The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
you know, not as a mainstream writer and as somebody who was slightly sort of wacky because of her preoccupations with sex and single women.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
And she paints a very bleak view of life.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
And it certainly put me off ever going to London and having to live in a cold flat with, you had to put shillings into the gas meter to warm up.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
So I headed for New York rather than London.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
That seemed to me a more
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
alluring place but the American women's fiction was more exuberant and more celebratory I guess than the English women.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
I also read Margaret Drabble and I certainly read Edna O'Brien of course who's Irish.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
All of these books were an incredibly enriching part of my expanding brain I guess.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
Well, it can.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
I mean, as I say in the book, I mean, I came very late to reading the Frank Morehouse trilogy.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
I mean, I bought the books as they were published, but to my shame, I didn't read them.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
But then a couple of years ago, I had some pretty major surgery and I was at home recovering for a few months.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
Yeah.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
So I actually had the privilege and I'm sort of glad in a way now that I read the three, these three very large books, you know, straight through in over a week or so.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
And I just found them extraordinary for a number of reasons.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
I mean, I think the character of Edith Campbell Berry is somebody who I would have valued having around when I was younger.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
It would have been great to have someone like her to know someone like her existed would have been very encouraging to me.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
But what I really admire about what Frank has done in those books is that he has told us the story of the League of Nations,
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
of an institution that, frankly, I didn't really know that much about.
The Bookshelf
On Graham Norton's A Keeper, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries and Georgina Harding's Land of the Living with David Hunt, Aoife Clifford and Anne Summers
So, you know, I learnt about this sort of noble and doomed institution that attempted to come out of the First World War to prevent it ever happening again and, of course, failed.