Lauren J. Joseph & Olivia Laing: Lean Cat, Savage Cat
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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.
Hello everyone, and thank you for that lovely warm welcome for Lauren J. Joseph to talk about her new novel, Lean Cat, Savage Cat. Just out. And one of the, no, the sexiest cover in the show. By a mile. It's a great cover. Whoever had that idea, hats off. Is that yours? It's gorgeous. It's a pleasure to welcome back Olivia Lang. We might get you your own special chair.
What is Lauren J. Joseph’s new novel Lean Cat, Savage Cat about and how does she introduce it?
Thank you.
with your name on it like the directors and it's so it's just lovely to have you back again and this is a dream pairing you two and I can't wait to hear you talk thank you all very much I'm going to get out of the way just please join me in a warm welcome for Lauren and Olivia thank you both so much congratulations
Hello. I'm extremely excited. I've been excited for the last few days about this event. Lauren, it's no secret, is one of my favourite people in the world. And I think this book is completely exceptional. I read it for the second time at the weekend. It's very rare that you read a book twice and it just opens up into this sort of second level of depth and strangeness. It really repays everything. going round for a second time, which is very appropriate because it's a book that's all about doubles and doppelgangers and things not being quite what they seem. It's written in a very beautiful and unusual way. We're going to talk about style, we're going to talk about all kinds of things, but Lauren is going to give us a little taste first.
I am. I'm going to read a section here at Olivia's request. because my one rule in life is whatever olivia says do it and that's how i ended up in this situation so um this novel centers on a woman called charlie who um falls in with a mysterious sinister figure called alexander they moved to berlin together rather ill-advisedly He becomes a musician and a sort of budding rock star. And Charlie becomes his sort of momager, basically just making sure he's there on time, making sure he's got his lippy, making sure he's not too effed up. as he often is. Un-successfully. Un-successfully, yeah. I suddenly felt all of a sudden like, don't say the F word, but this is not live television. So I think it's fine.
All right. And this is a gig that Alex is being paid the princely sum of 300 euros to perform at. And Charlie is getting him there. This is a reading of about five minutes. During the rest of the week, Cindy's House of Sin was a live music venue which hosted rockabilly acts. It was decorated in schlocky Wild West style, with mounted cow skulls on the walls and saloon doors between the rooms, all bathed in the sallow yellow light of flickering fake candles, which gave it more the atmosphere of a funeral chapel than a cowboy honky tonk. There are a couple of incongruous pinball machines and a very popular table football game, not quite in keeping with the Western stylings, jammed over by the bathrooms.
And then the decor veered entirely off theme in the smoking lounge, where a gargantuan photograph of Saddam Hussein grinned down from behind the sticky leather sofas. And who can say why? Cindy's crowd compromised of 18-year-old boys in white vests with cheap bleach jobs, 50-something men in V-necks and Ray-Bans, and nobody in between, unless you included the hostess herself in your count. At first I thought I recognized her as a sister spirit, but the party's promoter balked at the idea. Cindy is not a transsexual, he intoned. She is a gay man with tits. Cindy wore a gold sequined mini dress and nude tights. glossy black shoes and high platform soles, a spike heel and an ankle strap, fingerless gloves and what I guessed was a wig.
Her makeup was not too subtle, purple eyes and heavy liner, fake lashes, blood red lips, extreme contouring and I presume some face tape under her wig line. One side pulled tighter than the other, dragging her left eyebrow higher than her right and giving her a permanently quizzical look.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–0:52
2
What is Lauren J. Joseph’s new novel Lean Cat, Savage Cat about and how does she introduce it?
0:52–9:47
3
Why does Olivia Laing describe the book as a novel of doubles and doppelgängers?
9:47–45:39
4
How did a car crash in Berlin inspire the opening premise of the novel?
45:39–57:37