On Campus: Ella’s first Sally Rooney, Booker Prizes and an exclusive reading of May We Feed The King by Rebecca Perry

STACK with Jake and Ella

Hosts Jake and Ella curate a 'stack' of campus-set novels to celebrate the back-to-school season. The episode traverses multiple genres, ran

Key takeaways

• Luke Kennard's 'Black Bag' explores the psychological transition from hostility to friendship through a social experiment in anonymity.
• Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History' is discussed as a foundational text for the Dark Academia genre despite its dense prose.

Main topics

• Campus-set literature
• Dark Academia

Notable quotes

Read what you love, not what you think you should.

Conclusion

The episode provides a diverse reading guide for those interested in t

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:04) Hello and welcome to Stack, the books podcast that's here to help you fall in love and stay in love with reading. I'm Ella, I work in book publishing. I'm Speaker 3 (0:11) Jake, I'm a writer and a podcast producer. In every episode we'll be building a themed stack of books that we love and that we know you will too. Speaker 2 (0:18) This week's theme is campus set novels inspired by the September back to school energy. But before we get into that, Jake, how was your week? Speaker 3 (0:25) Ella, we've reached quite a big milestone in our friendship. Speaker 2 (0:28) Is it going to be like some horrible length of time that makes you feel really old? No, Speaker 3 (0:31) because we don't do numbers on the pod. We're now Strava friends. Speaker 2 (0:34) Yeah, Strava. Were we not before? That's so crazy. No, Speaker 3 (0:36) we weren't. And you came up with my suggestion. I thought, yeah, we're there. Speaker 2 (0:39) Yeah, Speaker 3 (0:40) good Speaker 2 (0:40) suggestion. So I finished my couch to 5K. Thanks to my coach, Denise Lewis, who always tells me I'm doing brilliantly. You're running big distances though, pal. I saw your 10K. Speaker 3 (0:51) I'm only doing about one run a week. I'm really enjoying it because I'm getting faster. I'm getting quite into the stats. Speaker 2 (0:55) Do you ever do a park run? Speaker 3 (0:57) Yeah, I love a park run. Because you've got stats. Because of the stats. A park run actually is one of the nicest things you can do in your community, I think. Speaker 2 (1:05) And run by volunteers, which always feels very wholesome. Speaker 3 (1:08) You know, I do need to do more doing the volunteering. Oh, everyone says that, Speaker 2 (1:11) Jake. Speaker 3 (1:11) I know, I'm sure they do. I'm sure they find it really annoying. I've Speaker 2 (1:13) been Speaker 3 (1:13) saying it for Speaker 2 (1:14) years. Speaker 3 (1:14) How was your week? Speaker 2 (1:15) My week was good. I have been reading May We Feed the King. Have you heard of this from the booker? long listing. I Speaker 3 (1:22) think we mentioned it the other day. So Speaker 2 (1:24) it won the Waterstones debut prize, which was also won by your friend and mine in memoriam, Alice Wynn. What I Speaker 3 (1:31) sanded. Speaker 2 (1:32) Which we loved. So I think that made me interested in it. Speaker 3 (1:34) The cover makes me think it'd be so long. Speaker 2 (1:37) Yeah, I remember. I remember. No, it's not stupid. But do you remember on the shelf help where you're like, this book's a really big one. I haven't read it yet. May we feed the king. Wrong. Speaker 3 (1:47) Everyone says it's amazing. Speaker 2 (1:49) Yeah, it was really good. The book opens and closes in the present day with an unnamed museum curator. And their job is to dress the private quarters of an old palace. And by dress, I guess stage. So set the scene so that people can see what their life might have been like. So there's replica food, furniture, fabrics, and they make the room look frozen in time. And then the bulk of the novel is then 700 years in the past. told in third person, and it's about this obscure, unnamed monarch who is rushed onto the throne after his two older brothers die. So he's this complete reluctant ruler that never expected to be in power, has no appetite for it at all. And so this is the king that she imagines in the scene that she is setting, and then at the end we come back to her. So I don't think I've read anything like it, really. I'm not always comfortable with ambiguity in novels. But actually, a lot of the book is about the ambiguity of history and you can never really know the past and the curator is aware of that. But then we, the reader, get to see what happened for some of that period. The food description, I loved. I really love descriptions of food in books, but apparently I love descriptions of replica food. Speaker 3 (3:04) That's just like plasticky stuff. Speaker 2 (3:06) Yeah, but there's a whole section where she just talks about all the different like food, replica food that is available on this replica food website and what she thinks of each one and what the eggs are like in this one and how these pairs are sublime. I actually emailed. grantor the publisher for this book and asked them if we could play that as an extract at the end of this episode and they very kindly have sent us a video of Rebecca Perry the author reading that extract about replica food that I love so much stay tuned to the end and you can hear that extract that Speaker 3 (3:39) kind of Speaker 2 (3:40) a Speaker 3 (3:40) long description of replica food doesn't sound very plotty which is normally something you need so Speaker 2 (3:45) true is Speaker 3 (3:47) it plotty Speaker 2 (3:48) I think particularly the King section is quite plotty, but it's like a snapshot. So for that short section, it's like you have been thrown into the middle of a plot of historical fiction, but then you're pulled out of it before you have resolution or before the story is told. And then you just have to be okay with that as a reader. And the curator has to be okay with that. It felt pacey, even as it's not just about plot. If I had to rate it. You will like it. Speaker 3 (4:14) I've also read a booker. A long-listed book, which is on my stack. So that'll be coming up. Speaker 2 (4:20) Oh my gosh, wow, look at us, we're Booker people. Booker Speaker 1 (4:22) people Speaker 3 (4:22) now. So all of our books today are set in and around University College campus, which does have a long tradition in literature. Why do you think that is such a fertile ground for good books? Speaker 2 (4:34) There is definitely an element of the follies of youth. I look back at my time at uni and I think, God, I really was still forming who I was as a person. And I think... that particular state of being allows people to make maybe mistakes that you wouldn't find believable if the characters were a bit older. You have this amazing optimism and energy that perhaps fades slightly. Also then there's maybe similar to weddings that element of the campus set is all set within this kind of little world that is somehow safe from the outside. or could be a danger because you might need that outside help. What do you think? Speaker 3 (5:14) Yeah, it's almost like its own little microcosm. They're quite often like coming of age stories because you've got these new freedoms of your age and the things you can do and the way you can live and who you live with. You also have the fact that you are still children. Like when I see people being driven to uni or people talk about their being 18, I think you are such a child. Speaker 2 (5:32) Yeah, that's so true. But there is something about an campus set novel. Most people are living away from home for the first time and having to navigate new people and everyone's desperate to make friends and find someone to live with and it feels so high stakes. Speaker 3 (5:51) Sometimes what I don't like about a campus university story is that it comes from a place of feeling like this is a common experience, everyone's done this and actually so many people don't go to uni and it's not a universal experience and it's a distinct experience which is why it's interesting to write about because there's quite a lot that I... find difficult with quite traditionally campus novels which is why what I've picked is quite a few more recent novels I think are quite different. I hate the stuffiness of academia. I don't love teacher professor romance. I just think that's an abuse of power. Yeah, it's wrong. It's wrong. Black and white is wrong. And I also don't really like when it's like we both work together at uni. It's quite often the reality that you're not just doing whatever you want. You actually have to pay for it. I think that's often. Speaker 2 (6:33) That's so true. Speaker 3 (6:34) Never finished a literature. You Speaker 2 (6:36) don't often get people working behind the bar, do you? And I, and this might get us some hate. I really don't like the novel Stoner. Do you know it? Speaker 3 (6:46) I think I read that a while ago and I couldn't. remember much about it which is quite telling I Speaker 2 (6:54) can't remember much about it either so it's great for the podcast to talk about but Speaker 1 (6:59) I Speaker 2 (7:02) would say what you said about the stuffiness of academia I think that is something I really didn't enjoy about that book I just like I just found it very tedious to be in that world but then one of my choices does have elements of that and I did like it so I'm an enigma Before we get into our favourite campus novels, we wanted to just give a huge shout out to our sponsor this week, Quercus, who have published a book that we think our listeners will love. Speaker 3 (7:22) It's called Fellow Creatures and it has it all. An elite London drama school, a toxic female friendship and a twist to obsess over. Speaker 2 (7:30) Yeah, it's the kind of novel that you just have to talk about, which makes it perfect for book clubs. Fellow Creatures by Emma Louther is available now wherever you get your books. Speaker 3 (7:40) So my first book for this week's stack is Black Bag by Luke Kennard. This is my Booker Prize long-listed one. This book is strange. Speaker 2 (7:48) Okay. Speaker 3 (7:49) I do really recommend it. People always do that thing online where they are like, the Booker Prize long list is out, I'm going to read them all. There's so many books. Speaker 2 (7:58) Yeah, I'm not. I just said that with hopes, not me. No, Speaker 3 (8:00) you certainly aren't. But I normally try a smattering of the ones that really is for me a signifier of what I might want to read. Speaker 2 (8:08) Yeah, and this one was at the top of your list? Speaker 3 (8:11) This one was top of my list. And I read this and what this book is about is a university lecturer who hires an unnamed narrator to take part in this social experiment where he will come to the university and sit in on lectures and seminars in a big head-to-toe kind of leathery black bag, Speaker 2 (8:30) only Speaker 3 (8:31) with his little feet poking out the bottom. Speaker 2 (8:33) Is he wearing shoes? Speaker 3 (8:34) I think often he's not wearing shoes. Okay. It's an experiment in people's response to that existing in their space. Speaker 2 (8:42) Yeah. As Speaker 3 (8:43) a kind of hook, you are just like, what? What the hell? Speaker 2 (8:47) What the hell? And Speaker 3 (8:49) then you get to the end of the book. And this is based on a real life social experiment that's happened. Stop Speaker 2 (8:54) it! In Speaker 3 (8:56) 1967, the original black bag experiment was conducted by Charles Goetzinger at Oregon State University. What it found was that the student's attitude to the black bag went from hostility to curiosity and then finally to friendship with the black bag. And it's about exposure to something that you initially find off-putting. Speaker 2 (9:18) Do you, just to pause on that, do you think that is the trajectory you would have had? If somebody did this in your English lectures at uni. Hostility. It would have given Speaker 3 (9:28) me something to be interested in. I'll tell you that. Speaker 2 (9:31) Yeah. I would have spent a lot of time watching that black bag. It would have maybe stopped Speaker 3 (9:37) me falling asleep in that seminar I fell asleep in. He says at one point, the narrator says,