Cassie McCullough

What were you doing there?

Yeah.

I wonder how it's changed, how it's going, the hoarding addiction or whatever it is, syndrome with COVID.

I found myself chucking everything out, actually.

I'm going the opposite way.

Well, what have you both been reading in this strange time?

We've just been talking about Jock Sorong's new novel, The Burning Island, and I wonder if either of you have even seen that one yet.

Well, it will not disappoint.

Well, what have you been reading?

Maybe Aoife, you can tell us, you know, how you've been escaping into books.

Wow, that sounds like a ripper.

Great.

Song of the Crocodile by Nardi Simpson.

Yeah, it sounds pretty good.

Well, let's turn to the books that you've read for us today.

Sarah Moss's Summer Water and Ian McGuire's The Abstainer.

Let's begin in Scotland on a rainy holiday with Summer Water.

Sarah Moss is an English novelist and academic whose non-fiction work includes spilling the beans, reading, writing, eating and cooking in British women's fiction from 1770 to 1830.

Well, that is a pretty precise little piece of work she's done there.

Her novels include Night Waking, Bodies of Light and Ghost Wall, which all got rave reviews here on the bookshelf.