‘What was that book featured on the radio the other day?’
BBC Radio 4’s fascinating ‘A Good Read’ with Harriett Gilbert this week featured Columnist at The Times James Marriott and arts journalist for The Guardian Jude Rogers – both talk with Harriett Gilbert about their favourite books.
James Marriott has chosen ‘The Past’ by Tessa Hadley
Four siblings meet up in their grandparents’ old house for three long, hot summer weeks. But under the idyllic surface lie shattering tensions.
Roland has come with his new wife, and his sisters don’t like her.
Fran has brought her children, who soon uncover an ugly secret in a ruined cottage in the woods.
Alice has invited Kasim, an outsider, who makes plans to seduce Roland’s teenage daughter.
And Harriet, the eldest, finds her quiet self-possession ripped apart when passion erupts unexpectedly.
Over the course of the holiday, a familiar way of life falls apart forever.
Jude Rogers has chosen ‘Border Country’ by Raymond Williams
The second title in the landmark series, the Library of Wales. When railway signalman Harry Price suddenly suffers a stroke his son Matthew, a lecturer in London, makes a return to the border village of Glynmawr. As Matthew and Harry struggle with their memories of social and personal change, a beautiful and moving portrait of the love between a father and son emerges. Reprint.
Harriet has chosen ‘The Summer Without Men’ by Siri Hustvedt
After Mia Fredricksen’s husband of thirty years asks for a pause – so he can indulge his infatuation with a young French colleague – she cracks up (briefly), rages (deeply), then decamps to her prairie childhood home.
There, gradually, she is drawn into the lives of those around her: her mother’s circle of feisty widows; the young woman next door; and the diabolical teenage girls in her poetry class. By the end of the summer without men, Mia knows what’s worth fighting for – and on whose terms.
Provocative, mordant, and fiercely intelligent, this is a gloriously vivacious tragi-comedy about women and girls, love and marriage, and the age-old war between the sexes.
