about the food, and she's worrying about the guests. And yet at the same time, Wolf is exploring the idea of death of madness and death. You've got this traumatised ex soldier and his sweet wife who just doesn't know how to help him. He's seeing visions of past horrors, he's seeing his dead friend, he is hearing the babbling of birds speaking in classical languages, which I think is something that wolf herself experienced. And
so you've got that, and there's somewhat incompetent doctors. So you've got
that story on the one hand, and then you've got Clarissa herself meditating on life. And she is now at a point where her own daughter Elizabeth has grown up, she's 17. She's still at home, but there is a sense that she will soon be married and not on the closest care anymore. And I have to say, I really responded to that she's not so very much older than me, Clarissa Dalloway in this and I thought it was a really beautiful meditation on the changes that we go through in our lives. And even at the beginning of Emory's introduction, she writes, Clarissa considers what her life has been what any life must be. And then she quotes from the book The terror, the overwhelming incapacity, one's parents giving it into one's hands, this life, to be lived to the end, to be walked with serenely. There was in the depths of her heart and awful fear, and this love of life and this desire for experiences to really engage with the world and live and yet at the same time, somehow, Wolf seems to be saying, we can only really appreciate this if we also consider death. And you've got this death in the midst of this story. I mean, come on.
He tried to sell it to me. No, of course, I think the whole story of Septimus Smith is a very powerful one and obviously lends an element of tragedy to the story and also connects to Clarissa. Dalloway is story because she hears about it. his suicide leader at the party and as you say, meditate on that. And I just didn't really didn't know, I couldn't, I couldn't connect with it. I think it's interesting that we now know that it's PTSD. And they didn't really have word for it aside from Shell Shock. In those days, as I was reading it, actually one thought came to me and I wondered, actually, it was the whole of society and maybe specifically the writers like Virginia Woolf would have been a little bit shell shocked by World War One. And I think they have and, and you know, so that's why we're looking at this very weird, experimental, innovative structure. And I think they were a little bit impacted by it as well. So as I was coming here, a comparable book came into my mind, and I was wondering if you'd read it, and if you thought it was relevant, but during COVID, I read the massive novel ducks new report, which in a way connects to this is maybe an updated version of it, because it is the stream of consciousness of a housewife, who is zigging and zagging in real time in her head with a lot of commentary around many different things, including feminism and the role of family and so on. And I connected so much more to that book. So I don't want your listeners to feel like Oh, this guy's like no attention span and cannot follow a simple stream of consciousness. No, I followed 1000 pages of a board Ohio housewife and Duxton report and I thought it was brilliant. And I thought the way it all connected, despite a much more complicated structure and syntax and the fact that every single sentence is basically a grammatical clause that starts with the fact that blah, blah, blah. And I love that. So this book, you know, a lot of semi colons, a lot of going back and forth in different points of view, different ideas, ya know,
I have a copy of ducks Newburyport on my shelf, I started it. Ah, I read it. I thought, I think I can see that this is going to be a work of genius, but I just can't. I'm not ready. And so it sits unread. But everyone I know who has read it. He has a similar response to you. So I know it's worth it. But yeah, it's interesting. And I think Well, isn't that everybody? I know my book club. We tried to read the waves a few months ago, and I had to stop after about 15 pages. Why? Why was that? I just couldn't focus on it.
I had that with this one.
Looking online, someone called Ralph like you really struggle with it. You gave it one star. He says okay, I get it. The book was modernist, and its structure and style revolutionary in the subtle themes that explored and an elegy and its tone. But I could not like the book at all. Except for the viewports werewolf explored the PTSD of a war veteran. Everything else seems so boring, are respectable attempts to turn the readers deeply voyeuristic enough to focus on the psyche of her characters. But I was tired to keep moving from one character's consciousness to another. It was as if I was watching paint dry on a wall, loathed it. At some point, I was so irritated with the dullness. The book induced my right hand picked up the book to throw it out of the window. Luckily, my left hand intervened and consoled the other before slowly putting it down on the desk, so he did not get on with it. But happily for Mrs. Wolf who watches us they'll flee from the corner. Mrs. Dalloway has many fans. Violet wells gave it five stars writing, I've always had Mrs. Dalloway down as wolves third best book, but falling a fair way short of the waves and to the lighthouse. Therefore, I was surprised by just how much I loved and admired it this time around. It's probably her most popular novel, because it's more intimate, more personal and sprightly and warm than her other novels. What's most brilliant about it is the easy fluid way she makes each passing moment a ruffled reservoir of the inner life of her characters. Every moment alters the composition, the ebb and flow of memory and identity. And everything very subtly is experienced in relation to the inevitability of death. It's a deeply LJ novel, and one of the finest celebrations of the beauty to be gleaned in the passing moment I can think of I have to thank you because thanks to you and are slightly last minute scramble to read Mrs. Dalloway in time to be able to do this while you were here. I carved out some time yesterday and I took the book and I made sure that I was in a space where I wouldn't be disturbed by anyone. I switch my phone off. I took some snacks, and I just read it from cover to cover with all these wonderful little notes took me about five hours. I confess I had a short nap at one point
probably require
that does maybe say something, but I found it a completely extraordinary experience. I shot the cover at the end and sat there and I couldn't quite believe what I just experienced. and how alive I felt and I felt clever. I felt just like my mind had been slightly lifted. And I sort of felt like wow, this is great.
How long is this amazing literary experience then?
Thanks to you I had that experience. I'm so sorry that you did not I
had an experience like your listener, Ralph. I also did want to throw it out the window but thought in the spirit of this interview, I was gonna stick with it. All right,
you didn't get on with Mrs. Dalloway. But perhaps you can tell us about a book that touches on London in some way that you do love.
While I was reading Mrs. Dalloway and thinking of Virginia Woolf and seeing how London is such a character in the story, I was reminded of my great love for the poet TS Eliot and his poem, The Wasteland, which is Ziggy zaggy and full of references that one might or might not get, but it's a beautiful poem and London features prominently this unreal city, the fog is one of the passages where the Thames is compared to some ancient Greek mythological setting. And then connected to that I read a couple of years ago, a brilliant biography of TSL, yet called Young Elliot by Robert Crawford, which is his biography until right after the publication of the Wasteland, so it's essentially all his life what inspired him specific passages of the Wasteland, he refers back to specific passages of TS Eliot's life. Of course TSI is life in London features prominently. But the best news around all this is that there's not going to be a sequel to this book, apparently, it's going to come out I think, next month by this author, Otto Crawford, and I'm impatient to read it. And this will be focused on all his years in London because he has he was originally American. So the first book had a bit of American portion to it, but I think this will be really focused on his years in London. In terms of other books focused around London. I am currently reading very late to the party. Bring up the bodies by Hilary Mantel, mantle anto man mental,
she confuses the issue doesn't see because there's that book of hers book of essays, I think that has an awful title. It's called mental pieces.
Oh, gosh. No. So that if you squint, is connected to everything, it does take place a lot in London. It's not water in London, tutor London. And I'm absolutely loving it. I had really enjoyed Wolf Hall, which I read, I think about 10 years ago, actually. And I don't know what took me so long to get back into that party, because it is such a pleasure read. I just love the contemplative tone to it because it describes such a brutal sport of politics. And yet, it takes that tone of Thomas Cromwell, who really observes the development. And then another book that I read a few years back, I think is fundamentally London was white teeth by Zadie Smith, of course, which I think yes, feels today, maybe a little late 90s. But one has to remember how young she was and how new This was when she wrote it. I read it three years ago, and it's still felt very relevant, very powerful, didn't love the ending. It's about inter woven lives in North London across eras, especially there's an immigrant family from Bangladesh, and how they evolve in the setting of North London. And there's another character who connects with them in various ways. So it's essentially a series of vignettes almost of different characters in different times in London, different areas of London. I thought it was a really cool book that really showcased the best of London.
I think Zadie Smith is such a good follow on to think about when thinking about Virginia Woolf, in this English literary tradition, in a way quite academic tradition. And yet, as you say, some it's such a fresh voice.
I think that's a great point, actually, that you could trace a direct line between those two authors. And Zadie Smith is such an amazing author
tickling her essays. Have you read any of her essays?
I have not no one. Oh, are they? Yeah,
that's so good. There's a very slim little book called intimations that she wrote during lockdown, I think, that has, you know, seven or eight little things. You can read the whole thing in 20 minutes, but you shouldn't, you should put it somewhere like buy the kettle or somewhere and just every so often pick it up, and they're just so perfect. And I think again, when you read an essay by Virginia Woolf, it feels like you're sitting like you're on the bench next to me, it feels like you're just right next to her. And I think Smith has that same thing where you read her and it's like, she's right there. And I love that. I was going to recommend a book called open water, which is by a writer called Caleb Azuma Nelson, who is almost the contemporary equivalent. He's a sudden breakout debut novelist everyone got really excited about it won the Costa first novel award. And it is the story of two young Londoners both black one is a photographer, and one is a dancer. And it plays out across the different boroughs of London over one hot London Summer.
Oh, very relevant to Mrs. Dalloway.
It's a slightly longer time span, but the same sense of immediacy and the same vivid sense of the streets, the sounds, the music, and he weaves in much as wolf did, she's really interested in art and culture and the things that she was seeing going on all around her, and he's the same. And so there's even a Spotify playlist that you can access, which is created to go with this book, although I would argue you don't need it. And when I saw it, there was one it made me smile, because it's almost like you kind of hear it in your head through the references.
It looks amazing. Sounds amazing.
I think it would make a really interesting book club book, there was something about the pacing of it, that didn't quite work for me, I was thinking about how to sum up the prom with it. And I decided that for me, it was very put down trouble. Okay, it took me a long time to read it because I did keep putting it down because it doesn't have this strong plot dynamic to pull you through it is quite meandering and discursive. And yet there's something about the atmosphere of it and the quality of it. That is something that you do want to keep reading. So I think I love it. I think it's a must read for sure. If you are in the UK, and you get the Waterstones Special Edition, there is a short story at the back called pray, which I thought was perfection. When I read that I was like, Whoa, it had the electric energy that I slightly felt was missing from the novel. So I loved reading that. But anyway, I really recommend that one. It's such an interesting book. And I was also going to recommend a book called Light perpetual by Francis buffered, I do not talk about on Golden Hill, which was his first
do not either, so on Golden Hill was getting a lot of good tips here. Now you know how I pick my books. I
think we did an episode on on Golden Hill. It's a fantastic it's often described as rollicking. It's a brilliant historical novel set in 18th century New York was very attractive main character who's slightly mysterious you don't know where he's going riffing on Tom Jones and 18th century picturesque nobles, I believe. But yeah, this is so different from that. So when I started reading, like perpetual, it just took me a while to get over the fact that it was a very, very different book. And this one is inspired by something that he encountered in true life. He teaches literature at Goldsmiths University here in south London. And every day, he walked past a branch of supermarket chain called Iceland, which is on the site where there used to be a department store. And in 1944, there was a bomb that fell on this department store. And it was just this terrible tragedy. 168 people were killed, including several children. And so he saw this little plaque on the wall that commemorates this as he walked to work every day. And so he was reflecting on these lives cut short and decided to write a novel about five working class children, allowing them to survive and grow up, but not using real names, and transposing their stories to this inventive South London Borough of Beck's word which once you've read the book, you will feel like it's just there. It's so incredibly, beautifully done, even though it's a fictional place, but to any Londoner, it's it speaks volumes, because it feels real. It's one of these cities where like, as we sit here, we're in sort of Virginia Woolf, London. But there are layers, there are all these different layers. And you can see them all as you walk around. And so you've got this kind of very contemporary edge of Caleb Azuma Nelson's writing but then you can go back to Wolf's lair, you've got this this time period that's buckets talking about flat that what is that now? That's ambulance,
an ambulance perhaps.
The BBC would never make this mistake, they would, they would know that this is like they did back in the day.
So you get this lifetime, lived through these very different characters. And like Wolf, I think Spofford is really interested in character. And much like he has his a very fluid. One of the things I love the most about this is that they are not the same in their 20s as they are when you encounter them in their 70s. They change because of their life experiences because of their relationships because of the events because of lives lived and he captures that so beautifully. Can't talk about it without welling up because you know, at the end, you know, the reality is that these are lives that didn't get to be lived. And so it's extraordinarily poignant, but it's not a sad book. It's a wonderful life enhancing read. That is just so good.
I'd love to answer your sounds amazing.
And then finally, I'd be a bit less emotional about this one. I think it's a little bit more random, but it's called the Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. It's by Helen Hamp. That name must mean something.
I'm afraid it doesn't. I'm sorry.
She in the book well Old is very well known for a book she wrote called 84, Charing Cross Road, which Oh, sure, of course. Yeah. So she's the woman Hello. And she was a New Yorker. And so I had quite a strange relationship with that book. I had been curious about it, I'd never read it. And so I got some old second hand edition of it. And I really didn't like it. I thought, Oh, this woman is so annoying. She writes these aggressive, peremptory letters all the time demanding this demanding that and I was kind of completely astonished that this bookseller should be so patient with her and actually go to the trouble of trying to find her all these things. I really didn't get it at all. I read the whole thing, just feeling really bewildered. And in my audition, bundled in to the same book was this memoir called the Duchess of Bloomsbury street, and I was curious about her, so I started reading it. And really quickly, I absolutely fell in love, because she was just such an extraordinary, wonderful, completely eccentric, but utterly brilliant person. So it's
a biography of memoir.
So that's 84, Charing Cross Road is letters exchanged between her and this bookshop, real life ones. And then this follow on is her memoir of her time when thanks to the success of 84, Charing Cross Road, she came here to London on a sort of bit of a publishers publicity tool. And she got to tour around because she was obsessed with London. She loved London. And the reason is because she was obsessed with English literature. She was a sort of classicist, she loved Shakespeare. She loved John Dom, she loved the great English writers and poets. And she was very steeped in that. And she lived in New York. And she brought all that to her work, which she was quite successful as a screenwriter, you know, in the early days of television, that's what she used to do. And she was always trying to write Broadway plays. That was her thing that she did. And so in this memoir, she comes to London and she gets to travel around and finally she gets to actually go to the bookshop in Charing Cross Road. The blurb says when devoted anglophile Helen HAMP was invited to London for the English publication of 84 Charing Cross Road, in which she shares two decades of correspondence with Frank doll, a British bookseller who became a dear friend, she can hardly believe her luck. Frank is no longer alive but his widow and daughter, along with enthusiastic British fans from all walks of life embrace Helene as an honoured guest. Eager hosts, including a famous actress and a retired colonel sweet pair up in a whirlwind of plays and dinners, trips to Harrods and wild Jones to their favourite corners of the countryside. A New Yorker who isn't afraid to speak her mind, Helene HAMP delivers an outsider's funny yet fabulous portrayal of idiosyncratic Britain at its best. And whether she's walking across the Oxford University courtyard where John Donne used to tread visiting Windsor Castle or telling a British barman how to make a real American Latini Helene always wears her heart on her sleeve, the Duchess of Blooms retreat is not only a witty account of two different worlds colliding, but also a love letter to England and its literary heritage, and a celebration of the written words power to sustain us transporters and unite us. The New York Times said a charmer will beguile an hour of your time and put you in touch with mankind. And I agree. This is one of my secret gems books, because I feel like I discovered it. I've never heard of it. I've never heard anyone talking about it. I still feel I've never heard of it. And it's so good. I think you know, pick it up, give it a go. It's not a long read. You will be charmed by it, I'm sure But the crucial thing I think is that she makes you feel some of her own excitement and passion for you know, John Donne, who I think of as fairly dry oil, British poet oh my goodness, the flee. First of Lee sucks me and then it sucks you something about a flee anyway. But the thing is, she really brings all that to life and her passion for it. And so you put the book down and you then feel really excited about all of that. And here we are. You're here I am living here in London in the heart of it. Well, listeners after this, you may want to read Mrs. Galloway and decide for yourselves but I'm feel sure these other recommendations, we've come up with the book that you're going to love. Charles, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for reading for this. Thank you for coming and spending time in the noisiest Square in London.
I love the idea of talking in Tavistock Square next to Virginia Woolf. I thought it was actually brilliant. Thank you so much.
Ducks Newburyport, by the way, which we were mentioning there at one point is by a British author Lucy Elman. It's an 800 page novel that consists of a single long sentence with brief clauses that start with the phrase the fact that more than 19,000 times and which runs to over 1000 pages. Laura are you likely to be diving into that anytime soon?
You know I'm not
well, I'm not either. I just thought I'd check. You might want secretly reading it on the side
I would not rule out you deciding in six months that this was your next long reads following in the footsteps of Thomas Mann's the Magic Mountain and reluctantly pulling me behind you and I'll get 100 pages in and that will be that.
Okay, so you're out there in Vancouver but you know When you're remembering the London days, you're pining for the grimy streets of your other hometown. What's the book that you think of that takes you there?
Well, the first book that came to mind is a week in December by Sebastian Fox, which features a wide range of characters from different backgrounds. But I don't want to recommend that because I don't actually know if it was any good or if I just read it in the first six months of being in London. And so it gave me insight into the wide cast of characters you might find in London society at that time. I also suspect it's a bit dated. So that's the book that came to mind. But the book I'm going to recommend to Londoners but especially to non Londoners is Queenie by Candice cardi Williams. And this is a fantastic rom com other book, I would say in the spirit of Bridget Jones's Diary to a certain extent, but its heroine is Queenie Jenkins. She is a 25 year old Jamaican British woman living in London in Brixton. And it's about the ups and downs she is facing in her romantic life after a really tough breakup within her friendship group where things are slightly unravelling, and in her home life, and I do compare it to Bridget Jones's Diary, but it's much darker in terms of how it deals with mental health issues, and actually how mental health issues are understood and engaged with in Jamaican British culture. I really loved this book. Queenie is stomping around London. It reminded me a lot of my 20s in London, although we're very different people. And I think it's just fun atmospheric. It memorably begins with Queenie in stirrups at the doctor's having an examination. And I remember telling you because I have talked about this book before, I remember telling you that this immediately won me over and you, you were not convinced?
Yeah, even now, I'm thinking, oh, did you read it? Are you ready to reading it? No, I think it was one of those books where, you know, sometimes we do things on the pod, and you tell me about them. And I almost feel like that's great. I know about that book. Now I can move on. So I never got around to reading it.
It's wonderful. And I do think that in its huge commercial success, it rightly and belatedly alerted publishers, who unfortunately can be a bit white, pale and stale across I think the US, Canada and the UK. And then the UK, you also have class coming up in there. So it's very upper class. It alerted this backwards industry in some respects to the amazing commercial potential of these voices, and kind of forced them to start bringing in more diversity to their lists, which let's be clear, they should have been doing long, long ago, but I think Candice cardi Williams really broke down some barriers. And it's a great book. I feel like it's a love song to London in many ways.
Well, what do you think you're a could this be a new series? It seems a bit anomalous this one, because it's just the first one but maybe this could be the beginning of something that I do from now on people I meet off the internet to discuss books in parks. Would anyone tune in for more of those?
I hope so. I do think that you find interesting people and they find you
That's nearly it for this episode. Books mentioned we're in Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust ducks Newburyport by Lucy Ellman the waves by Virginia Woolf, young Elliot and Elliot after the wasteland by Robert Crawford, bring up the bodies by Hilary Mantel, white tea and intimations by Zadie Smith, open water by Caleb Azuma Nelson on Golden Hill and light perpetual by Francis buffered the Duchess of Bloomsbury Street and 84 Charing Cross Road by Helen ham a week in December by Sebastian folx and the Queenie by Candice Carty Williams if you enjoyed listening to Charles and want to hear more check out his Instagram account at Charles langit L A, N G. I IP for his regular book reviews, reading recommendations and author interviews. Coming up for us is our Women's Prize episode where we'll be discussing the winner the book of form and emptiness by Ruth Ozeki and also casting of a critical eyes across the also rounds. To help us out we're welcoming back pod friends, Elizabeth Morris of crib notes, and Sarah Oliver, Virginia Woolf. Bloomsbury London, do you have a book to recommend for us? We'd love to hear from you. And no matter when you listen to this show, you can comment anytime at the episode page over on our website. There you will find full show notes on all the books discussed here, a transcript and comments for comments that do show up in our inboxes so drop us a line we love to hear from you. Head to the book club review.co.uk where you'll also find our archive of other episodes to try between pods. You can follow us on Instagram at Book Club Review podcast on Twitter at book club our VW pod or drop us a line at book club review@gmail.com. If you'd like to support us you can do so by rating and reviewing the show subscribe and never miss an episode. And most importantly, please tell your friends I've never yet met any One who had heard of us which seems a shame because you never know they might love it so please help us spread the word but for now thanks for listening and happy reading
