Chapter 1: What new fiction books are explored in this episode?
This is an ABC podcast.
Hello and welcome to The Bookshelf on Radio National, on ABC Listen and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Evans.
And I'm Cassie McCullough. And we're back again with a collection of brand new fiction and guests who are also novelists.
The writers Mireille Dushaw and Anne Brinsden will join us soon. Anne has read Dutch novelist Tommy Waringhuis, The Blessed Rita.
And Mireille has read Jenny Offal's Weather, which is causing a storm, Kate. Oh, dear, oh, dear.
while you and I, Cassie, have read Colin McCann's A Paragon, A Novel, a story that takes us right into the lives of Israelis and Palestinians. So let's start there.
MUSIC
Colin McCann is an Irish writer who now lives in the US. His novels include Transatlantic, fittingly, and Let the Great World Spin, as well as eight others. And he's also written non-fiction as well.
His collection of essays, Letters to a Young Writer, is glorious. And the name of that one comes from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet from 1929. But the other thing about McCann is that he runs a global story exchange program called Narrative 4. And it's all about building empathy through storytelling, which I think partly explains this new book.
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Chapter 2: Who is Colum McCann and what is his novel 'Apeirogon' about?
You know, I thought of the two of these guys as if they were a pair of ancient mariners, you know, from the poem. They're compelled for their whole life to tell the story of their child or their experience of losing a child and and how they came to terms with it and found love, a universal love and a humanity as the only way they could overcome this loss. And that's what they share.
And that's what they realise they share in this book and in life.
Which means too that the whole process of standing up again and again and performing your grief and your sorrow and your anguish and your analysis. That also becomes part of the shape of the novel as it unfolds in different ways. But the structure is really interesting because it's also partly based on the 1001 Arabian Nights. So the book is actually in 1001 fragments.
And it builds up to number 500 and number 500, which each tell its Rami story and Bassam story with another little bit in the middle. So we count up to 500 and then we count from 500 down to one. So all of those sort of literary and poetic conceits are also built into this novel.
Mm-hmm.
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Chapter 3: What themes are present in Jenny Offill's 'Weather'?
And quite overtly because there's Colin McCann's description of 1001 Nights as the kind of ultimate achievement of storytelling of humanity, akin to, I don't know, the Sistine Chapel or... the pyramids, because it is so indestructible.
It transcends language, it transcends time, because even before the stories were written down, they were already being told, and they were just collected for a moment in this form, and they continue to be told without the existence of the book. So this is the central idea of the 1001 Nights, as told to us by Colin McCann through the lens of these two men.
But you also have to trust, I think, Cassie, that you are in the hands of a storyteller who knows what he's doing. Because sometimes as you're reading things, you're not quite sure why it's there. So there's one section, for example, and it's number 214 on the way up to 500.
When we suddenly stop and we get the story of Sir Richard Francis Burton, the 19th century explorer, who was also a falconer, and we might get back to the birds. And so we get this little story that seems to be a byway from the main story. You're not quite sure why you're reading it.
And then a couple of pages later, you realise it's because he was the first person to translate The Thousand and One Nights into English. Mm-hmm. as well as being somebody who was travelling through this part of the world.
And I came to really value that for those moments when I thought, this is beautifully done, this is a compelling aside, I'm not quite sure why I'm reading it, but I'm going to trust that soon I will understand why I'm reading this aside.
Yes, and there's a little sidetrack about President Mitterrand as well, which is really eye-opening. But, yes, the birds. You mentioned Richard Francis Burton, not to be confused, of course, with the other one, coming through the land where this story is told, Israel and Palestine, essentially, and And that also, we learn, is a great migratory path for birds.
And so there are thousands of birds migrating at any time. I think there's three or four hundred different species who regularly make the trip. So they don't belong there. They're passing through it, but they actually don't belong anywhere necessarily because this is their home. The sky is their home.
And so there's this lovely sense of transience about life as well in this metaphor about the birds, which we explore in so many different ways. And each... moment of cruelty to a bird that comes, and there are many, it's almost unbearable. They're almost unbearably sad, these little pictures of birds being even tagged or dipped into boiling water alive. Drowned in honey.
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Chapter 4: How does 'Apeirogon' address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
A heavenly stitch. That's all I ask. And bring back a beer too. A beer is... Bassam's daughter. And then... He continues, and while you're at it, bring back Sivan and Ahuva and Delia and Yamina and Lily and Yale and Suleiman and Kalila and then this list of names of all the lost ones that he's encountered in this work. And you realise, you know, the job is endless.
You can't bring them all back, but they have all been lost.
And that use of those list-like structures also reminds us that we're in the territory of testimony literature, of giving witness, and that whole tradition of making lists of the names of the fallen.
Yes, and it's very biblical in a way too, yeah.
I feel like this is a book where I was in the hands of somebody who had really thought about what he was doing and did it quite well. But I also think that this is a book that is going to divide people about who has the right to tell whose stories, about what line he is or isn't taking on it. But for me, it was an extraordinarily powerful book.
There are questions about fiction and fictional practices and non-fiction and real people's stories and who has the rights to tell them. And he was extremely consultative, we're told, with these families. So, look... Epic work. Part of me wondered why he had taken it on, but I guess, you know, it is the story.
It is one of the great stories of our times and one that will continue to be so, unfortunately.
Colin McCann's A Paragon, a novel, is published by Bloomsbury.
I need another place Will there be peace I need another world This one's nearly gone
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Chapter 5: What unique narrative structure does 'Apeirogon' utilize?
And because I've recently done some judging work in which I had to read many, many texts, that was really good for me because it actually, I realised that reading was like a muscle that I had to keep exercising. And so to get through the amount that I had to read
I could feel myself being able to read longer and longer and longer as I went along, but definitely at the beginning it was hard to get through a large quantity of reading, whereas once upon a time that would have been a joy and something I didn't even think about. So I really, I am really noticing it now.
And what about you, Anne? I've got a brother who's figured out how many hours he's got to live in his entire life and then has worked out how many books that means he can read. It's about 2,000. So he's got a list. Are you as disciplined as my brother or have you got a different approach?
No, that sounds a bit scary and I've certainly got a different approach. I have to say, because I'm only a relatively new writer, I've always perceived and had the approach to reading that it's actually a pleasure, it's a pleasure. Yeah, it's something that I do in my spare time for pleasure. So I have to really work hard at going, no, this is what I do now and it is okay.
I don't have to feel guilty. It is okay if I sit here and read this book. It's what I'm supposed to do.
All right. Well, let's hear about what you actually have been reading. Mireille, what are you going to throw on our platter?
I just finished reading a book by a Norwegian writer, and I'm not sure if I can pronounce her name correctly, but it's Hjort, I think.
H-J-O-R-T-H.
Yeah, yeah. And I heard about this novel a little while ago. I think I might have read a piece in The New Yorker about it. It's sort of receiving a lot of or has received because it first came out in 2016 in Norwegian and has only just been translated into English and received quite a lot of attention when it came out because it involves a sort of question around
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Chapter 6: Who are the main characters in Tommy Wieringa's 'The Blessed Rita'?
My mother knew as much and kept her promise until I started crawling around on the floor and making demands of her that she wasn't interested in meeting. At that point, she got the wonders and eventually she traveled far enough that she didn't bother finding her way back home.
For a while, I reckon my father had to be an albino because I was the fairest skinned black fella in town and I could have easily passed for white. Abraham tried steering me on the right path, but as soon as I was old enough, I drifted out to the lake, to the ruins of the Christian mission. I quickly learned to love the drink and smell of a girl's skin after it had been dipped in water and wine.
Abraham left the house to me after his death. It wasn't much of a prize, but it was enough to impress Carol, a farmer's daughter who knew all about the value of private property.
It's a start.
I met her during a brief period of sobriety, a time when I went around town in a clean white shirt and talked about reviving Abraham's dream of a church of his own. I'd even dressed this up for Carol in an effort to get her into Abraham's old brass bed. And I swore to him as he lay dying that I would build his church.
And what did he say?
Well, he looked up at me with that wrinkled old face of his and he said, I know you can do it, Luke. You're a strong boy. The Lord will be pleased and I'll rest easy.
Amen.
Amen.
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Chapter 7: What moral dilemmas are presented in 'The Blessed Rita'?
You've never been clean, Luke. You're dirty. You and all your kind. Look at you. You're drunk now. I got a call from Jenny Oakes from the bank.
She told me you were in there yesterday morning cashing a cheque and by 12, when she was out getting her lunch, you were sitting in the front bar of the Royal half-drunk. You're not in any program.
Go. You shouldn't have driven out here as it was. That car's got no registration and you've got no licence to drive it. I hope the police pick you up.
Please, Luke. We don't want any trouble here. I'll give you a lift back into town if you like.
Have you anything to say to my daughter, Luke?
Yeah.
Maybe an apology?
I've got something to say, Martha. To all of you. I did have plenty to say. I just couldn't remember what it was right then. I shook my head, trying to loosen the thought. But it wouldn't come. If I'd had a dollar for every time Carol had threatened to leave, I'd be the richest black fella in the country. Richer even than those boys working on the oil rigs off the coast up north.
But this time I could feel the pain deep in my gut. I got back in the car and drove off. At home, I went through the medicine cupboard again and grabbed hold of all the pills I could find. Sleeping tablets, antidepressants, painkillers, a few vitamins. I shoved them all in my gob, stuck my head under the tap and drank until I'd swallowed the lot.
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Chapter 8: What reflections do the hosts share about the impact of these novels?
Sounds fine by me.
But in your case, you are not quite ready. First, you must be cleansed.
Yeah. I know that. I need to get clean, for sure. I'd like to get this foot seen too as well.
You're a troubled man. Your soul is stuck.
Alright. Can you help me? I've got this awful ringing in my head that's driving me crazy. Can you get rid of that as well?
No. I'm sorry, but I cannot do that.
Why not? You just said it's what I need.
And it is, but I am not a cleanser. That is the work of others.
And what about one of these others? Can't one of them help me?
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