Dr Vee Kativhu and Susie Riddell

A Good Read

In this episode of A Good Read, hosts Harriett Gilbert, Susie Riddell, and Dr Vee Kativhu discuss three impactful novels. The conversation move

Key takeaways

• Susie Riddell highlights how Molly Keane's 'Loving and Giving' uses humor to mask devastating loss.
• Dr Vee Kativhu discusses the powerful first-person dialect in Abi Daré's 'The Girl with the Louding Voice'.

Main topics

• Literary recommendations
• Anglo-Irish history

Notable quotes

It's a brilliantly funny and devastating book.

Conclusion

A poignant exploration of how literature serves as a window into compl

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) This BBC podcast is supported by ads Speaker 2 (0:02) outside the UK. Speaker 4 (0:09) Welcome to the Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 3 (0:38) Hello, welcome to A Good Read, where we talk about some books we love. Sometimes all agree, sometimes not. Today I'm joined first by actor Susie Riddell, a.k.a. Tracy Horobin of The Archers. Besides a wide range of radio, TV and stage work, Susie also produces and hosts the award-winning podcast Limited Time Only, and she's currently touring the UK as part of The Archers Live at 75, a celebration of the programme's 75th anniversary. With her is Vee Kativu, a prominent activist for girls' education, a young leader at the United Nations and founder of the charity Empowered by Vee, which champions equitable access to education for girls and underrepresented young people worldwide. Susie Riddell, would you start us off? What are you recommending as a good read? Speaker 2 (1:27) I am recommending Molly Keane's Loving and Giving, which I love and I want to give it to you. It's a brilliantly funny and devastating book. It straddles the two world wars and it's set in a crumbling family estate in the final throes of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. The central character is Nicandra. And she is actually named after her father's favourite horse, which kind of tells you quite a lot there about her parents. And we first meet her at age eight, then at 16, then in her 20s and 30s. So you kind of go through her life. When she's eight, her mother leaves home never to return. That's not giving away too much because it happens quite early on. And the effect of that loss impacts everything I think that happens to Nicandra after that. The way she is unable to allow herself. pleasure, really. She denies herself constantly and making herself small rather than being an active character. She's really quite passive. I think it's a story of how complicated it is to be loved and to give love and the responsibility that parents have in giving love to their children. And I just adore it. I think it's brilliant. Speaker 3 (2:41) Well, Vika Tivu, Loving and Giving by Molly Keane. Did you adore it? Speaker 1 (2:46) Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, to be honest, and I was surprised at how much emotion it evoked out of me because I think we can all either identify with Nicandria or we know someone who is like her, who constantly wants to give so much in the hopes of return for even a small ounce of love. And whether you relate to it from you currently or you in the past or anyone who has people-pleasing tendencies, you just get frustrated and just hope. hope that she realises for herself. So I really enjoyed reading this because I didn't realise it would evoke so much from me and so much frustration, to say the least, is what I found. Frustrated with Speaker 3 (3:28) Nicandra? Speaker 1 (3:29) No, frustrated for her. Because I almost wished I could have been inside that book and just shaken her a little bit. But with each chapter, you're just more and more shocked at the ways that I guess she's willing to give, overly give, I could say. Speaker 3 (3:44) Love Molly Keane. She's got a very similar sort of nasty sense of humour to Muriel Spark, by which I mean that she equips her characters with flaws and vices and vulnerabilities and damage and then just sort of sets them going to see how they're going to cope. And Nicandra copes extremely badly. And in fact, although I laughed a lot, Nicandra as a child is heartbreaking. She's this overweight, clumsy kid. thundering around her parents' large estate, desperate to find somebody, somebody who'll love her, but almost more importantly, somebody to love. She tries to love her mother, who absolutely couldn't care less. Her father obviously couldn't care less either. The bantam hens don't want her love. The pigeons don't want her love. It's actually quite, I Speaker 2 (4:32) find quite heartbreaking. Oh, completely. And what I love about Keane's writing is that she's able to be in the same sentence. hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time. Seeing the world through Nekandra's eight-year-old eyes is devastating, isn't it? But because she's eight and she doesn't fully understand, I think that's where the humour Speaker 1 (4:54) comes in as well. The frustration definitely comes in her adult years when you wonder why... You know, she won't stand up for herself in that way. But it is heartbreak during her childhood because she believes love is attached to doing. The act of doing means you get back the love. And it's just it's a shame because that's not what happens. What Speaker 3 (5:14) I find very Molly Keane is this, that although. This poor child is very pitiable in many ways. Actually, because, and it's quite clear, because she is neglected and maltreated as a child, she also develops a very nasty streak herself. There's a young lad on her parents' estate, he's the son of a gatekeeper, who obviously has some kind of learning difficulty. And this is whom Dikandra takes everything out on. I mean, she tortures the child. So she's not only this... help this victim. It's more complicated than that. It Speaker 2 (5:49) is complicated. But the fact that she is only able to assert any kind of, I mean, it's not very nice authority, but it's authority of some kind, over the very weakest in her vicinity is Speaker 1 (6:03) really, it's grim, isn't it? It just shows you how complicated the human is, right? I think that's what this book does show you, that there are some complications where you're heartbroken for her, you're frustrated for her, but then at the same time, I was like, why are you doing that? Surely you'd show the most amount of kindness to him. Speaker 2 (6:20) I Speaker 1 (6:21) also love the Speaker 2 (6:22) images. We all have them. Things that happen a split second in time of something that you see or hear and it stays with you forever and can completely overshadow everything else that's gone before. The instant with seeing the gamekeeper, it kills it, it's about to kill a sheep. Just seeing the look in his eyes, it really, it sticks with her forever. And there's a very funny incident and the Aunt Tossie, who is the most wonderful character. I mean, I would just... Just the most fabulous, vivacious, crazy, I mean, almost absurd, I think, but totally believable character. Fortunately, she's leaning over the dinner table and one of her breasts pops out of the dress and she has to put it back in. But this sticks in Nicandra's mind as a sort of really obscene thing that's happened. But actually, it's very funny, but you can see exactly why it would be mortifying for this girl. I love Aunt Tossie too. Speaker 3 (7:17) You've said... Susie, that the novel spans the wars and definitely by the end, this large, wonderful Anglo-Irish home is crumbling. And Aunt Tossie has to live in a caravan in the grounds. But what is so interesting is that this isn't presented as a tragedy. On the contrary, this is Aunt Tossie's really happy. She's living in this tiny caravan. All she does is stay in bed. Within easy reach are the biscuits and the whiskey. Speaker 2 (7:44) Yes. Speaker 3 (7:45) Her life is just great. She doesn't mind at all. Yeah, she Speaker 2 (7:49) loves it. She absolutely loves it. Speaker 3 (7:50) But Nicandra sees it as a real Speaker 1 (7:52) kind Speaker 2