Summer Reading: The Debrief, with Kate and Laura

The Book Club Review

Hosts Kate and Laura reflect on their summer reading highlights and disappointments, ranging from epic non-fiction to contemporary campus no

Key takeaways

Kate found Alex E. Harrow's 'The Everlasting' to be a beautifully executed time-loop novel despite initial author confusion.
Laura expressed significant dissatisfaction with Gwendolyn Riley's 'The Palm House', describing it as flat and unengaging.
Olivia Laing's 'The Silver Book' was highly praised by Kate for its evocative, painterly prose set in Venice.
Phil Chafee recommended Bret Easton Ellis's 'The Shards' as an engrossing and well-executed high school noir.
The hosts discussed the concept of 'dialogic criticism' as a way to describe their enthusiastic, personal approach to book reviewing.

Main topics

Summer reading reviews
Fantasy and time-loop narratives
Critique of contemporary literary fiction

Notable quotes

A more pluralistic criticism might put less stock in defending its choices and more in depicting its enjoyment.

Conclusion

The episode serves as both a personal reading diary and a helpful guid

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:03) Hello and welcome to the Book Club Review. I'm Kate and this is the podcast about book clubs and the books that get people talking. Speaker 2 (0:23) It's the end of summer. We're shaking the sand from our toes and looking back over the highs and lows of our summer reading. We've got a fantasy novel that turned out to be more of a Marmite read than I was expecting. Some critical thoughts on my pick from the book along list. The End of the Power Broker by Robert Caro, a book famously owned by many but read by few. I've made it through, but was it worth it? We've also got a pleasing book club find for Laura and two highly enjoyable camp estoppels. But wait, there's more, as we'll also be hearing from pod regular Phil Chafee, just back from his own travels and pulling out the highlights from his summer reading stacks. And while it's fun to look back, we're also getting ready to brush ourselves off and get into back-to-school mode for autumn reading, with the Booker shortlist soon to be announced. If you want all that, plus some extra book recommendations from all of us, you might like to know that there's an extended version of this episode over on Patreon. Check out patreon.com forward slash the book club review for all the benefits available there, from ad-free listening to extra shows and be a part of the amazing community of readers we have there. You'll find the link in the show notes. But if you're staying here, don't worry, we've got plenty to get through. All that coming up here on the book club review. Speaker 2 (1:41) Summer reading had me a blast. Speaker 3 (1:44) Summer reading happened so fast. I mean, that's promising. I'm not sure that was my experience of summer reading, but we can get to that. Speaker 2 (1:53) Well, I want to know. I want to know details. We had plans, didn't we? We had projects. We had some ambitions for our summer reading. I took away four library books with me. So actually, I didn't do what I... had really enjoyed doing in the past, which is going to the bookshop and buying one book and just reading that one book. Because actually, I then, before I went, got so excited by the idea of having time to read all these books that I've been meaning to get to for the longest time. And I was just like, you have this time. This time is coming up. This is your gift. Take these books with you. And so I had a very nice time picking out some books that I've been meaning to read and took them with me. And guess what? I read those books. All four of them. I mean, can I tell you a slightly worrying realization I had only in terms of, you know, my activities as a book podcaster, but I just realized when I'm not spending as much time as I spend editing, boy, oh boy, does that open up new vistas of reading time. Speaker 3 (2:51) So you need to have a conversation with AI about its editing capabilities. It certainly feels like it could be your friend. You know, Speaker 2 (2:58) people worry about AI, but I tell you what, at this current stage of development, it can't do the job that I can do personally. When it can, great. I'll hang up my hat. I'll go just go and have a nice time reading books. Speaker 3 (3:09) That's my experience too. What four books were they? I want to hear about your four books. Speaker 2 (3:13) Well, I actually had such a brilliant because I had two weeks of this beautiful untrammeled digital detox. loads of reading time. So I actually read a really pleasing stack of books and I finished the ongoing project that has been a big part of my life for the past three months, I guess, which is The Power Broker by Robert Caro, which we talked about a little bit. Speaker 3 (3:31) I feel like you're slightly Speaker 2 (3:32) on the fence about the whole Robert Caro 1,200 page transportation epic. Speaker 3 (3:38) No, I mean, I just don't read a lot of nonfiction. So I can't imagine I'd be sticking with it in the same way that you are. Speaker 2 (3:45) I mean, all I will say is I absolutely want to convene a special episode in appreciation of this book, which is just incredible. It has been one of the great reading experiences of my life. And I so loved. getting to really enjoy the way that Caro wraps up this story. And so, yeah, that will be coming soon. But yeah, so that was great. And then I just pulled out a few that really felt like particularly rewarding reads. So I've got The Everlasting by Alex Harrow, The Silver Book by Olivia Lange, and a book called Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, which is one of those books that I feel was a real it book a couple of years ago and just completely swept by me down the stream. And I was like, oh, I always meant to read that book. Campus novel. Sounds quite fun. I'll take that one with me. So I did. Speaker 3 (4:30) I feel like it got maybe got made into, yes, it did. It got made into a movie or a series with Rachel Weisz. And Speaker 2 (4:35) I feel like, is this the book that spawned, there was a whole series of books with covers where it was a woman basically like sort of pressing her face into a wall. I feel like this might have been the kind of the OG of that. Speaker 3 (4:49) How about you? Well, Kate, I am three quarters, two thirds of the way through The Everlasting. Hey! Speaker 2 (4:56) Which you do not know. Okay, well then let's talk about this because I am dying to talk about this with you. Speaker 3 (5:01) So Speaker 2 (5:02) this was one of those lovely moments where I was browsing the shelves at the Barbican Library, one of my very favourite places, and I just pulled this out because of the cover. I thought, that looks nice. Alex Harrow. And I had a vague idea. Now this is me being a complete idiot. But do you remember those books we read about the lesbian necromancers in space? Yep. I thought... Speaker 3 (5:21) How Speaker 2 (5:21) could I not, I guess. But do you remember the name of that author? Because I... Even now, again, now I've looked it up, I've forgotten again. Speaker 3 (5:27) Necromancers in Space book, Google. Gideon the Ninth by New Speaker 2 (5:32) Zealand writer Tamsin Muir. Tamsin Muir, right? So I had forgotten that because, and you know the confusion, is because the follow-on to that book is called Harrow the Ninth. And that's why when I saw Alex Harrow, anyway. Point is, because I'm an idiot, I thought this was the same author. And I was like, oh, I love those books. You know, this is interesting, kind of medieval time travel romp. I'm here for that. You know, I'll take it. So I took it with me, quite quickly realized it wasn't the same author, Tamsin Muir. It was someone completely different, but didn't stop me absolutely adoring this book. It's a really well executed time loop. novel where one of the particular pleasures is the care with which she's taken to incorporate the very book that you're reading and elements of the printed matter that you're enjoying as part of that time loop story. So you've got this young scholar. He is a medievalist. He's made a particular specialty of studying this one heroic, semi-mythical figure, but who was a real person called Una the Everlasting. And she was a knight of the realm. She was a champion of the queen. There are various legends attached to her. And it very much feels like the stories we know of something like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or those kind of Arthurian legends. It feels like it's tapping back into that really beautifully. Speaker 1 (6:52) And then... He gets called Speaker 2 (6:54) in to see the chancellor of the university who hands him this blank book and then ends up stabbing him with a penknife and his blood drips onto the book. And when this happens, he is transported back in time and he finds himself at this yew tree and on the other side of the tree is... Una the Everlasting. And then he ends up going with her on this quest. He is there to write her story, to document her story. And so you get this idea of this legend being written and that he is the person who is putting these deeds that will then be passed down through history into words. But there's a sort of twist which gradually you start to realise, which is that he has been here before. And the reason that Una the Everlasting seems such a familiar figure, and what's brilliant about her is that she's incredibly spiky and reluctant and not particularly nice to him, doesn't really want him hanging around. So there's this great, you know, it's that classic enemies to lovers trope, I suppose, a bit that's very enjoyable. Speaker 3 (7:52) And Speaker 2 (7:53) gradually you start to understand that the way he is telling her story, is affecting an outcome that will happen many years in the future. And so as the novel continues, gradually it becomes more complex as layer upon layer of the journey being repeated, but with new information being dropped in. And then it turns into a bit of a thriller, caper, this idea of stories and the way stories are told and the way that myths are made and that that can then be used by... a powerful politician to affect their use of power because power ultimately comes from people believing in something that you're telling them and putting you in a position of power, right? So it's sort of tapping into that. And what I loved about that was I thought that had real resonance to our contemporary world. And ultimately, the writing was absolutely beautiful. It was just so well done. I loved it. I love the tone of it. I love the dialogue. I love the way that the story unfolded. I loved the way it almost felt like reading a fairy tale, but it wasn't whimsical. The only other thing I had a slight sense of, I think only because my pleasure was such that it reminded me of another book where I had felt the same, was when I read Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. This is completely different to that. But there's something about the way this is so well done that made me think of that. But Speaker 3 (9:16) how about you? Speaker 2 (9:18) Did you Speaker 3 (9:19) like it as much as Speaker 2 (9:19) I did? Speaker 3 (9:20) So important context that Kate has not mentioned. Well, She has mentioned. You read this on a two-week holiday. You were in holiday mode. The key fact you have not mentioned is it's 750 pages long. No, it isn't. Are Speaker 2 (9:32) we reading Speaker 3 (9:32) the same book? Well, okay. It's 750 Speaker 2 (9:34) pages long on my cool book. Ah, you're reading it. Let's put it this way. Maybe listeners, the key thing is it is way too long. It's not. I am done Speaker 3 (9:43) with this Speaker 2 (9:43) book. It is. Speaker 3 (9:45) I do not like this book. What a shame. I found it tiresome. I found it obvious. I find her writing overwrought. You're supposed to believe these characters love each other, but you never ever see them fall in love or why they would fall Speaker 2 (9:57) in love. Speaker 3 (9:57) Because it's always happened in the past. But there's no reason they would fall in love. There's this evil woman who is, you know, pursuing them. She can do anything. She seems like she's God. She chases them through space and time. Meanwhile, Una, she's a knight who can kill anyone. And I'm like, just turn around and kill her. Like, I don't understand what the problem is here. Speaker 2 (10:18) There Speaker 3 (10:18) was, but I also don't think. time travels for me. Because there's just a moment in any time travel novel where I'm like, I don't understand how this makes sense. I'm not sure I care. And I really hate retreading the same story. And they go back to the beginning. I don't know, at least four times. Seven? Eight? How many times, Kate? Speaker 2 (10:40) Yeah, well, there's your time loop novel right there. Have you read any of those calculation of volume books? Speaker 3 (10:45) No. Speaker 2 (10:46) Where she's stuck in, actually, to be fair, she's not repeating. Is Speaker 3 (10:49) she? I can't. Speaker 2 (10:50) It's been a while since I've read them now. Is she repeating things? No. That's the thing about those books is she's not repeating, but she's stuck on the same day. I Speaker 3 (10:55) am not saying that my judgment is correct here by any means. I'm just saying that back in real world life, I was like, I do not have time to rehash this story with these characters. It is written like a fairy tale, but for me, that meant the characters sort of paper thin. I couldn't quite understand who they were, why they were doing these things. There's a lot of talk about them being cowardly and there's a lot of self-loathing. And I'm like, Okay. It was very impatient. Speaker 2 (11:20) Yeah. Speaker 3 (11:21) Kate looks slightly put out. Speaker 2 (11:23) Listeners know this podcast is all about debate. But Kate's like, but Laura, I thought you, I picked it up because you said I might love it. And I thought, I thought you would like this. I was like, oh, I can't wait Speaker 3 (11:32) for Laura to read this. I think she'll love this. So Speaker 2 (11:34) that's only why I'm only dismayed on that basis because I thought it would be a real treat for you. And oh no, you didn't like it. I also, I agree. I did think the characters are quite thin. I think that worked for me because it did tally with this idea of these characters not being real, right? They're figures of myth and legend. I didn't mind, particularly Una, that there's not a lot of psychological depth to her because in the context of the book, that made sense. And I also thought, and I think something that is a big thing to miss out on, is what I was saying at the beginning that I was so charmed by, the sense of the book as an object and the book itself being part of the story because there are these wonderful moments where... things are blacked out like they've been redacted because Speaker 3 (12:19) they have Speaker 2 (12:20) as you start to understand. And there's also a really great moment at the end where I can't remember, sort of two years away through, you learn about a code, a way of leaving messages using a certain punctuation-based code. It's got all these great writerly touches that I really enjoyed. And at the end, you get a bit of information in that code. So you have to then go back and look at the punctuation. So, you know, I was just delighted by all of this. You were entirely there for it. I was. I mean, you're absolutely right. I was reading it at leisure by the sea and I was very willing to be swept away. And just the last thing, at the very beginning, it's got this lovely epigram on the first page. Again and again, even though we know love's landscape and the little churchyard with its lamenting names and the terrible reticent gorge in which the others end, again and again the two of us walk out together under the ancient trees, lay ourselves down again and again among the flowers and look up into the sky. And that is from a