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Tonight on The Book Review Show, a quartet of new work from some of | :00:32. | :00:39. | |
the most successful modern authors. John Irving's latest epic novel of | :00:39. | :00:46. | |
sex and sexuality, In One Person. Kate Summerscale recounts adultery | :00:46. | :00:50. | |
Victorian-style in Mrs Robinson's Disgrace. Mark Haddon and his | :00:50. | :00:52. | |
anticipated new novel, The Red House. I talk to Hilary Mantel | :00:52. | :00:58. | |
about Bring Up The Bodies, the follow up to her Man Booker winner, | :00:58. | :01:04. | |
Wolf Hall, delving under the covers to judge all of that, best selling | :01:04. | :01:09. | |
author, Kate Mosse, literary journalist and broadcaster, John | :01:09. | :01:15. | |
Mullen, and the inimtable Germaine Greer. | :01:15. | :01:20. | |
Welcome to the monthly book review special. Tonight we have expert | :01:20. | :01:25. | |
opinions in the studio. We love to hear your views too. Join on | :01:25. | :01:29. | |
Twitter or drop an e-mail. First up tonight, the latest novel from a | :01:29. | :01:34. | |
woman who has become a literary sensation, Hilary Mantel. Wolf Hall, | :01:34. | :01:39. | |
her fictional book about the rise of Thomas Cromwell, won the Booker | :01:39. | :01:43. | |
Prize and sold millions of copies. The new book, Bring Up The Bodies, | :01:44. | :01:51. | |
the story of the fall of Anne Boleyn, is the second in her Tudor | :01:51. | :01:54. | |
trilogy. Who would have thought that Thomas Cromwell would be | :01:54. | :02:02. | |
anything at all. When Wollsey fell, one would have thought as his | :02:02. | :02:05. | |
servant he would have been ruined. When his wife and daughters died, | :02:05. | :02:10. | |
you might have thought the loss would kill him. But Henry has | :02:10. | :02:17. | |
turned to him, Henry has sworn him in, Henry has put his time at his | :02:17. | :02:24. | |
disposal, and has said to come Master Cromwell, and take his arm, | :02:24. | :02:29. | |
throne rooms, his path in life made smooth and clear. How do we see the | :02:29. | :02:33. | |
character of Thomas Cromwell evolve, do you think, between Wolf Hall and | :02:33. | :02:38. | |
Bring Up The Bodies? There is a very small gap, we leave Wolf Hall | :02:38. | :02:48. | |
:02:48. | :02:55. | ||
July 1535, the evening of Thomas Moor, he's excuse. We resume | :02:56. | :03:02. | |
Moore's execution. We resume at Wolf Hall, what happens is he | :03:02. | :03:09. | |
realises that Henry has fallen in love with the daughter of the house, | :03:09. | :03:12. | |
storms are clouding Anne Boleyn and it is becoming a political | :03:12. | :03:16. | |
liability and embarrassment. Cromwell is very quick to see this. | :03:16. | :03:21. | |
He is now setting a course that will end in the destruction of Anne | :03:21. | :03:26. | |
Boleyn. Why, do you think, in general, people are so drawn to | :03:26. | :03:32. | |
this period? I think it is the repositry of all stories. All | :03:32. | :03:38. | |
themes, all ark types, I think it touches on our collective processes. | :03:38. | :03:47. | |
Henry is Blue Beards, the wives his victims, Cromwell is a sort of | :03:47. | :03:53. | |
fixed figure. It is strength and fairytale and yet it is real. It | :03:53. | :03:57. | |
was enacted not just in sexual politics, but actual politics. | :03:57. | :04:07. | |
difficult is it to get inside the sexuality Morays of that time, | :04:07. | :04:13. | |
which -- morays of that time? not particularly difficult at all, | :04:13. | :04:17. | |
because the missoingnisic slant of the era is apparent in all sorts of | :04:17. | :04:26. | |
works, in poems, in proz, the woman's is the sin of Eve, she's | :04:26. | :04:36. | |
the sexual temptrous, the man is innocent she -- temptress, the man | :04:36. | :04:40. | |
is isn't, this is clear with Anne Boleyn. There is a third book, are | :04:40. | :04:45. | |
you clear how that will end? It can only end one way. We know the | :04:45. | :04:51. | |
history! I often end my books with beheadings, readers will have | :04:51. | :04:56. | |
noticed. I'm afraid the axeman comes for Thomas Cromwell in the | :04:56. | :05:01. | |
summer of 1540. After his death Henry realises within weeks that he | :05:01. | :05:11. | |
made a terrible mistake. We don't go there. My trilogy will end as | :05:11. | :05:16. | |
Cromwell's consciousness ends. Now John, there are high | :05:16. | :05:21. | |
expectations for Wolf Hall, you were one of the judges which gave | :05:21. | :05:27. | |
it the Man Booker Prize, does Bring Up The Bodies live up to that? | :05:27. | :05:30. | |
skwhrus because I was on the panel, but -- not just because I was on | :05:30. | :05:34. | |
the panel, but I didn't open this book, I couldn't open this book | :05:34. | :05:38. | |
without thinking, I'm really looking forward to this. Because I | :05:38. | :05:45. | |
think Hilary Mantel is one of the two or three best writers of | :05:45. | :05:49. | |
English prose, fictional prose, a prose adapted to whatever uses she | :05:49. | :05:53. | |
wants to put to it. Writing in English today. It is quite unusual | :05:53. | :05:58. | |
to be reading this novel, because in all her previous novels they | :05:58. | :06:02. | |
have been different than the one before. Strikingly different. That | :06:02. | :06:07. | |
is one of her great qualities. sure her publishers and agents must | :06:08. | :06:12. | |
be groaning, as soon as she has a successful one she does something | :06:12. | :06:15. | |
completely different next. It is unusual for her to follow up with a | :06:15. | :06:18. | |
sequel like this. There are enough subtle changes and developments, | :06:18. | :06:22. | |
especially in the central character, in his relationship with Anne | :06:22. | :06:28. | |
Boleyn, and so on, to make it different. But also it has just all | :06:28. | :06:38. | |
the wonderful stylistic versatility and virtue ostee of the previous | :06:38. | :06:41. | |
book. One of the difficulties of writing this kind of book is | :06:42. | :06:46. | |
sustaining any kind of tension, when we Whereareyouknow what | :06:46. | :06:52. | |
happens to Anne Boleyn? It is one of -- When we know what happens to | :06:52. | :06:57. | |
Anne Boleyn? Everyone knows that period of history, whether Keith | :06:58. | :07:04. | |
Starky, or Alison Weir, it has been mined a lot. What I thought was so | :07:04. | :07:08. | |
extraordinary about the novel, two things I associate with Mantel, one | :07:08. | :07:14. | |
that there is a lot of set piece work in terms of whether it is the | :07:14. | :07:17. | |
trial of Anne Boleyn or a hunting incident, or the mistresses being | :07:17. | :07:23. | |
moved in and out. Things that are self-contained, like little | :07:23. | :07:26. | |
vignettes, but underlying that is we know where it is going to go. | :07:26. | :07:30. | |
There is no surprise, but there is the ratchetting all the time of the | :07:30. | :07:34. | |
tension. It is the way, as she's often said. You can't muck around, | :07:34. | :07:39. | |
you can't distort the history, but you can choose how much light you | :07:39. | :07:43. | |
put on something. The order in which you narrate things. That, I | :07:43. | :07:47. | |
think, along with the fact that I think she's one of the greatest | :07:47. | :07:51. | |
describers of tiny things, she can take a whole scene by a little | :07:51. | :07:56. | |
button. That sort of thing. I think it is fabulous. Do you think she | :07:56. | :08:02. | |
moves beyond the drama of the history of the period? No. I'm | :08:02. | :08:06. | |
coming at it from a slightly different point of view, I think. | :08:06. | :08:11. | |
If it's mined this period, it has been mined very shallowly. If we're | :08:11. | :08:16. | |
thinking of the Starky approach, history as gossip, this is more of | :08:16. | :08:21. | |
the same. We are talking about these people as if they did not | :08:21. | :08:28. | |
exist within a very special political and religious context. It | :08:28. | :08:34. | |
wounds me in a way, because, Anne Boleyn isn't just a nobleman's | :08:34. | :08:43. | |
daughter, or this besieged figure, who becomes more and more emaciated | :08:43. | :08:48. | |
and crazy and vindictive. She's a Protestant reformer, she's one of | :08:48. | :08:52. | |
the most important contributors of books to the royal library. Her | :08:52. | :08:56. | |
books are now being identified in the British Library. She has a | :08:56. | :09:02. | |
faction, she is supported. And we mentioned Tindale three or four | :09:02. | :09:08. | |
times, that's massively important. The central character isn't Anne | :09:08. | :09:14. | |
Boleyn, it is Thomas Cromwell? is Cromwell, she does this | :09:14. | :09:17. | |
extraordinary thing, which she does again, of filtering the action | :09:17. | :09:21. | |
entirely through his consciousness, it is a third person narrative, but | :09:21. | :09:25. | |
all done through his consciousness. So you judge him, but you're with | :09:25. | :09:29. | |
him. And that is a really difficult thing to bring off as well as she | :09:29. | :09:37. | |
does. To get that mixture of sympathy and sometimes horror. | :09:37. | :09:42. | |
There is a fantastic phase late in the novel, where he's doing the | :09:42. | :09:48. | |
interrogations of the supposed lovers of Anne Boleyn. They are in | :09:48. | :09:56. | |
the headlights, they have had it. You're with him doing something | :09:56. | :10:02. | |
terrible, you are part of it. rational, and yet he's the origin | :10:02. | :10:07. | |
of every terrible torturer you have ever seen. How does she address | :10:07. | :10:10. | |
that, with writers of historical fiction, to make the language | :10:10. | :10:19. | |
archaic or not? The language is an artifice, it is not a way of | :10:19. | :10:25. | |
producing language appropriate for the story she's telling. It is | :10:25. | :10:33. | |
Wallis Stephens, it is the she and not the he that said it, it is not | :10:33. | :10:37. | |
the oldeworlde writing. There is that third person all the way | :10:37. | :10:43. | |
through, it is he, on Cromwell's shoulder. She never uses his name? | :10:43. | :10:47. | |
He's horrible and awful. When people say this is the story of the | :10:47. | :10:50. | |
fall of Anne Boleyn, the point about all the things that Anne | :10:50. | :10:54. | |
Boleyn is, this is not that book, that is not her project. It is | :10:54. | :10:58. | |
entirely Cromwell, and it is the awful way in which anything will go, | :10:58. | :11:07. | |
the sense of how man niplation works. I think -- man niplation | :11:07. | :11:17. | |
:11:17. | :11:21. | ||
works, -- It is the prose that Hilary Mantel is famous for? | :11:21. | :11:28. | |
first I thought, mystery, what fun, it is like chocolate syrup poured | :11:28. | :11:36. | |
over everything. I wallowed in the elusiveness of it. It is very | :11:36. | :11:41. | |
cinematic, in a way, you have very sharp jump cuts, you see one thing, | :11:41. | :11:45. | |
then another. You build up the image of the actual situation that | :11:45. | :11:50. | |
you are in, in that particular episode, with all these little | :11:50. | :11:55. | |
visual bits pieces. But after a while it began to really annoy me. | :11:55. | :11:58. | |
For one thing she never contracts, it is a bit like the way people | :11:59. | :12:04. | |
speak in BBC adaptations of the classics. "I do not", everybody | :12:04. | :12:13. | |
says, nobody says "I don't", I "I cannot", then you get madness like | :12:13. | :12:19. | |
"it was not within his remit". "will" move on there, see what I | :12:19. | :12:22. | |
did. Bring Up The Bodies is out this | :12:22. | :12:26. | |
week. Families are famously tricky things to manage, just ask Rupert | :12:26. | :12:33. | |
Murdoch. Family dynamics at the heart of the new novel from Mark | :12:33. | :12:40. | |
Haddon, another widely popular author. His last book, The Curious | :12:40. | :12:44. | |
Incident of the Dog in the Night- Time, sat on the best selling list | :12:44. | :12:48. | |
for months. After the death of his mother, he | :12:48. | :12:53. | |
asks his estranged sister and her children, and invites them to share | :12:53. | :12:58. | |
a house for a week with his family. This reveals the hidden strains | :12:58. | :13:03. | |
geen adults and children alike. When people are on holiday they | :13:03. | :13:08. | |
haven't got routine and they are thrown back to their resources and | :13:08. | :13:13. | |
come to the surface things do. I'm not keen on holiday, I like things | :13:13. | :13:23. | |
:13:23. | :13:23. | ||
to do all the time. "pensiony had a special dispensation to play his | :13:23. | :13:29. | |
Nintendo because". He wanted to talk about his on going fantasy of | :13:29. | :13:35. | |
which the teacher killed and ate children in her class. Daisy tried | :13:35. | :13:40. | |
to talk to allless, who kept -- Alex, who kept looking at Melissa | :13:40. | :13:44. | |
who ignored him. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night- | :13:44. | :13:50. | |
Time is told from the point of view of a boy who has as perinjures. | :13:50. | :13:55. | |
There is also the views of the eight members of the extended | :13:55. | :13:58. | |
family. Writing almost simultaneously from eight points of | :13:58. | :14:02. | |
view was hard, something I committed to early on. You are | :14:02. | :14:05. | |
never a single person with your family. You are often the child you | :14:05. | :14:10. | |
used to be, a parent to someone, quite often you don't really know | :14:10. | :14:14. | |
who you are, it depends who is in the room. As the holiday progresses, | :14:15. | :14:17. | |
several different stories emerge from the different view points. | :14:17. | :14:23. | |
While the three teenagers struggle to navigate the sexual currents of | :14:23. | :14:27. | |
adulthood. The parents find themselves simply adrift. "mum and | :14:27. | :14:29. | |
dad were sitting at opposite corners of the table. Why didn't | :14:29. | :14:34. | |
they love each other? It was easier being here with Louis is a and | :14:34. | :14:39. | |
Richard, who acted as a kind of padding, at home it was always | :14:39. | :14:44. | |
cooler in temperature when the two of them were together." People need | :14:44. | :14:49. | |
to be troubled in whatever way to generate stories, and gain your | :14:49. | :14:53. | |
interest. As the family members try to come to terms with themselves | :14:53. | :14:58. | |
and each other, the Red House itself becomes a presence. Haddon | :14:58. | :15:04. | |
lovingly describes the objects it contain, mute guardians of the past | :15:04. | :15:07. | |
and present. Towards the end of the book where everyone leaves the | :15:07. | :15:10. | |
holiday home where they have staying, they haven't really gone, | :15:10. | :15:14. | |
they have left a few things behind. The house continues as a character | :15:14. | :15:19. | |
in its own right. Full of all the marks and stains and coasts that | :15:19. | :15:23. | |
everyone else who has ever been in the house has left behind. Does | :15:23. | :15:27. | |
Haddon take us on a holiday to remember, or will his technical | :15:27. | :15:32. | |
experiments leave some readers behind? | :15:32. | :15:36. | |
To a certain extent, this idea of people trapped in one house, in one | :15:36. | :15:39. | |
holiday, is a familiar one, do you think that Mark Haddon breathes new | :15:39. | :15:49. | |
life into the device? Well, mostly. I think he does. I admire him, and | :15:49. | :15:53. | |
his previous novels as well, in managing to do, as you say, | :15:53. | :15:58. | |
experimental things, for popular fiction. He's a very popular writer | :15:58. | :16:08. | |
:16:08. | :16:08. | ||
to be trying to do. Sometimes in this novel, not just the use of the | :16:08. | :16:12. | |
eight view points, but rapid shifting from viewpoint to | :16:12. | :16:17. | |
viewpoint, sometimes there are problems with it. I quite admire | :16:17. | :16:22. | |
the effort to do it. It is an old fashioned thing, actually, the idea | :16:22. | :16:27. | |
that actually what fiction does is extends your sympathy to all sorts | :16:27. | :16:32. | |
of characters. It is a George Elliott thing with a sub-Virginia | :16:32. | :16:39. | |
Woolf thing to it. I was laughing at the word "horror" that you said | :16:39. | :16:46. | |
it. What I felt, and I think the idea, exactly as you said, the | :16:46. | :16:50. | |
project, he has done precisely, perfectly, what he set out to do, | :16:50. | :16:54. | |
in terms of an equal narrative. Nobody feels they are less or more | :16:54. | :16:58. | |
important. When you are reading it, you realise he's not going that is | :16:58. | :17:01. | |
the boring one I didn't want to write about. For me, the problem is, | :17:01. | :17:07. | |
that this sense of the trapped house, I have low tastes. I'm | :17:07. | :17:12. | |
brought up on Agatha Christie, Mysterious Affair of Styles, if I | :17:12. | :17:19. | |
read a country house, I want there to be a ghost or murder. There is a | :17:19. | :17:25. | |
ghost. Kind of a ghost. Everything about it I admired. I thought he | :17:25. | :17:28. | |
had completely delivered what he said in the film. I wanted more to | :17:28. | :17:34. | |
happen. I know the point is it is the extraordinaryness of | :17:34. | :17:40. | |
ordinariness. What about the individual characters. What about | :17:40. | :17:44. | |
the Melissa character, the teenager? All of the characters are | :17:44. | :17:49. | |
constructed in a really interesting way. I think maybe the book is a | :17:49. | :17:53. | |
bit too compressed. Because how have they made up these characters. | :17:53. | :17:57. | |
They are made up of memories, true and always, they are made up of | :17:57. | :18:07. | |
:18:07. | :18:12. | ||
what they need, they are made up of the games they play. They are made | :18:12. | :18:16. | |
up of the roads not taken and things not done. He weaves them | :18:16. | :18:20. | |
into one strand which is the one character, and weaves it all | :18:20. | :18:25. | |
together in this family dynamic, in which it is a bit like Chekhov, | :18:26. | :18:34. | |
nothing is meant to happen, there musn't be the gunshot. If there is, | :18:34. | :18:39. | |
you have undone everything. It is really about the complexity of the | :18:39. | :18:43. | |
psychopathology of every day life. You have no sooner decided that a | :18:43. | :18:46. | |
character is good, when you discover that character is | :18:46. | :18:53. | |
treacherous at the same time. Melissa is a bully, but she's also | :18:53. | :18:56. | |
strangely creative, extraordinarily frustrated and manipulative, and | :18:57. | :19:02. | |
stands in the strange relationship to Louisa, which who has a whole | :19:02. | :19:07. | |
life that nobody hardly dares to investigate. And it's like living, | :19:07. | :19:12. | |
but it is deliberately compressed and wrought to this extraordinarily | :19:12. | :19:16. | |
high standard. I would say, though, ultimately it doesn't work. It is | :19:16. | :19:21. | |
just a bit too hard on the reader. You need a bit more elbow room. | :19:21. | :19:26. | |
is funny you say that. Although he does distribute his sympathies very | :19:26. | :19:32. | |
evenly, and he's very fair, I think. Funnily enough, I think he's better | :19:32. | :19:36. | |
on teenagers than adults, and actually, the nearest he gets to | :19:36. | :19:43. | |
the thing you wanted, which is the heror, or something, at the heart | :19:43. | :19:50. | |
of it -- horror, or something, at the heart of it, is with Angela, | :19:50. | :19:59. | |
that is something that felt facticious. It doesn't work. She's | :19:59. | :20:03. | |
revisited by something in the past. It is like he heard a voice in his | :20:03. | :20:08. | |
head saying something like you said. That was one of the false notes in | :20:08. | :20:12. | |
it. I think it is partly of the idea that the construct of the | :20:12. | :20:17. | |
house is character, and requires something extra, whether it is a | :20:17. | :20:24. | |
Sarah Walters or Alan Holeinghurst extra, it is more than the | :20:24. | :20:32. | |
architecture of the novel. The point about Chekhov is right, there | :20:32. | :20:39. | |
is the gunshot, Vanya is it, how can you say that, we won't go with | :20:39. | :20:46. | |
Chekhov. I think that the sense of the, what is being celebrated is | :20:46. | :20:50. | |
that everybody can relate to this sort of story. The idea of | :20:50. | :20:55. | |
mismatched people, coming to the for whatever reason, they want an | :20:55. | :20:58. | |
epiphany, reconciliation. All of these things do work. I agree the | :20:58. | :21:03. | |
teenagers are better. I think he's terrific on girls, not just boys. I | :21:03. | :21:09. | |
think that the twists at the heart of it, which we can't reveal, they | :21:09. | :21:16. | |
are not quite...I Think we can reveal that there is no murder. The | :21:16. | :21:21. | |
Red House is available in all good book shops now. From one troubled | :21:21. | :21:27. | |
family to another. Mrs Robinson's seduction of a younger man in the | :21:27. | :21:31. | |
1960s was seen as sexy and glamorous, for her earlier name | :21:31. | :21:36. | |
sake in Victorian Britain, an affair meant disgrace. The story of | :21:36. | :21:41. | |
that, Mrs Robinson's downfall, has been told by Kate Summerscale, who | :21:41. | :21:49. | |
shot to fame with her story The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. This is | :21:49. | :21:55. | |
the story of a well to do Victorian lady, who kept a diary in the 1850, | :21:55. | :21:59. | |
in which she detailed all her miseries and frustrations with her | :21:59. | :22:05. | |
life, particularly her husband. She also detailed her several | :22:05. | :22:10. | |
infatuations with young men that she met. And in 1854, there are a | :22:10. | :22:13. | |
series of entries which apparently describe her having an affair with | :22:13. | :22:20. | |
one of these men. And her husband read her diary, confiscated the | :22:20. | :22:24. | |
diary, took her sons away, sued for divorce, and that was the setting | :22:24. | :22:30. | |
for one of the first and most notorious divorce cases, when the | :22:31. | :22:36. | |
new divorce court opened in 1858. As with Summerscale's previous | :22:36. | :22:41. | |
novel, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, the story of Isabella Robinson | :22:41. | :22:48. | |
involved meticulous research. found a big cachet of letters | :22:48. | :22:54. | |
relating to the case in -- cache of letters relating to the case in | :22:54. | :22:58. | |
Edinburgh, I was able to get behind the trial and the court case, to | :22:58. | :23:03. | |
see in the protaganist's own words what they were up to and what they | :23:03. | :23:07. | |
thought they were doing, and how they were presenting their stories. | :23:07. | :23:11. | |
The events unfold at the time of new divorce laws. And the bare | :23:11. | :23:16. | |
facts of the story, exposes the shocking Victorian attitudes to | :23:16. | :23:21. | |
women contained in the legislation. There was a stark double standard | :23:21. | :23:26. | |
enshrined, by which a husband could win a divorce, simply by proving | :23:26. | :23:31. | |
his wife had been unfaithful to him. Where as a woman had to prove in | :23:31. | :23:35. | |
order to win a divorce, that her husband, had not only been | :23:35. | :23:41. | |
unfaithful, but had also committed another marital crime, such as | :23:41. | :23:47. | |
beastality, or incest, or brutality towards her. At the time Mrs | :23:47. | :23:53. | |
Robinson's diaries created a sensation with their called born | :23:53. | :23:59. | |
pornographic entries. Provoking -- called pornographic entries, | :23:59. | :24:04. | |
provoking a press reaction that we would recognise today. In court | :24:04. | :24:10. | |
every word was reported, and with relish and excitement, this kind of | :24:10. | :24:14. | |
frank discussion of sexual desire in women was not available anywhere | :24:14. | :24:17. | |
else in the mainstream press. Then, of course, the newspapers would | :24:17. | :24:22. | |
also run editorals saying that the diary entries were disgusting. And | :24:23. | :24:29. | |
that the practice of writing such things was horrendous. | :24:30. | :24:34. | |
I suppose in a way, like Mark Haddon and Hilary Mantel, there are | :24:34. | :24:37. | |
big he can peck takes of this, because of Kate Summerscale -- | :24:37. | :24:41. | |
expectations of this, because of Kate Summerscale's previous success. | :24:41. | :24:47. | |
Were you hit by the story? I think so, I got a bit frustrated, because | :24:47. | :24:50. | |
we start off with Mrs Robinson, we get interested in her when she | :24:50. | :25:00. | |
:25:00. | :25:01. | ||
starts to keep the diary. But there is a tragic story before that, we | :25:01. | :25:07. | |
find Kate Summerscale sails over. 19 years old, married to a 43-year- | :25:07. | :25:11. | |
old widowed, retired naval officer. She is married for four years, has | :25:11. | :25:15. | |
a child. Then he suddenly becomes insane, and six months later he's | :25:15. | :25:21. | |
dead. That particular sequence of events suggests something, which | :25:21. | :25:24. | |
would have been a terrible tragedy and injustice done to this young | :25:24. | :25:29. | |
woman, at the very beginning of her life. Because the most likely story | :25:29. | :25:33. | |
there is syphilis, I'm afraid, especially, his naval history and | :25:33. | :25:37. | |
so on, it all adds up. Then you have all the other odd things that | :25:37. | :25:43. | |
happen. She marries unsuitably, she says, by this time she's already | :25:43. | :25:47. | |
fictionalising her life. Her father gives her all this money, which is | :25:47. | :25:51. | |
meant to make her independent of her husband, and she signs it all | :25:51. | :25:56. | |
over to him as blank cheques, and you have to think, why does she do | :25:56. | :25:59. | |
that? That is the stifling relationship at the heart of it, | :25:59. | :26:02. | |
this woman who could have been financially independent, but isn't. | :26:02. | :26:07. | |
Owes tofrg her husband, and so turns, -- owes everything to her us, | :26:07. | :26:12. | |
and turns, whether in fantasy or fact, to another man? There are | :26:12. | :26:16. | |
lots of other stories glanced at in this book. Unlike you, I found that | :26:16. | :26:23. | |
one of the things I liked about it. There wasn't room for all the | :26:23. | :26:29. | |
extraordinary stories of all the strange, offer sexual | :26:29. | :26:33. | |
irregularities and unhappinesss of all the various relations and | :26:33. | :26:39. | |
members of the family. Amazing things were going on. That is part | :26:39. | :26:43. | |
of the effect of the book, what is historically fascinating about this | :26:43. | :26:46. | |
is, this particular story is one example of something amazing that | :26:46. | :26:50. | |
is happening in the mid-19th sent treatment because divorce by our | :26:50. | :26:54. | |
standards doesn't become easy, but suddenly becomes possible. A whole | :26:54. | :26:58. | |
culture goes into shock about the condition of marriage. And has to | :26:58. | :27:02. | |
face up to the prevalence of adultery. Even Queen Vicoria says | :27:02. | :27:11. | |
perhaps people shouldn't get married. Do you think there is | :27:11. | :27:16. | |
adultery, there is an ambiguity, there is an element of fantasy, | :27:16. | :27:19. | |
isn't there? I think Kate Summerscale said something really | :27:19. | :27:24. | |
important in her film. It made me think of the Hilary Mantel, talking | :27:25. | :27:29. | |
about the seam of misogyny, that is so through everything. Unless you | :27:29. | :27:33. | |
look through that prisism, none of it makes sense. For me I thought I | :27:33. | :27:39. | |
was going to be thinking, I wonder did or they didn't they do it. What | :27:39. | :27:48. | |
I actually started to think was, my God, this is quite appalling. Not | :27:48. | :27:52. | |
only the things about a wife being a chat tell, and the husband being | :27:52. | :27:55. | |
able to take everything. But the other things, if the wife loses the | :27:55. | :28:00. | |
children get taken if they are over a certain age. Every time they talk | :28:00. | :28:03. | |
about this woman's inner most secrets, whether madness, | :28:03. | :28:06. | |
deillusion or truth, all the other women are cleared from the court. | :28:06. | :28:10. | |
You have this idea of a single woman, almost as if she's being | :28:10. | :28:16. | |
stoned, surrounded only by men. For me, oddly, like the stories within | :28:17. | :28:21. | |
a story, I found it a horrifying read. We think we know about the | :28:21. | :28:25. | |
position of women in the mid-19th century, there were still elements | :28:25. | :28:29. | |
that came as a surprise? Yes, I think we need to know a little bit | :28:29. | :28:33. | |
more about it. The father who settles money on her, settles it on | :28:33. | :28:37. | |
her. That is for the heirs of her body. That was to protect her. You | :28:37. | :28:45. | |
could do that. That had always been an option. But she didn't take it? | :28:45. | :28:49. | |
She gave it away. You want to know why. Is she guilty about something. | :28:49. | :28:57. | |
She says that funny thing about that first marriage being something | :28:57. | :29:01. | |
to do with unconquerable passion. Clearly it is something people | :29:02. | :29:06. | |
didn't want to happen but it did happen. But is the thing we think | :29:06. | :29:11. | |
happened, happen. What I found was this crucial of the individual, | :29:11. | :29:15. | |
clever woman, desperately trying to seek out intellectual company? | :29:15. | :29:23. | |
is a chronicle of thwarted ap site, isn't it. -- appetite. The appetite | :29:23. | :29:27. | |
is not just carnal, she is desperate for fiscal love -- | :29:27. | :29:33. | |
physical love, whether she got it or not from the doctor she fell for, | :29:33. | :29:38. | |
she definitely got it from a tutor of one of the children. She is | :29:38. | :29:40. | |
recording endlessly the speculations about art and the | :29:40. | :29:48. | |
landscape. She wants all that. Like some sort of George Elliott heroine. | :29:48. | :29:52. | |
If you would like to know more about the appetites of Mrs Robinson, | :29:52. | :29:56. | |
in the Victorian diary, the book is out now. Potentially ruinous, | :29:56. | :30:01. | |
hidden sexuality, also lies at the heart of the final book tonight. In | :30:01. | :30:05. | |
his latest model, In One Person, John Irving ifr, whose back | :30:05. | :30:11. | |
catalogue reads like a best seller list, takes on sexual ambiguity in | :30:11. | :30:16. | |
small town America. John Irving gained world renown for A Prayer | :30:16. | :30:20. | |
for Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules, and Hotel New Hampshire, the | :30:20. | :30:26. | |
novel, In One Person, looks at the story of Billy Abbott, a bisexual | :30:26. | :30:33. | |
writer, and his coming of age taking place in Vermont. He is torn | :30:33. | :30:39. | |
between his lust for the librarian Miss Frost, and a manipulative | :30:39. | :30:45. | |
student. "If an unwanted pregnancy was the abyss an intrepid girl | :30:45. | :30:51. | |
could fall into. Surely the abyss for a boy like me was to succumb to | :30:51. | :30:54. | |
homosexual activity. Sor so I believed at the fall of my senior | :30:54. | :31:01. | |
year at Favourite River Academy, I was 18, but my sexual misgivings | :31:01. | :31:07. | |
were innumberable. My self-hatred was huge." The first person | :31:07. | :31:11. | |
narrative goes on to span five decades of American history. And | :31:11. | :31:16. | |
over the years Billy accrues and reflects on a proliferation of | :31:16. | :31:21. | |
partners, from a predatory poet, to a Canadian drag Queen and a budding | :31:21. | :31:25. | |
opera singer. But his fluid sexuality makes him an object of | :31:25. | :31:35. | |
:31:35. | :31:35. | ||
distrust from childhood to retirement. And the book sees the | :31:35. | :31:42. | |
return of Irving to his book The World According to Garp. "You're a | :31:42. | :31:45. | |
transsexual, I said my boy don't name me and make me a catagory | :31:45. | :31:49. | |
before you get to know me. When she stood up from her desk she seemed | :31:49. | :31:54. | |
to tower over me. When she opened her arms to me, I didn't hesitate, | :31:54. | :31:59. | |
I ran to her strong embrace and kissed her". A po lemic against | :31:59. | :32:03. | |
narrow mindedness, In One Person is considered by Irving to be his most | :32:03. | :32:08. | |
political book in years. In the wake of recent books from others, | :32:08. | :32:18. | |
:32:18. | :32:19. | ||
does the theme of sexual prejudice still have bite? | :32:20. | :32:24. | |
The narrative of a bisexual man is unusual? It is only reading a lot | :32:24. | :32:29. | |
of the clips that I realised it is. I hadn't talked about it. We were | :32:29. | :32:35. | |
trying to think of others? could say Orlando, but not really. | :32:35. | :32:39. | |
I think this is tremendous. It is the idea that some how all these | :32:39. | :32:42. | |
discussions have been had, and all right thinking people now think | :32:42. | :32:45. | |
that what matters is you should be yourself, and you should be with | :32:45. | :32:49. | |
who you want to be, and being honourable and decent is all that | :32:49. | :32:52. | |
matters. We know this is not the case. Things are going backwards in | :32:52. | :32:58. | |
many of these areas. What I think he has done with wonderful Billy as | :32:58. | :33:03. | |
the narrate toe. He's a bt bit goofy, he doesn't always get it | :33:03. | :33:08. | |
right. He's passionate about his Shakespeare and acting, he wants to | :33:08. | :33:13. | |
read all the time. It is as much about the power of words and | :33:13. | :33:15. | |
theatres and as it is about sexuality and intolerance. He | :33:15. | :33:22. | |
gently takes us by the hand, and takes us through 70 years, is it 70 | :33:22. | :33:28. | |
or 50, I couldn't work it out. was 68? It really succeeded in | :33:28. | :33:32. | |
saying that there are different ways of seeing these experiences. | :33:32. | :33:37. | |
There are some people in the gook who define themselves as gay or | :33:37. | :33:42. | |
bisexual. There is a lot of cross dressing in Vermont t seems to me. | :33:42. | :33:46. | |
I was surprised by the amount of cross dressing in Vermont, | :33:46. | :33:51. | |
actually? It is clever and an intimate personal dialogue between | :33:51. | :33:57. | |
Billy and the reader. Billy's dates coincide exactly with Irving's own | :33:57. | :34:05. | |
dates. The bisexual man, who is a top and not a bottom. Picture of | :34:05. | :34:11. | |
dodger. Picture of Catio, and capable of having sex with both men | :34:11. | :34:15. | |
and women, is a slight low fantastic figure. I can think of | :34:16. | :34:23. | |
lots of gay men who would say they just didn't buy it. But it gives | :34:23. | :34:28. | |
him his get-out, it covers his incomprehension about gay sexuality. | :34:28. | :34:37. | |
Which is incredibly protien, and various, much more so than female | :34:37. | :34:42. | |
sexuality, which is more emotional and straight laceed in its way. | :34:42. | :34:44. | |
These guys are creating extraordinary things to do, that | :34:44. | :34:48. | |
you didn't know you wanted to do until you had tried everything else. | :34:48. | :34:53. | |
The only thing is underneath the notion of sexuality is a pretty | :34:53. | :34:59. | |
ordinary one. And the games he plays with the repeated moatity ofs, | :34:59. | :35:08. | |
like the small breast Moive, and the fact he will refeet his own | :35:08. | :35:14. | |
catch phrases, I was irritated with the use of -- repeat his on catch | :35:14. | :35:18. | |
phrases, I was irritated with the use of Shakespeare. Not all readers | :35:18. | :35:22. | |
will enjoy that. I disagree with one thing you were saying when it | :35:22. | :35:29. | |
takes you gently by the hand. I think he grabs and yaanks you and | :35:29. | :35:35. | |
won't let you go. Too much of a pole lemic? Too much of all sorts | :35:35. | :35:43. | |
of things. He talks a lot this narrator and he talks about the | :35:43. | :35:47. | |
same things a lot, you must be prepared for that. When it works it | :35:47. | :35:51. | |
is the fierceness of his intent. The character of his stepfather, | :35:51. | :35:57. | |
saying to the character at one stage, the trouble with you is you | :35:57. | :36:01. | |
are intolerant of anybody who is not tolerant. And you feel he's | :36:01. | :36:06. | |
being made very much a kind of spokesperson for the author himself, | :36:06. | :36:11. | |
and sometimes I think the fierce passages about AIDS of the 1980s, | :36:11. | :36:16. | |
that is terrific, sometimes it just goes on too much. I thought that | :36:16. | :36:21. | |
was incredibly moving the sections on AIDS, and the pace changed | :36:21. | :36:27. | |
dramatically? I thought that they were terrifically well done. Most | :36:27. | :36:30. | |
people reading that will have read other fiction covering those areas. | :36:30. | :36:35. | |
For me it wasn't like I have read this before. The point I made about | :36:35. | :36:39. | |
gently and repetition, I see it as a deliberate attempt as the | :36:39. | :36:46. | |
novelist to show that over a life you repeat yourself. You slightly | :36:46. | :36:51. | |
change your view and then you go back to something else. I see it as | :36:51. | :36:55. | |
an extraordinarily ambitious thing to do, in a Beckett type way, to | :36:55. | :37:00. | |
leave all of that in, rather than edit it out. Quite near the end the | :37:00. | :37:04. | |
point about the label is, when the beautiful boy, that he vanished off, | :37:04. | :37:09. | |
and he never comes back, but his son comes, and he's angry and will | :37:09. | :37:14. | |
spoil this play. He says what you are doing is making the disgusting, | :37:14. | :37:18. | |
the abnormal, normal and ordinary. For me that was the point of the | :37:18. | :37:23. | |
repetition, was that it makes it ordinary. Shouldn't it be ordinary. | :37:23. | :37:27. | |
It is not just sex at centre stage, there is the literary world, | :37:27. | :37:32. | |
constant references to Shakespeare, to Flaubert? And to the fact that | :37:32. | :37:38. | |
he is a writer. Poor old Madame Bovary has been worked very hard. | :37:38. | :37:46. | |
What about the club and all of that. Not all of it is entirely | :37:46. | :37:53. | |
convincing, we are reworking all of the Irving tropes, wrestling. He | :37:53. | :37:57. | |
has to pull off a movie stunt by doing his famous, whatever that is | :37:57. | :38:02. | |
called, the duck-under. I will wrestle us away from this item and | :38:02. | :38:06. | |
move on. Love it, loathe it, or swing both ways possibly, In One | :38:06. | :38:10. | |
Person is available now. This week saw the announcement of the | :38:10. | :38:13. | |
shortlist for The Orange Prize. Founded by one of my studio guests, | :38:13. | :38:18. | |
guess which one. And this year featuring a familiar face amongst | :38:18. | :38:26. | |
the judge, we asked Natalie to talk us through the runners and riders. | :38:26. | :38:34. | |
Half Blood Blues is set during the Second World War, by Esi Edugyan, | :38:34. | :38:38. | |
it is about ultimate betrayal, it is about jazz musicians in Berlin, | :38:38. | :38:46. | |
and in Paris as the Nazis takeover. As a story it turns on sexual and | :38:46. | :38:49. | |
artistic jealousy, it is the fact that someone else's talent is so | :38:49. | :38:55. | |
great it makes you hate them. It is a sign of her brilliance. The | :38:55. | :39:00. | |
Forgotten Waltz is about an affair, set in Ireland at the time when the | :39:00. | :39:05. | |
credit crunch is just about to hit and hits. It is a metaphor for | :39:05. | :39:10. | |
everything that goes wrong in Ireland for the past decade. Gina, | :39:10. | :39:15. | |
our heroine realises how much money each kiss with this man cost her. | :39:15. | :39:18. | |
Everyone bought their houses when the economy was at a thriving | :39:18. | :39:23. | |
height and now they want sell it. The Song of Achilles is by Madeline | :39:23. | :39:27. | |
Miller, she's the only first-time novelist, but punches her weight | :39:27. | :39:33. | |
with the others. She has written a very beautiful love story with | :39:34. | :39:38. | |
Achilles, it is a story we know from the Iliad, but told by the | :39:38. | :39:42. | |
other point of view. It is incredibly touching and poetic, it | :39:42. | :39:47. | |
is the only book on the entirety of the Orange sub misses list this | :39:47. | :39:55. | |
year that made me fry. The next one is Foreign Bodies, about a woman | :39:55. | :39:59. | |
called Bea, living in New York, where she teaches, and her | :39:59. | :40:03. | |
extremely demanding brother, Marvyn, demands that she goes over to Paris | :40:03. | :40:11. | |
to try to bring his son home. It is extremely clever book, never stuffy, | :40:11. | :40:17. | |
very certificate reebbral, a lot like Henry James. We have State of | :40:17. | :40:23. | |
Wonder by Ann Patchett, she as an old hand, about a woman called | :40:23. | :40:27. | |
Marina, a research scientist, and her research colleague is sent to | :40:27. | :40:37. | |
:40:37. | :40:37. | ||
hout America by their boss to find out what is happening with a | :40:37. | :40:42. | |
research project, and he disappears, she goes to find him. Painter of | :40:42. | :40:48. | |
Silence is set in Romania in the 1950s, at the beginning of the book | :40:48. | :40:51. | |
a deaf mute man arrives at the hospital. He has a terrible story | :40:51. | :40:56. | |
but has no language to express it. He can only draw and paint and make | :40:56. | :41:00. | |
imagery of what has happened to him, the language of the book is | :41:00. | :41:04. | |
incredibly artistic and very beautiful. | :41:04. | :41:08. | |
That's all for tonight. Thanks to my guests, Germaine Greer, John | :41:08. | :41:11. | |
Mullen and Kate Mosse. Remember you can find out more about all of | :41:11. | :41:15. | |
tonight's books and find a longer version of my interview with Hilary | :41:15. | :41:20. | |
Mantel on the website. Do continue to tweet away. Next week Kirsty | :41:20. | :41:29. | |
will be here to discuss the latest installment in the 7-up series, and | :41:29. | :41:35. | |
The Dictator. Jools Holland is up next. To get you into a musical | :41:35. | :41:45. | |
:41:45. | :42:03. | ||
mood, here is King Creasote and # I won't go too far | :42:03. | :42:13. | |
:42:13. | :42:18. | ||
# I promise to crawl # Until I'm back on my feet | :42:18. | :42:28. | |
:42:28. | :42:29. | ||
# If something were wrong # Do you think I'd leave | :42:29. | :42:39. | |
:42:39. | :42:43. | ||
# If something went wrong # Don't you know that I'd be here | :42:43. | :42:53. | |
:42:53. | :42:55. | ||
# So who's been unfair # Who causes you sorrow | :42:55. | :43:05. | |
:43:05. | :43:08. | ||
# Who's been unkind # Who burst your bubble | :43:08. | :43:15. | |
# Who drags you down # Down | :43:15. | :43:25. | |
:43:25. | :43:36. |