Speaker 1: I've realized recently that I want to read water before
Speaker 1: I learned how to read a book.
Speaker 2: That's Dylan Hardcastle, writer and self described water baby. Growing up,
Speaker 2: Dylan spend every free moment at the beach with surfboard
Speaker 2: in tow. In fact, up until the age of sixteen,
Speaker 2: they thought they would become a professional surfer, and while
Speaker 2: that career may not have come to pass, Dylan's ability
Speaker 2: to read water has guided all of their work, from
Speaker 2: their debut ya book Breathing Underwater to their twenty twenty
Speaker 2: follow up Below Deck. Now Dylan is back with a
Speaker 2: new book and I loved it. There's water a sure,
Speaker 2: and characters who most achieve a sense of peace when
Speaker 2: swimming in Sydney's ocean pools. But it's a richly elemental
Speaker 2: book in surprising ways too. It's called a Language of limbs,
Speaker 2: and it's about selfhood, about the choices we make as
Speaker 2: we work at who we are and how to be
Speaker 2: in the world. In alternating chapters spanning several decades, the
Speaker 2: book follows two women trying to make sense of their
Speaker 2: sexualities and their lives. As the book opens their teenagers
Speaker 2: growing up in suburban Newcastle, they're referred to simply as
Speaker 2: Limb one and Limb TWI, and each of them is
Speaker 2: faced with an awareness of desire for their best friend.
Speaker 2: Two first kisses, two adolescent heartaches, two paths. There's this
Speaker 2: tradition of LGBTIQA plus coming of age stories that came
Speaker 2: to mind when reading this extremely accomplished novel. It had
Speaker 2: echoes of Timothy Conograve's classic memoir Holding the Man in
Speaker 2: the ways it laid out the vulnerabilities and pleasures of
Speaker 2: first love. In its account of the rise of aids
Speaker 2: and its horrifying toll, there are shades of Rebecca Mackay's
Speaker 2: Wonderful Book for Great Believers, and the descriptions of Urani
Speaker 2: in the House Qui sharehouse that is at once sanctuary
Speaker 2: and gathering point for community, reminded me of Armistead Morphin's
Speaker 2: indelible twenty eight Barbary Lane. But a language of limbs,
Speaker 2: while suffused in a cultural, political literary tradition, is still
Speaker 2: very much its own story. Through tragedy and heartache as
Speaker 2: well as moments of deep joy. The two characters' lives
Speaker 2: run parallel, they almost intersect and overlap, but they always
Speaker 2: offer this sense of possibility of hope and of love,
Speaker 2: all of which is to say it made me cry.
Speaker 2: So I thought I should talk with its author, non
Speaker 2: professional surfer Dylan Hardcastle. I'm Michael Williams, and this is
Speaker 2: Read This the show about the books we love and
Speaker 2: the stories behind them. The first thing I'd love it
Speaker 2: if you talk about a bit is Douglas and explain
Speaker 2: who he was and what he meant to you and
Speaker 2: what kind of human being he was, because from everything
Speaker 2: I've read and no, he seems like a pretty important
Speaker 2: guiding light to this book and the energy behind it.
Speaker 2: So I'd love to hear you talk about him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, what an honor. It was such an
Speaker 1: honor to love and be loved by him. He was
Speaker 1: my grandfather's older brother, who was twelve years older than
Speaker 1: my grandfather, and Doug passed away to over two months
Speaker 1: ago now, and he was ninety seven, And for as
Speaker 1: long as I can remember, I always knew that he
Speaker 1: was gay, and then he was a gay man, but
Speaker 1: we'd never spoken about that, the two of us together.
Speaker 1: It was just something that I was sort of always
Speaker 1: aware of, and I think it was he was often
Speaker 1: not invited to family events and I wasn't really until
Speaker 1: I was an adult myself that I actually started to
Speaker 1: have this relationship with him. But I remember, like the
Speaker 1: few times that he was family gatherings when I was
Speaker 1: a child, he'd just sort of make eyes with me
Speaker 1: across the room and give me this like really knowing smile,
Speaker 1: and I just thought he was the most like sort
Speaker 1: of magical being because he would just tell these stories
Speaker 1: and he's so theatrical and so camp and flamboyant, and
Speaker 1: I was so drawn to him. And then I think
Speaker 1: when I was like nine or ten, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be I told him I wanted to be an artist,
Speaker 1: and he told me that the role of an artist
Speaker 1: is to make things glow. And around that time, he
Speaker 1: also started saying that we were simpatico. And I had
Speaker 1: no idea what that word meant, and it wasn't until
Speaker 1: I was much older, I think that I like, it
Speaker 1: was always this word that he was saying, and then
Speaker 1: I just looked up the meaning one day and it's,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you're in sync and you're like
Speaker 1: two things as combatible. But you know, that was well
Speaker 1: before he knew I was queer, and it was probably
Speaker 1: two years ago that I was talking about him, and
Speaker 1: a friend was like, you should actually just talk to
Speaker 1: him about your queerness, and so he never worries hearing aids.
Speaker 1: So I wrote down on this piece of paper I
Speaker 1: am gay, and then I put it across the table
Speaker 1: to him.
Speaker 3: And he was drinking his.
Speaker 1: Glass of red wine in the garden and he would
Speaker 1: always be in his garden. He credited his plants to
Speaker 1: him living so long because he would take care of them.
Speaker 1: And he picked up his wineglass and he said, my darling,
Speaker 1: it is an honor and a privilege to love and
Speaker 1: to witness you. And then he broke into song and
Speaker 1: he sang the entirety of you are so beautiful to me.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the actual is that the name
Speaker 1: of the actual song.
Speaker 2: Honestly, it's immediately recognizable from that refrain.
Speaker 1: Yeah ninety five at the time sings to start to finish,
Speaker 1: and then he says at the end and anyway, I've
Speaker 1: always known, and so I think, yeah, it was like
Speaker 1: he saw that in me well before I did. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that was part of that beauty of saying
Speaker 1: that were simpatico when I was just this little child
Speaker 1: running around and yeah, he really recognized this in me
Speaker 1: well before I did.
Speaker 2: It's such a beautiful story and that idea of sympatico.
Speaker 2: I really wanted to draw that out because in the
Speaker 2: context of this book it's really important. One of your
Speaker 2: protagonists grapples with at a number of different points with
Speaker 2: the inadequacy of words to describe quite deep feelings, quite
Speaker 2: deep connections, and one of them is, you know, this
Speaker 2: concept of found family, and she settles on the idea
Speaker 2: of skin as being the word to capture both kin
Speaker 2: and solidarity and found family and sympatico the thing that
Speaker 2: when people are your people, I guess totally.
Speaker 1: And because Doug and I, he was adopted by my
Speaker 1: great grandmother, which is its own whole, just incredible story.
Speaker 1: I think it speaks to these because Doug and I
Speaker 1: aren't technically related, and yet I found a home in him,
Speaker 1: and I think us being sympaticorn sort of having this
Speaker 1: like long soul love dance with each other. Across my
Speaker 1: whole lifetime, I've known him, I've learned how a person
Speaker 1: can become a home.
Speaker 2: I think it's so important, not just in the context
Speaker 2: of this book, but also in the genre of queer
Speaker 2: love stories. And queer coming of age stories in particular,
Speaker 2: is that relationship between previous generations and their experience and
Speaker 2: the generations that follow that idea of the legacy and
Speaker 2: the debt to the legacy of people who have loved
Speaker 2: and struggled and felt great joy before to make it
Speaker 2: possible for future generations to do that. And I'm interested
Speaker 2: the books set in a time where that journey predates
Speaker 2: your own. You know, you are telling a story that's
Speaker 2: come before your own, and I'm curious about whether you
Speaker 2: felt anxiety, your reticence about that, and how you found
Speaker 2: your way into feeling like you could own those stories
Speaker 2: and retell them.
Speaker 3: Hmm, I mean I did.
Speaker 1: I felt a sense of responsibility and an anxiety around this.
Speaker 1: I felt more anxious about this book coming out than
Speaker 1: any book I've ever written. And I think that was, yeah,
Speaker 1: largely because it was written in a time I haven't
Speaker 1: lived through and was speaking to a community that i've
Speaker 1: you know, have inherited in some way, but wasn't technically
Speaker 1: a part of. And you know, I have friends that
Speaker 1: lived through that time who have shared stories with me,
Speaker 1: and that also, I felt so much responsibility to do
Speaker 1: that time justice and to do those stories and those
Speaker 1: very real lives justice. I think the other thing that
Speaker 1: I've been thinking a lot about was so I had
Speaker 1: a conversation with a friend who we were talking about
Speaker 1: the power of naming ourselves like Dylan's my chosen name
Speaker 1: and it means born of the sea or toward the tide,
Speaker 1: And we were talking about this idea of inheritance and
Speaker 1: you know, because it's not like you're born into this
Speaker 1: family where these stories are passed down to you. You know,
Speaker 1: in many ways, you have to seek it out and
Speaker 1: find this and find these stories. And yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that was the biggest thing with this book was the
Speaker 1: research just led me into my own understanding of myself
Speaker 1: in such a beautiful and profound way because I slowly,
Speaker 1: over time came to understand that people's bodies were literally
Speaker 1: broken open and that that history. That's amounted to me
Speaker 1: being able to write this book as an openly career
Speaker 1: and transperson and you know the fact that I even
Speaker 1: have pride in that just understanding, Yeah, how much has
Speaker 1: been sacrificed. And I had someone asked me a question
Speaker 1: recently whether I sort of became no style jic when
Speaker 1: writing this book. For this time that my friends who
Speaker 1: are seventy eight ers or who you know lived through
Speaker 1: that time describe just how turbo the parties were and
Speaker 1: how they have openly been like, yeah, we had way
Speaker 1: more fun. But I think there was this real the
Speaker 1: joy in this book. I think you know that were
Speaker 1: it just comes at a cost, and parties were so
Speaker 1: high stakes because and the dances were this sacred thing
Speaker 1: and I missed in many ways still at but were
Speaker 1: sacred because it was very much life or death. And yeah,
Speaker 1: those oppositions sitting alongside each other.
Speaker 3: I've really felt that.
Speaker 1: And I don't think I actually felt jealous when I
Speaker 1: was writing this book of that time. I just felt
Speaker 1: such deep, deep admiration for the people who may have
Speaker 1: made my life possible.
Speaker 2: That sense of debt to that time comes through really clearly.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting, whether it's depicting the kind of rise
Speaker 2: of AIDS or the first might, you know, these moments
Speaker 2: that are so kind of historically resonant and so kind
Speaker 2: of embedded with trauma. One of the things I admire
Speaker 2: in this book is the way in which you get
Speaker 2: that dance between trauma and joy quite deliberately. I think
Speaker 2: the question of whether it's worth it. Whether something is
Speaker 2: worth the pain is one that's infused all the way
Speaker 2: through this book.
Speaker 1: One of the pieces of sort of material that I
Speaker 1: watched first was a TV series Got It's a Sin,
Speaker 1: and that I was just so blown away by that
Speaker 1: dance that you were talking about. I'd never come across
Speaker 1: anything where I felt so like the blows of that
Speaker 1: heartache because I loved the characters so much, and I
Speaker 1: think also, you know, being a part of the LGBTQ
Speaker 1: A plus community, those two things come rub up against
Speaker 1: each other. Joan loss rub up against each other all
Speaker 1: the time. I think with this book in particular, I
Speaker 1: really wanted to anchor myself in the body and yeah,
Speaker 1: to sort of speak from that place. I guess that
Speaker 1: was also what I felt in terms of this sense
Speaker 1: of responsibility anchoring the story and the body, and was
Speaker 1: a way for me to sort of like really get
Speaker 1: into that time and speak to that time that I
Speaker 1: hadn't lived through, but also to sort of play with
Speaker 1: that dance of joy and heartache.
Speaker 2: When I saw It's a Same mentioned in the acknowledgments,
Speaker 2: it made perfect sense to me. It was an earlier
Speaker 2: work that I thought of when I was reading this book,
Speaker 2: and I think you achieve many similar things to that show.
Speaker 2: But tell me about the relationship between historical trauma, collective trauma,
Speaker 2: societal trauma, and some of the stuff that you visit
Speaker 2: upon your characters as individuals and characters in a book,
Speaker 2: because one of the hard things that seems to me
Speaker 2: must be working out how much your characters can bear
Speaker 2: individually in the context of narrative, in the context of
Speaker 2: who they are, and what that right balance is to
Speaker 2: have them prevail, to have them not be broken by it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the first thing that comes to mind is, I
Speaker 1: guess as I've over the last five to ten years
Speaker 1: lean into my own transness, the world has become increasingly
Speaker 1: more hostile, the more aligned I have felt on the inside,
Speaker 1: and that the ways that my friends and my chosen
Speaker 1: family have been this sort of refuge or this soothing
Speaker 1: balm where no matter what kind of hostility I have
Speaker 1: experienced as a more visibly trans person, not only is
Speaker 1: it like actual hostility that I've sort of, I guess experienced,
Speaker 1: but seeing the ways trans people, for exams are either
Speaker 1: pathologized or you know, considered perverted in a threat to
Speaker 1: women and children, those headlines I think slowly seep in
Speaker 1: to the point where if something sort of goes wrong
Speaker 1: in my personal life, I've often found that my skin
Speaker 1: is thinner and that those headlines suddenly rip straight through,
Speaker 1: and I very much believe them in moments of.
Speaker 3: Yet, like in sort.
Speaker 1: Of lower low moments, and my friends and my chosen
Speaker 1: family have been the kind of thing to boss to
Speaker 1: me from the inside out. And I think that was, yeah,
Speaker 1: what I kind of wanted to show with this book
Speaker 1: that in Uranian House, Limb One's life is outwardly much harder.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think people talk about how what
Speaker 1: doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and I think what
Speaker 1: doesn't kill you sometimes just makes you really tired. And
Speaker 1: her life is outwardly much harder than Limb Too's, where
Speaker 1: doors for Limb Too are constantly opening, you know, she
Speaker 1: gets to finish school, gets the scholarship to university, she's
Speaker 1: able to buy a house, can be public with her partner, etc.
Speaker 3: Etc.
Speaker 1: And yet inwardly she's sort of eaten up by that repression.
Speaker 1: Whereas in the one story, the main character outwardly her
Speaker 1: life is so much harder, but she bolstered from the
Speaker 1: inside and that house functions in a very similar way
Speaker 1: to my chosen family and my own life, where the
Speaker 1: end is this like shedding of not just your clothes.
Speaker 1: I think there's a line where it's like not just
Speaker 1: the fabric, but the skin too, And it's just that
Speaker 1: total like ability to be naked and vulnerable in front
Speaker 1: of these people and to have them hold that. And
Speaker 1: I think that that was how I felt comfortable. I
Speaker 1: think writing some of those blows of like deep tragedy
Speaker 1: existing in these people's lives because the love that they
Speaker 1: have for each other, like is how they survive that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really love life, very thoughtful answer. I
Speaker 2: did have a moment where I wondered whether with lim
Speaker 2: one and limb to the person who gets to define
Speaker 2: themselves and identify themselves and honestly live themselves becomes the artist,
Speaker 2: and the person who represses those things becomes the publisher editor.
Speaker 2: And I might have been reading too much into that,
Speaker 2: but I say that fits with most publisher editors I
Speaker 2: know about being able to manage in the world a
Speaker 2: particular way, but not to tell their own story. Am
Speaker 2: I reading too much into that?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's so funny. I actually never thought about.
Speaker 2: That, it got like I could one hundred percent be
Speaker 2: projecting on that, but I was just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: the artist needs to be able to be honest about
Speaker 2: their own voice.
Speaker 1: I actually think there is some truth in that, because
Speaker 1: they is this part very early on that's actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: I loved that you have picked up on that, because
Speaker 1: I think I've actually forgotten. There's this part very early
Speaker 1: on in Limbtoo's story where she's in the library all
Speaker 1: the time at school, and yeah, there's a line where
Speaker 1: she says like, I don't really write my own poetry.
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing, but it's like something about her not writing
Speaker 1: her own poetry because.
Speaker 3: She's scared of what she'll say. Yeah, oh my god, totally.
Speaker 2: When we returned, Dylan shares some of the books that
Speaker 2: influence the Language of Limbs. We'll be right back. There's
Speaker 2: this sequence early in Dylan Hardcastle's new novel, A Language
Speaker 2: of Limbs, where both characters independently pick up Virginia Wolf's Orlando.
Speaker 2: As with so much of their respective journeys, they have
Speaker 2: these strong but opposing responses to the book The limb One.
Speaker 2: It's this treasured piece of literature. It helps give words
Speaker 2: to the feelings she's been experiencing. But in stark contrast,
Speaker 2: Lim too, after learning the book was written for Wolfe's
Speaker 2: female lover, quickly returns it to the library bookshelf, not
Speaker 2: even taking the time to remove the bookmark. For Dylan,
Speaker 2: the acceptance and rejection of art is a fundamental part
Speaker 2: of how we define ourselves. I wanted to ask you
Speaker 2: about books, early books, even as a young person, first
Speaker 2: discovering reading that were important or revelatory to you, that
Speaker 2: you either embraced or rejected in the way that your
Speaker 2: two characters do.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I was hoping that we would got to
Speaker 1: talk about this because I am a painfully slow reader.
Speaker 1: But my first ever book with chapters was Blue Back
Speaker 1: by Tim Winton, and that book remains my favorite book
Speaker 1: of all time. And it's because I was such a
Speaker 1: water baby, like I was saving before and after school
Speaker 1: by the time I was nine, and my parents bought
Speaker 1: me a rack for my bike so that I could
Speaker 1: ride myself to the beach when I was ten, because
Speaker 1: they were so sick of me coming in at five
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning saying can you drive me to
Speaker 1: the beach.
Speaker 2: That's my kind of parentig absolutely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I was such a water baby and honestly
Speaker 1: barely read, Like I had Blue Back that my dad
Speaker 1: had read to me two or three times, and I
Speaker 1: loved that. And I think that story was really sort
Speaker 1: of set the scene and was foundational to my own
Speaker 1: riding practice because it showed me that the ocean could
Speaker 1: be almost a character, you know, not this passive backdrop,
Speaker 1: but this body that is alive and that has the
Speaker 1: potential to both liberate and drowning, which I think is
Speaker 1: something that I already very much knew from spending so
Speaker 1: much time in the water. But I've realized recently that
Speaker 1: I learned to read water before I learned how to
Speaker 1: read a book properly, Like I spent so many hours
Speaker 1: sitting in the lineup reading lines of swell that I
Speaker 1: think that genuinely is why almost every metaphor I ever
Speaker 1: lean on has water in it, because yeah, I learned
Speaker 1: to read water before I learned how to read. And
Speaker 1: it actually wasn't until I got this scholarship to study
Speaker 1: English literature at the University of Oxford in the UK
Speaker 1: when I was twenty three that I properly began a
Speaker 1: reading practice, and that I actually started to find books
Speaker 1: and so that was the most amazing sort of deep dive,
Speaker 1: but very much getting thrown in the deep end at
Speaker 1: Oxford because I suddenly was reading and you know, they
Speaker 1: were like the canon, and I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: even know what that word means, what books are part
Speaker 1: of the canon, But I think there is something about
Speaker 1: you know, I wrote my first two books before I
Speaker 1: was probably a reader, and there was something about that
Speaker 1: that really.
Speaker 3: Meant that I found.
Speaker 1: A voice that I think honestly was guided by water
Speaker 1: and that was very much my own. And then you know,
Speaker 1: then started learning about craft and through reading other people's
Speaker 1: work and began to learn the rules. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: think my way in was actually I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: think I would change it, because I yeah, I did.
Speaker 3: I found a voice that was very my own.
Speaker 2: It's really lovely and it is marked. I mean, this
Speaker 2: book does feel like a departure from your first couple
Speaker 2: in a range of ways. You mentioned it's a sin.
Speaker 2: Are there queer narratives that you read before this that
Speaker 2: you wanted to fit into the tradition of or were
Speaker 2: you keen to carve out your own space.
Speaker 1: Most of the reading that I did for this book
Speaker 1: was nonfiction. I read all of Pride History Groups publications
Speaker 1: that they've put out, spent a lot of time listening
Speaker 1: to a lot of their material on their sort of
Speaker 1: their online repository. But then I ended up writing a
Speaker 1: Language of films as part of a PhD in creative writing.
Speaker 1: My PhD is on queer embodiment and looking specifically at
Speaker 1: how writers have used the uncanny as a site right
Speaker 1: with potential to sort of bring about some sort of
Speaker 1: queer corporeality. And the two books that I have done
Speaker 1: deep dives on in the dream House by Carmen Maria
Speaker 1: Machado and Lars Horne's Voice of the Fish, a lyric essay.
Speaker 1: They're actually both memoirs, but they play with genre in
Speaker 1: such interesting ways.
Speaker 3: And they really yeah, they really taught me, I.
Speaker 1: Think doing this really close textual analysis of both books
Speaker 1: whilst writing this cracked open my mind and heart of
Speaker 1: what I could achieve. And it was really important to
Speaker 1: me that Limb Too story where the character is sort
Speaker 1: of repressing her desires and carving out this cis heat
Speaker 1: life and sort of you know, following all of the
Speaker 1: key milestones of that that her side of the story
Speaker 1: is written in traditional scene formulations. When somebody talks, you
Speaker 1: go to the next line. You know, follows a lot
Speaker 1: of literary conventions. Whereas limb One, my motto when writing
Speaker 1: that side of the story was think less.
Speaker 3: And feel more.
Speaker 1: And I tried to be guided by bodily instinct and
Speaker 1: do away with all of these devices. And so I
Speaker 1: think most of the research I did in the early
Speaker 1: days was to do with the actual historical context. But
Speaker 1: then yeah, as I found these two books, it really
Speaker 1: just allowed me to lean into my body in sort
Speaker 1: of a band and whatever I thought to know about writing.
Speaker 2: You mentioned before the question of kind of chosen names
Speaker 2: and as part of your transness, getting to choose the
Speaker 2: name Dylan for yourself. And I am curious because you
Speaker 2: do have a character who's a Thomas, who's been named
Speaker 2: for Dylan Thomas, and then you've got to choose Dylan
Speaker 2: for yourself. And apart from the sea, is the Thomas
Speaker 2: connection a specific one for you? You do you have
Speaker 2: a Welsh background or is that.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, my dad's Welsh and he's actually the only
Speaker 1: person in his family that's here. The rest of his
Speaker 1: family is in Wales, and so I've spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time there. Yeah, it's funny because before I chose
Speaker 1: Dylan for myself, Thomas in the book was called Dylan,
Speaker 1: and my agent when I decided to change my name,
Speaker 1: was like, Dylan is going to have to be Thomas.
Speaker 1: You can't have one of the main characters called Dylan
Speaker 1: and then Dylan on the cover. So yeah, that was
Speaker 1: why Thomas became Thomas. But yeah, I really wanted my
Speaker 1: name to sort of speak to that lineage. I loved
Speaker 1: learning what Dylan meant as Born of the Sea feels
Speaker 1: very apt, but also toward the tide, and this sort
Speaker 1: of like turning always back to water felt really resonant.
Speaker 2: On the question of names and naming, Ben and chosen names,
Speaker 2: how early did you know that you weren't going to
Speaker 2: give names to your two protagonists until the very end?
Speaker 2: How clear was that to you as a device that
Speaker 2: you wanted them to remain kind of nameless.
Speaker 1: That was very intentional from the very beginning, And that
Speaker 1: was because I want my readers to read almost the
Speaker 1: entire book not quite knowing if they are two versions
Speaker 1: of one story. You know that kind of sliding doors
Speaker 1: in this story, this person comes out in this story
Speaker 1: they or if they are in fact different people and
Speaker 1: which you obviously don't find out until the end, and so.
Speaker 3: Not naming them was part of lending itself to that.
Speaker 2: Dylan, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. That was such
Speaker 3: a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Dylan Hardcastle's A Language of Limbs is available at all
Speaker 2: good bookstores. Now, before we go, I wanted to tell
Speaker 2: you what I've been reading this week. Yomi Ada Gerke's
Speaker 2: novel The List came out more than a year ago
Speaker 2: and I somehow missed it at the time. But it's
Speaker 2: a media satire that is a lot of fun. It
Speaker 2: follows couple Olla and Michael, two stars of black British
Speaker 2: media whose relationship is rocked when Michael is named on
Speaker 2: a list calling out me too style perpetrators. It's funny,
Speaker 2: page turning and full of moral complexity, and well worth
Speaker 2: a read before the inevitable TV adaptation that's already in
Speaker 2: the works. You can find it and all the other
Speaker 2: books we mentioned in the episode at your favorite independent bookstore.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week's show. As ever, follow, like,
Speaker 2: subscribe and share. Next week, I'm read this, I catch
Speaker 2: up with a veteran of crime writing and the first
Speaker 2: author I ever interviewed, Michael Robot.
Speaker 3: I hate three word slogans for all sorts of reasons,
Speaker 3: but I have three words that I sort of write by.
Speaker 2: Not to make them care. I thought it was stop
Speaker 2: the boats, Okay, make them care? Right? That makes more
Speaker 2: make them care?
Speaker 3: Yes, definitely not the other one.
Speaker 2: Read. This is produced and edited by Clara Ames, mixing
Speaker 2: and original compositions by Zolton Fetcher. Thanks for listening, See
Speaker 2: you next week.