Speaker 1: There's kind of a little ritual I've evolved around listening
Speaker 1: to read this. I'll be sitting on the bench in
Speaker 1: my kitchen looking out over two hundred acres of wetlands,
Speaker 1: and in the distance there is this line of trees.
Speaker 1: They're so far away I can't tell what they are.
Speaker 1: But every morning I'll get up, I'll look out towards
Speaker 1: these trees, and I will kind of immediately physically realign
Speaker 1: stand properly just by looking at them.
Speaker 2: Writing is It's clear a resolutely solitary pursuit. Different writers
Speaker 2: approach it differently. They have different interactions with peers and mentors,
Speaker 2: and different ideas about kinship with other writers, But by
Speaker 2: and large, their rituals, their approaches when deep in the
Speaker 2: writing bunker are theirs alone, and I'm not going to lie.
Speaker 2: There is something very gratifying about discovering that for some writers,
Speaker 2: read this has become part of that ritual, That hearing
Speaker 2: other writers talk through their own thinking forms a basis
Speaker 2: for a sense of creative connection, That listening to these
Speaker 2: conversations creates a framework and a community around what they're doing.
Speaker 2: For Australian author Josephine Rowe, it was our episode with
Speaker 2: the brilliant, idiosyncratic Gerald Manain the quarter her attention.
Speaker 1: There's a point where he's talking about the mind and
Speaker 1: consciousness and individuality and where that sort of meets infinity,
Speaker 1: and he describes this barren stretch of land, and in
Speaker 1: the distance there is this line of trees. I was like,
Speaker 1: looking out over pretty much what he was describing. It
Speaker 1: just felt this kind of beautiful echo.
Speaker 3: The mind. Now, some people say there's a super ego
Speaker 3: and unconscious. I have never found any evidence for that
Speaker 3: view of the mind. My view of the mind is
Speaker 3: rather like the view that I can see around me
Speaker 3: all day in the western womroom, mostly level landscape with
Speaker 3: a line of trees in the distance. I think that's
Speaker 3: what my mind really is. The next christion is what's
Speaker 3: behind a line of trees. Well, if you go through
Speaker 3: the trees, you're in another sort of beer landscape, and
Speaker 3: ten kilometers further over is another line of trees.
Speaker 2: Two authors, two lines of trees in the middle distance,
Speaker 2: Two conversations about creativity and imagination and how we might
Speaker 2: conceive of our place in things. Josephine Rowe hadn't yet
Speaker 2: turned thirty when she published her first collection of short stories,
Speaker 2: Tarcuta Wake. It's a gorgeous book, delicate glimpses of lives
Speaker 2: and fragments of human experience, all about those things that
Speaker 2: are left behind, souvenirs and scars and shadows of prejudice.
Speaker 2: Her next book was a novel, A Loving, Faithful Animal.
Speaker 2: It was long listed for the Miles Franklin Award in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. The New York Times described her language in
Speaker 2: the book as gorgeous and precise. Her latest book, Little World,
Speaker 2: is another slender volume, but, as with all of rose writing,
Speaker 2: a deeper, denser exploration of ideas than its modest page
Speaker 2: count might suggest. At the center of the book is
Speaker 2: a Saint, a young girl of unknown age whose body
Speaker 2: remains incorruptible and whose mind remains conscious. Stretching across continents
Speaker 2: and eerrors from the nineteen fifties to the present day,
Speaker 2: we encounter the lives the Saint touches, from the retired
Speaker 2: engineer who unwittingly becomes her custodian, to a woman driving
Speaker 2: across the nullible plane in the mid nineteen seventies with
Speaker 2: a pair of young lovers. The whole thing ends in
Speaker 2: contemporary Victoria with the COVID lockdowns, casting a shadow across
Speaker 2: all proceedings. Josephine Rowe is a deeply thoughtful, sharply intelligent
Speaker 2: writer whose books suggests an author acutely aware of the
Speaker 2: traditions into w she's writing, while at the same time
Speaker 2: resolutely carving out her own imaginary landscape. I'm Michael Williams,
Speaker 2: and this is Read. This a show about the books
Speaker 2: we love and the stories behind them.
Speaker 1: I didn't intend to write this book necessarily. I had
Speaker 1: to write this book so that I could get back
Speaker 1: to writing the book that I was meant to be writing.
Speaker 1: And I think at this particular time in my life,
Speaker 1: where it was sort of late thirties, I felt like
Speaker 1: i'd sort of maybe most people, most writers feel this.
Speaker 1: Between books, you just completely drop off the map. Unless
Speaker 1: your book is a raging success. You kind of dip
Speaker 1: in and out of obscurity. And I think that's really
Speaker 1: fertile and important. So that, plus being kind of late
Speaker 1: thirties and I was very transient, kind of moving around
Speaker 1: a lot. Nobody knew where I was living, and I
Speaker 1: was kind of like, nobody's looking quick, nobody's looking You
Speaker 1: can whatever you want, and I didn't actually there. There
Speaker 1: were central images in this book that were just so
Speaker 1: resident that I had to had to kind of follow
Speaker 1: through them. But I didn't expect to be writing about
Speaker 1: leprosy colonies in Naru and Panama and termite mounds and
Speaker 1: you know, and all of these other wild places I
Speaker 1: was taken to, and I did not expect it necessarily
Speaker 1: to be published. And that wasn't even the point.
Speaker 2: It's nice to me that it wasn't the point. And
Speaker 2: it's nice to me that you're liberated by the idea
Speaker 2: that no one's watching, so you're allowed, almost as a
Speaker 2: permission thing, you're allowed to do it. Does that suggest
Speaker 2: that this kind of writing, when you're doing it, feels
Speaker 2: like an indulgence.
Speaker 1: Which is not to say that it was easy. It
Speaker 1: took a long time. I tend to put things down
Speaker 1: for a while, put them in the third draw that
Speaker 1: let them kind of mature a bit. And I'm a
Speaker 1: kind of ruthless condenser. So it's, you know, a very
Speaker 1: short novel, but it feels a bit. I hope it
Speaker 1: feels a bit like it's eaten a larger novel, because
Speaker 1: that's pretty much the breadth of it. In terms of writing.
Speaker 1: Maybe on some level, writing always feels like an indulgence.
Speaker 1: Is an amazing thing to be able to kind of
Speaker 1: make any sort of livelihood out of it, something that
Speaker 1: feels so necessary to you as a form of expression,
Speaker 1: to be both the means and the end.
Speaker 2: So that relationship between that idea of necessity and the
Speaker 2: idea of doubt. Do you remember for you the moment
Speaker 2: if there was such a moment when you develop the
Speaker 2: muscle of self belief where you're like, this is worth pursuing,
Speaker 2: this is a thing that I am going to do,
Speaker 2: regardless of the doubt.
Speaker 1: I guess I started writing quite young, and started publishing
Speaker 1: quite young, and before that there was music. I was
Speaker 1: in that a lot in my teens in early twenties
Speaker 1: and was writing as well, And there was a point
Speaker 1: where I suppose I felt well, partly, I was surrounded
Speaker 1: by brilliant musicians who really spoke music as a first language,
Speaker 1: and I did not have that background. And perhaps it's
Speaker 1: easier to feel conviction being a self taught inverted commas
Speaker 1: writer than it is to feel conviction being a self
Speaker 1: taught musician. I don't know if that's true. That was
Speaker 1: true of me maybe or maybe it was just in
Speaker 1: terms of the people I was in relation to and
Speaker 1: making music with, who I saw as being far, far
Speaker 1: more talented and natural in that than I was. I
Speaker 1: do love music, and I, you know, seeing and whittle
Speaker 1: a lot, but I don't write music anymore. There was
Speaker 1: a point where music sort of took the backseat, and
Speaker 1: then it got out of the car altogether and I
Speaker 1: just really focused on words.
Speaker 2: So then I that perhaps amongst musicians you felt it
Speaker 2: wasn't your native tongue or your native form in the
Speaker 2: same way it was for some of the people you
Speaker 2: revered when you made that move from music to the
Speaker 2: written word. Were there traditions you found you wanted to
Speaker 2: belong to. Were their writers you found yourself as a
Speaker 2: young writer trying to emulate before you found your own voice.
Speaker 1: Oh, who do I feel? Is like deep in the fabric,
Speaker 1: you know, when somebody asks your favorite book and you
Speaker 1: kind of like reach back to the favorite books that
Speaker 1: have been your favorite books for twenty twenty five years.
Speaker 1: But coming through Slaughter by Michael and Dutchey is a
Speaker 1: big one for me. And again that's sort of that
Speaker 1: conviction to start a book with Dolphin Sonar to write
Speaker 1: about this life, you know, early nineteen hundreds, corner player
Speaker 1: in your Orleans that you have a handful of facts
Speaker 1: about and then just to that kind of like wonderful, fragmentary,
Speaker 1: illuminative narrative that he builds from that. And that was
Speaker 1: a book that I read with like, oh, you can
Speaker 1: do anything, you just have to.
Speaker 2: I can so see that in your work sincerely, and
Speaker 2: in that thing of One of the feelings that I
Speaker 2: most am seeking out is that feeling you get of
Speaker 2: I didn't know you could do that. You know, that
Speaker 2: idea that there's somehow a license, somehow what's happening with
Speaker 2: the form, what's happening with the sentence on the line
Speaker 2: is confounding my expectations. And the older I git the
Speaker 2: more I read, the rarer it is to get that
Speaker 2: thing of the surprise of the possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's writing it its best as well
Speaker 1: when you kind of come to that junctuary like well,
Speaker 1: I didn't know I could do that? Am I allowed
Speaker 1: to do that? And you have to sort of turn
Speaker 1: off that critic that is kind of policing what is permissible.
Speaker 1: Maybe sometimes I think that that term to give permission
Speaker 1: or to take permission is kind of problematic because if
Speaker 1: I think for myself, if I was waiting for permission,
Speaker 1: I would never have become a writer. I just don't
Speaker 1: come from that sort of background. I was raised by libraries.
Speaker 1: I would be nowhere without libraries. I grew up in
Speaker 1: the outer Eastern suburbs in a commission house. There were
Speaker 1: not a lot of books in the house. There was
Speaker 1: not a lot of money for books, but there was,
Speaker 1: you know, the Country Gully Library where I was taking
Speaker 1: out Leonard Cohen poems from the age of about you know,
Speaker 1: thirteen or something like that. And then that sort of
Speaker 1: trajectory to twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two being on
Speaker 1: a research fellowship at the New York Public Library, which
Speaker 1: is I used to get tiery walking into the New
Speaker 1: York Public Library, just the idea this is for everyone,
Speaker 1: and that it's just a great equalizer.
Speaker 2: Are you a linear writer? I mean you described this
Speaker 2: as a small book that has swallowed a big book.
Speaker 2: Do you do you write and then cut down? Do
Speaker 2: you write in fragments and then work out how they
Speaker 2: fit together? Is it a combination?
Speaker 1: I think anybody who was at all interested in efficiency
Speaker 1: would be horrified by the way that I write. I
Speaker 1: write longhand a lot. I think there's just part of
Speaker 1: my brain that completely shuts down if I'm looking at
Speaker 1: a laptop, So I try to leave it out of
Speaker 1: the process for as long as possible. But you know,
Speaker 1: I do think that all of the best thoughts happened
Speaker 1: on the back of an envelope or a piece of
Speaker 1: scrap paper hotel stationary Gold. Literally think there was a
Speaker 1: hotel notebook from a while ago that it's felt like
Speaker 1: every every time I wrote something onto that particular notebook,
Speaker 1: it was like a little Midas kind of like it
Speaker 1: turned into it bloomed into an idea. Actually, a lot
Speaker 1: of little world was kind of written on that particular
Speaker 1: hotel station.
Speaker 2: Are you superstitious? Yeah, very sorry. I was just picking
Speaker 2: up the vibe from several of your answers.
Speaker 1: I think I inherited that from my mother.
Speaker 2: Was she superstious?
Speaker 1: She was very superstitious. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Did she apply that superstition to kind of the way
Speaker 2: she lived her life or did it constrain the way
Speaker 2: she lived her life?
Speaker 1: M I would say it did constrain in some ways.
Speaker 1: But she did have a certain sort of spookiness about
Speaker 1: her as well in terms of like knowing what you
Speaker 1: were thinking. Maybe that's just do you.
Speaker 2: Think writers have to have that slight spookiness about them,
Speaker 2: like that idea that there are forces beyond their control
Speaker 2: that they are trying to harness, rather than.
Speaker 1: I've had that conversation with Rodney Hall actually about these
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of coincidences that you are dealt
Speaker 1: and then you can choose to do something with or not,
Speaker 1: but you don't really have a choice. You have to
Speaker 1: kind of follow them through. I don't know if spookiness
Speaker 1: affects writers anymore so than anybody else. Maybe writers are
Speaker 1: just the people who are kind of like, I'll take
Speaker 1: an idea wherever I can get I'll take direction wherever
Speaker 1: I can get it. Let's let's go with this.
Speaker 4: If you do.
Speaker 2: Hear it though from Randers all the time is oh,
Speaker 2: that character developed a life of their own, and I
Speaker 2: was surprised to see what happened on the page. And
Speaker 2: you know, I looked up out of a few saint
Speaker 2: and I had twenty thousand words or whatever. That idea
Speaker 2: is the idea that creativity and belief in the book
Speaker 2: have to rely on a kind of more things in
Speaker 2: Heaven and Earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well then I think with most with most
Speaker 1: art forms, I think an artist would say, you know,
Speaker 1: the best experience of making anything is that feeling of
Speaker 1: being a conduit, that you're not entirely at the wheel,
Speaker 1: or you're at the wheel, but you're not you know,
Speaker 1: you're not necessarily in charge.
Speaker 2: When we come back, Josephine shares how her relationship with
Speaker 2: saints began and the one thing she can't live without.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: The very first image, and it doesn't spoil it because
Speaker 1: it is the first image. That's the image that opens
Speaker 1: the book, in the first couple of pages, is a
Speaker 1: man standing in the Australian desert waiting to receive the
Speaker 1: body of a child saint, or who he has been
Speaker 1: told as a child saint, delivered by horsefloat somewhere in
Speaker 1: like mid twentieth century. That's what I had. I'm quite
Speaker 1: a visual writer, and that was the image that found
Speaker 1: me sometime in twenty eighteen. I actually like flipped back
Speaker 1: to my notebooks because I can't exactly pass how we
Speaker 1: get from there to Naru and leprosy. And I think
Speaker 1: I was thinking a lot about about Naru, about what
Speaker 1: would make a nation amenable to how Australia has used
Speaker 1: it to. Even the term offshore processing is such a bloodless, cruel,
Speaker 1: dehumanizing term. But what makes a nation so desperate for
Speaker 1: revenue that that is the industry that they are open to.
Speaker 1: And so I got very interested in Nauru's past in
Speaker 1: terms of phosphate mining and I kind of deep dived
Speaker 1: on that, and in terms of those unintentional echoes. I
Speaker 1: went to you know, Broom and north of Broom for
Speaker 1: the first time, and that landscape just absolutely fused with
Speaker 1: this with this opening image I can't remember which came first,
Speaker 1: and even the kind of visual of termite mounds and
Speaker 1: how those recall the pinnacles of limestone that are left
Speaker 1: dover from gouging for a phosphate and what top side
Speaker 1: looks like on Naru. Now that was not an intentional
Speaker 1: visual echo, but that is kind of I think aspects
Speaker 1: of that reoccurred all through the book. Things that I
Speaker 1: didn't set out to kind of mirror or to recall,
Speaker 1: They just happened that way. So that was the opening image.
Speaker 1: I wrote the first section of the book, which is
Speaker 1: said in the nineteen fifties in the Kimberle and kind
Speaker 1: of reaches back to Naru in about the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: kind of leading up to the Second World War. And
Speaker 1: I wrote the final part of the book, which is
Speaker 1: set in an unnamed central Victorian town at the outset
Speaker 1: of the coronavirus, and I had an idea of what
Speaker 1: the sort of middle section would be, but it did
Speaker 1: take a long time to write, partly because that middle section,
Speaker 1: which is a bit of a extended fever dream or
Speaker 1: screenwriting friend told me the term vast desert, like the
Speaker 1: second act being a vast desert, and it's from the
Speaker 1: perspective of the driver and she has not slept for
Speaker 1: a long time, and Mattils is the name of the
Speaker 1: protagonist in that section of the book. She is pretty
Speaker 1: much where I channeled all of my own insomnia or
Speaker 1: I wanted to do something with that particular state of
Speaker 1: mind where you're so tired that it really does affect
Speaker 1: your perception and it feels like the edges of things
Speaker 1: kind of start to break down. And that is like
Speaker 1: a really great state to be reading Spinosa in, because
Speaker 1: you're just kind of like, oh, there's no there's no
Speaker 1: mere's there's no youth. There's not even us, there's just this.
Speaker 2: I've got to say, I'm very impressed with the idea
Speaker 2: that insomnia might be a generative state. That's never been
Speaker 2: my experience. Tell me, what role does emotion play for
Speaker 2: you when you're right?
Speaker 1: I think I'm somebody whose emotions are quite close to
Speaker 1: the surface in lots of ways, or at least it
Speaker 1: feels that way, to the extent that maybe I kind
Speaker 1: of I'm careful of what I let show with the surfa.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I don't know, maybe we're getting into the weirds
Speaker 1: a bit here that I think I'm I'm often trying
Speaker 1: to kind of find the root cause or the root
Speaker 1: causes for yeah, for feeling.
Speaker 2: So what about then, through the lens of someone like
Speaker 2: Matilda and a conception of a character like that giving
Speaker 2: her self knowledge, giving her the language to describe what
Speaker 2: she's grappling with? Yes, how much do you want to
Speaker 2: give that over to your character? And how much do
Speaker 2: you except that as unspoken or at least assumed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, I mean. I think something that I hope
Speaker 1: I am getting better at is allowing characters to not
Speaker 1: be articulate, to not have infinite self knowledge. I think
Speaker 1: there's an awful lot that Matild can't bear to look
Speaker 1: at or even name about her experience, you know, violences,
Speaker 1: harms that she has simply just completely disconnected from as
Speaker 1: a survival mechanism. And I think what were allowed through
Speaker 1: the sort of semi omniscient view of this other character
Speaker 1: who's who i'll refer to as a maybe saint, is
Speaker 1: kind of insight around those things Matilda hides from herself.
Speaker 1: We're back in her past somewhere.
Speaker 2: Tell me about that may be saint, and tell me
Speaker 2: about your relationship with saints as an idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that the first intimation of a saint
Speaker 1: that was interesting to me was in Lennard Cohen's Beautiful Losers.
Speaker 1: I read it at fifteen, and I tried to reread
Speaker 1: it recently, and it is I had to stop after
Speaker 1: a certain point, But there's a saint in that book
Speaker 1: that I, you know, later in life. I was really
Speaker 1: interested in it. It's an Caterra de cock witha who's
Speaker 1: an indigenous saint or a First Nation saint. She was
Speaker 1: called the Lily of the Mohawks, and I was just
Speaker 1: kind of curious and kind of repulsed about what goes
Speaker 1: into sainthood, I suppose, and in this case it was
Speaker 1: you know, on death she turned white, which is troubling
Speaker 1: in it south, and that all her small scars disappeared
Speaker 1: as well. I was like, oh, okay, and it's like,
Speaker 1: for whose sake is that? It's forgiveness, it's atonement for
Speaker 1: you know, for things that maybe oughtn't be given. And
Speaker 1: I guess traveling through Europe and kind of walking into
Speaker 1: churches cathedrals where where saints will often be just laid
Speaker 1: out and displayed. In the case of this, I'm going
Speaker 1: to call her a maybe saint. Her body is not
Speaker 1: broken down, so she's kind of like arrested between this
Speaker 1: world and whatever comes after, but her consciousness is still intact.
Speaker 1: I think I had an idea of that when I
Speaker 1: sat out writing the book, but at the start I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that she was going to be such a
Speaker 1: strong voice in the book. Again, it was kind of like, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know I could do that. Okay,
Speaker 1: oh wait, we go. I actually I was kind of
Speaker 1: ashamed of myself and afterwards because I like, well, of
Speaker 1: course she has like she has to have autonomy of
Speaker 1: some kind, even if it's like rage, even if it's interior,
Speaker 1: because otherwise she's a girl in a box that stands
Speaker 1: for what other people have decided she stands for and represents.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I became integral that she have a
Speaker 1: person who had a history.
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense. That is not if
Speaker 2: it's not an offensive parallel, that's not inconsistent with the way.
Speaker 2: In interviews in the past, you talked about the responsibility
Speaker 2: of depicting animals in your work, that if they were
Speaker 2: only there as a symbol of something rather than as
Speaker 2: a as a living being, that somehow you're doing them
Speaker 2: an injustice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I think maybe it just comes down to
Speaker 1: I'm not especially interested in human beings as a superior species,
Speaker 1: and definitely no kind of person as being superior to another,
Speaker 1: and maybe no narrative or story as being we have
Speaker 1: like in a attachment to particular narrative arcs of people
Speaker 1: who overcome, and that you know, people are strong. We
Speaker 1: consider characters strong or their lives meaningful only if they
Speaker 1: sort of tick these boxes and if there is a
Speaker 1: positive change, and otherwise is the story not worth telling?
Speaker 1: Is the person less vulnerable if they don't overcome, if
Speaker 1: they just endure. I think I've always been interested in
Speaker 1: telling those stories from the margins. But even that word
Speaker 1: is wrong, because it's like the word remote, remote to where,
Speaker 1: marginal to whom? Yeah, you know, they're the center of
Speaker 1: their own life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that resisting the idea of the kind of
Speaker 2: dominant or normal narrative. Is that resistance an active act
Speaker 2: for you when you're writ or do you find that
Speaker 2: the sense of kind of creative fulfillment organically comes from
Speaker 2: approaching a story slant wise?
Speaker 1: Probably a mix of both. I think I see myself
Speaker 1: as being kind of an outsider in lots of ways. Again,
Speaker 1: maybe that's typical of a lot of writers and big readers.
Speaker 1: That's sort of why we show up in the first place.
Speaker 1: They were kind of that's why you meet the best
Speaker 1: people in libraries.
Speaker 2: It's funny you said earlier that sense of between books,
Speaker 2: the possibility, even the likelihood of falling off the map
Speaker 2: when you're between books. You're a peripatetic writer, and I'm
Speaker 2: curious about the effect that's had on your writing, on
Speaker 2: your creative process, on the different lines of trees that
Speaker 2: you're looking at at when you're right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good question. I like the one
Speaker 1: about the trees. I do think the trees and the
Speaker 1: landscape that you're in do shape your perception. That's part
Speaker 1: of me that really sort of graves grounding actually of
Speaker 1: one kind or another. You know, on my birth certificate
Speaker 1: the address of my mother is a caravan park in
Speaker 1: Queensland and the address of my father is a different
Speaker 1: caravan park in Queensland. And I think that is like
Speaker 1: a self fulfilling prophecy. I mean, that's like the wise
Speaker 1: in the house. And I don't I don't make the rules.
Speaker 1: I'm just laying it's pretty much set out.
Speaker 4: You wash up.
Speaker 2: Where the best public library is, that's all about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think a library card is probably that's
Speaker 1: probably the most valuable thing.
Speaker 2: I respect that commitment to Grammar passport, library card and
Speaker 2: the passport. What more do you made?
Speaker 1: Not much good parashues?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'll loert. Well, Look, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: joining us today. I really I love this book and
Speaker 2: it's a trait to change.
Speaker 1: You so much, Michael, really really honored to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Josephine Rose new book, Little World is available at all
Speaker 2: Good bookstores.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Before we go, I wanted to tell you what else
Speaker 2: I've been reading this week and back at the end
Speaker 2: of last year when we visited Fitzroy Pool, one of
Speaker 2: the people poolside was reading an advance copy of a
Speaker 2: debut Australian novel that was due out this year. That
Speaker 2: novel was called Ritual by Chloe Elizabeth Wilson, who's a
Speaker 2: Melbourne writer, and it's a lot of fun It's a
Speaker 2: darkly comic novel that basically takes at central conceit. What
Speaker 2: if one of those wellness brands that functions more or
Speaker 2: less like a cult was actually a cult. It's funny,
Speaker 2: it's dark, it's very kind of relatable and very familiar
Speaker 2: and sharp satire. Such a nice thing to discover. Chloe
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Wilson's Ritual well worth a read. You can find
Speaker 2: it and all the others we mentioned at your favorite
Speaker 2: independent bookstore. That's it for this week's show. If you
Speaker 2: enjoyed it, please tell your friends and rate and review us.
Speaker 2: It helps a lot. Next week I'm reading this I'm
Speaker 2: joined by Jessica Stanley. Her new novel, Consider Yourself Kissed,
Speaker 2: is one that's going to capture your attention and maybe
Speaker 2: even your heart. Read This is a Swartz Media production
Speaker 2: made possible by the generous support of ar Group. The
Speaker 2: show is produced and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing
Speaker 2: by Travis Evans and original compositions by Zalton Fetcher. Posey
Speaker 2: Makake edits our transcripts. Thanks for listening, See you next week.