The Book Club Review – Details, episodes & analysis

Explore this year's Booker Prize shortlist on the latest episode of the Book Club Review! Hosts Kate and Laura and contributors Phil Chaffee and Martin Vovk discuss and debate the six shortlisted novels.

Listen in to hear our predictions, and then find out our reaction to the winner as we listen in to the live Booker Prize ceremony. We won't spoil the plots for you, just whet your appetite to read some or all of the books, all of which make for brilliant discussion.

Booklist

Paddy Clark, Ha, H, Ha by Roddy Doyle

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Flesh by David Szalay

All That Man Is by David Szalay

Starling House by Alex E. Harrow

Any Human Heart by William Boyd

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markowits

Carmageddon by Daniel Knowles

You Don't Have To Live Like This by Ben Markowits

Oh William by Elizabeth Strout

All Fours by Miranda July

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

Audition by Katie Kitamura

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Flashlight by Susan Choi

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood

Booker Longlist episode

Episode 181 of The Book Club Review

Links

A Good Read: Colm Toibin and Zadie Smith discuss Flesh

Martin's Eyes On the Prize blog

Browse Martin's archive and discover his extensive reviews (including The Women's Prize) here.

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In which Kate is joined by pod regular, journalist Phil Chaffee and Professor Elizabeth Eva Leach. Both read over 200 books a year, and their reading stacks this year have included the Booker longlist.

And so who better to consider the books that didn't make the final cut – but which are, notwithstanding, the 'best' books selected from over 150 submitted titles.

As we know, really great books can get overlooked for the shortlist. Consider Trust by Hernan Diaz, longlisted but not shortlisted, or, going further back Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and before that Penelope Fitzgerald's miraculous novel The Blue Flower. The fallibility of the judging process thus proven let's leave no stone unturned in considering this year's selection. Did the judges overlook a new favourite read?

The Booker Prize is announced on 10th November and we'll be recording an episode on the shortlist on the night. Coming soon!

Booklist

• Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga

• Seascraper by Benjamin Wood

• Endling by Maria Reva

• One Boat by Jonathan Buckley

• The Outline Trilogy by Rachel Cusk

• The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

• Universality by Natasha Brown

• The South by Tash Aw

• Love Forms by Claire Adam

• Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth

• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

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Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon is a novel that takes us back to ancient Syracuse, where war, art, and humanity collide. This gripping tale follows two down-on-their-luck potters who hatch an audacious plan to produce a performance of the works of Euripedes despite the fact that their actors are prisoners of war and their stage set a death camp in a marble pit. It's a story of resilience, friendship, and the power of art in the face of destruction, but did it make for a good book club book?

Regular book-club reporter Phil Chaffee dials in from New York to join Kate alongside keen readers and returning pod guests Emily Bohill and Sarah Oliver in London.

And find out Laura's thoughts at the end as we consider what makes Glorious Exploits such a standout debut, whether or not you need to know about Classical history to enjoy it, and why the audio version is such a particular joy. All this plus our recommendations for follow on reads inspired by Glorious Exploits.

Booklist

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower

The Years by Annie Ernaux

Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte

You Dreamed of Empires by Ávaro Enrigue

Metamorphoses by Ovid

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Circe by Madeleine Miller

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We look back over the ten books we read for bookclub in 2020. From Taffy Brodesser-Akner's snappy take on contemporary relationships with Fleishman is in Trouble, to The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa's carefully considered look at memory and the objects that bring meaning to our lives, we read and discussed a wide range of books that we're delighted to go back and revisit – like seeing old friends. But which will be our book club book of the year?

On the shortlist:

Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

That Glimpse of Truth, 100 of the Finest Short Stories Ever Written

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

Lanny by Max Porter

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan

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What's it like to set up your own publishing business? What does it take to succeed? And how do you find the right books? We talk to Kate Macdonald of Handheld Press, who gives us some behind-the-scenes insights into running a small, independent publishers, and her mission to seek out forgotten fiction and authors who need to be rediscovered.

Business as Usual by Jane Oliver and Anne Stafford

Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald

The Exile Waiting by Vonda N. McIntyre

Women's Weird, Melissa Edmundson (ed.)

British Weird, James Machin (ed.)

Kingdoms of Elfin by Silvia Townsend Warner

After the Death Of Ellen Keldberg by Eddie Thomas Petersen

The Caravaners, by Elizabeth von Arnim

www.handheldpress.co.uk

For more detailed show notes and our archive of over 80 episodes go to thebookclubreview.co.uk. If you'd like to see what we're up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. And if you're not already, why not subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what we do please do take a moment to rate and review the show, it helps other listeners find us.

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We discuss The Memory Police, a haunting dystopian novel that explores questions of power, trauma and state surveillance written by Yoko Ogawa, one of Japan's leading contemporary novelists.

Set on an unnamed island, the narrator of The Memory Police describes how every so often something in the inhabitants' lives will disappear. Birds, roses, books, one by one these things vanish overnight and the next day people wake up to find they have lost the memory of them. The Memory Police then arrive to enforce the disappearance, rounding up and destroying all evidence of the disappeared thing. They are also on the hunt for those few members of the population who have the ability to retain their memories, something hard to disguise. These people too must disappear, but what happens to them? The narrator tries to save her friend, R, by hiding him in a concealed room. But as more and more things disappear it starts to become unclear what she is saving him for.

An uncomfortable read that provoked mixed feelings among Laura's book group, but which, on reflection, we think could have been one of the best book club books we have ever done. Listen in to hear more, why Yoko Ogawa is the Georgette Heyer of Japan, and how Laura is about to become a disappeared thing herself. Plus our recommendations for your next book club read.

Books mentioned on the show: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Never Let Me Go and The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and The Happy Reader magazine.

Find full show notes, plus our archive of over 80 episodes, book reviews and articles on our new website: thebookclubreview.co.uk

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Wondering which of the Booker shortlisted novels to read? Look no further, we've got the rundown of all of them in our Booker Prize special. We're joined by previous podcast guests Phil Chaffee and Sarah Oliver to discuss the six titles. Due to Covid we weren't able to be in the same room, but that didn't hold us back. It's book club, so whether we loved them or loathed them, you'll get to hear what we really thought. Plus we play a game of 'Snog, Marry, Avoid' with Booker books, and offer up our favourite reads from past years.

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The perfect solution when your book club wants to read a classic, but no-one quite has the energy for the 19th-century greats, Bonjour Tristesse clocks in at just over 100 pages and was written by Françoise Sagan when she was only a teenager. It became an instant bestseller in France, and subsequently around the world, and has remained a hugely popular read ever since. What did Kate's book club make of it? Did they find it fabulous or frivolous? Listen in to find out. We also have some book recommendations for your next read or book club discussion. Check out our new website for extended show notes including some extra links: www.thebookclubreview.co.uk

Book recommendations

Cheri and Claudine at School by Colette

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Au Revoir, Tristesse by Viv Groskop

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Our bookshelf episodes are the ones where we get to let our hair down and talk about the things we're reading outside of our book clubs, the books that we get to pick and choose. So listen in as Kate is bewitched by the new Susanna Clarke novel Piranesi, charmed by Shirley Jackson's memoir of raising her children in Life Among the Savages, and has a guilty confession to make about To Calais in Ordinary Time by James Meek. In Laura's stack are supernatural thriller Himself by Jess Kidd, Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb and The Observations by Jane Harris. Not to mention some guilty pleasure reading of Georgette Heyer and Alison Croggon's fantasy series of Pellinor novels. It's a packed episode, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did making it.

For detailed notes on this episode, and over 70 other episodes of book club discussions, interviews and features you can find us at our new website: www.thebookclubreview.co.uk. Drop us a line there and say hello, we'd love to hear from you. Tell us what books are keeping you turning the pages right now?

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Identical twin sisters Stella and Desiree Vignes grow up together in a small, southern black community where the inhabitants have noteably light skin. When they run away at the age sixteen they make very different choices. One will marry and then return to her hometown, the other will live her life passing for white, knowing she can never go back. What will happen, though, when the next generation of their families connects? Race, identity, family, love, belonging, all thoughtfully woven through a compulsive page-turner that had both Laura and Kate's book clubs talking... We may just have found the perfect book club book. Did we have anything bad to say about it? Listen in to find out. Booklist: A Drop of Patience by William Melvin Kelley, Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo and Passing by Nella Larsen Upcoming shows will be on Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan and The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. Why not read along with us. Drop us a line and let us know what you think, and we can weave your comments into the show.

If you'd like to see what we're up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. If you like what we do please do take a moment to rate, review and subscribe to us on iTunes, it helps other listeners find us and means you'll never miss an episode.

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