John Mitchinson

She is the managing editor of the new literary magazine, The Second Shelf, rare books and words by women affiliated to the bookshop of the same name.

And she writes a monthly column for the Paris Review about out-of-print and forgotten books that deserve to be neither of those things.

So she is core backlisting.

Thank you, Lucy.

But before we get on to Penelope Fitzgerald and Human Voices, let me ask John.

John, what have you been reading this week?

Andy, what have you been reading?

Okay, so I've been reading the long-listed for the Bailey's Prize book,

short novel, Ghostwall, by Sarah Moss.

And in keeping with the tradition of the already mentioned by Grand Central Station, I sat down and wept, where you ask me what I've been reading and I get other people to talk about it.

I'm going to do that with Ghostwall.

The difference is that I really love Ghostwall.

I thought it was absolutely fantastic.

I'm just going to tell listeners what the novel is about by reading you the extremely on-point blurb on the dust jacket.

Teenage Sylvie and her parents are living in a hut in Northumberland as an exercise in experimental archaeology.

Her father is a difficult man, obsessed with imagining and enacting the harshness of Iron Age life.

Haunting Sylvie's narrative is the story of a bog girl, a young woman sacrificed by those closest to her, and the landscape both keeps and reveals the secrets of past violence and ritual.

as the summer builds to its harrowing climax.

Very good, very good blurb.

Before I ask the rest of you about it, I would like to say, the thing about this book is you can read it in one sitting, probably take you a couple of hours to read it.