Isabel Waidner & Sarah Wood: As If
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the London Review Bookshop podcast. To find out about our upcoming events, visit londonreviewbookshop.co.uk forward slash events.
Welcome to the London Review Bookshop, where tonight I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Isabel Widener to talk about their new novel, their absolutely brilliant new novel, As If, published by Hamish Hamilton. Isabel, it's just lovely to have you. Thank you to everyone who's helped put this together. It was one of those ones, you know, the first moment you see something on Instagram that, like, this book's going to come out in, like, six months' time or something, I was like, I need to get on this. I need to see if we can have you back and talk about it. The book is terrific. I can't wait to hear what you've got to say about it. Me neither. Sarah Wood, artist, filmmaker, Sarah Wood. Thank you.
How does Isabel Waidner introduce As If and its opening scene?
Legends. Legend.
Yeah.
Legend. And, you know, sort of happily for us, another bookshop regular.
Yeah.
Thank you very much. I'm very excited. But I know I must get out of the way so we can actually hear the good stuff. So just before I do, I'll say our guests will talk for about 45 minutes. There'll be time for questions afterwards. Well, however many of the 40,000 questions. 40,000 questions, yeah. Thank you very much for listening to me. Now for the good stuff. Isabel, Sarah, thank you both so much. Cheers. Thank you.
Isabel's infected me with this book because there's a very terrifying audition scene in the book. For those of you who haven't read it, you'll find out quite soon. And everything kind of goes wrong. And I printed out my questions for tonight. And when I looked at them on the train, they're the size of an ant. So if you see me, I've got to read everything.
This is literally what happens in the book in one scene. There's this guy, the main character is trying to read something for an audition scene and he can't find the place in the book, which is like a classic. You open the book and suddenly it's the wrong page. And it's the wrong book. And it's the wrong book, potentially. And so, yeah, we're recreating some of that.
It's pretty strange. but I do I love the book so much and I wanted to write something so I will read it this might be a bit embarrassing I was like oh I love this book so much and I've been reading it these few weeks when the world's so crazy with all the news going on all the time and I kept thinking has the world kind of melted a bit of you and it's kind of like a Joe Orton mashup because it's like the skeletons of awfulness keep falling out of the cupboard and then being squashed back in by the establishment you've got to hide it again so it's like what is going on it's like it's almost like you a terrible farce if it wasn't so awful and I was thinking how mad it is that we you know like when we had Covid time and we all the world was so quiet and we were all so brought up against existential questions what is to be alive and all the things about what it means to be human and social and we had all that time to think about it and then the world has roared back in in this mad way that I was just thinking how what a relief really is to have a book like this to have a space to think about an antidote and to think what it means to be
to properly engage with the existential questions of our time. And this book is so brilliant because it reminds us how life, love, isolation, death are all part of human life and they're not part of this stupid lifestyle that we're supposed to be living at the moment and that we're all supposed to be living up to. It's the real things and nobody's talking about the real things properly. And so this book feels like a perfect, beautiful space for that. So I think it feels like an antidote and I think this book is such a positive moment and I'm so proud that we're being able to launch it tonight. It feels timely, a little revolution in fact, sort of an argument for humanity and I can't think of anything better to celebrate.
So it's a very nice rest. So I think, anyway, let's put our hands together for this moment of birth.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–0:57
2
How does Isabel Waidner introduce As If and its opening scene?
0:57–29:07
3
What immediate themes and tone are set by the book reading?
29:07–54:52
4
How does the novel depict London settings like Aldersgate and the Barbican?
54:52–57:34