Lara Pawson

speaker

266 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 10 Aug

Lara Pawson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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London Review Bookshop Podcast · James Meek & Lara Pawson: Your Life Without Me · 15 Jun 2026 podcast

Well, the story of the family, I think on my first reading, I thought the story of the family was more important.

And on the second reading, I slightly changed my mind.

He's his alter ego, is he not?

Some of them are my best friends.

Well, and maybe Raf doesn't come to that until he's felt the power of when he goes to Bulgaria and he demolishes the power station there.

Maybe he hasn't had that idea, has he?

I suppose I felt, and I thought about this a lot on the second reading, that I realised, of course, that the title of the book, Your Life Without Me, comes in the moment when Raph is telling Mr Berman and Ada, and I think Leila when he goes there for dinner, about his aunt,

who leaves him.

So Mr. Berman, it first encounters Raph at school when he's in floods of tears in a corridor and he kind of passes him and thinks who's that boy and then he recognises him later.

And Raph then talks about his aunt, who he obviously adored, leaving him and never seeing him again and saying, I'm never going to see you again.

And this sort of devastating moment is terribly traumatised.

Well, yes, okay.

I think that Leila and her mother's relationship, that moment when they go horse riding together,

And Ada, the wife, is an incredible character.

She's very charismatic and everybody kind of enjoys, everyone comes alive when she's around.

And Leila is always in the shadows.

She's always paling in comparison and kind of trying and then just like giving up.

And you just feel her kind of collapsing, this poor child, desperately trying to be, to kind of be her mum's best friend, but always being overlooked by these parents.

I was trying to think about, have I read any books where there's an only child whose parents seem to fail her, who let her down?

It's almost like she's the gooseberry in the relationship.

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