This week’s Bookshelf features the latest from Elizabeth Strout, creator of Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, returning with a stand‑alone novel called The Things We Never Say. We’re also reading an ambitious, genre‑bending novel that moves from 1980s gaming culture to far‑future space travel, and Daniel Kehlmann’s The Director, a German novel in translation that explores film, power and propaganda. Joining us to review are Geordie Williamson - critic, publisher and writer; and Robert Forster - singer‑songwriter, founding member of The Go‑Betweens, memoirist and brand new novelist with Songwriters on the Run.

~ REVIEWERS

• Robert Forster and Geordie Williamson

~ BOOKS

• Daniel Kehlmann, The Director (translated from the German by Ross Benjamin), Riverrun
• Elizabeth Strout, The Things We Never Say, Viking Penguin  
• Portia Elan, Homebound, Chatto & Windus
• Caro Claire Burke, Yesteryear, Fourth Estate 

~ OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Daniel Kehlmann, works
• Elizabeth Strout, My Name is Lucy Barton
• The Boundless Deep, Richard Holmes
• Johnno, David Malouf
• Keeley Jobe, The Endling
• Ana Paula Maia, On Earth as It Is Beneath

~ CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
• Sound, Craig Tilmouth and Roi Huberman
• Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown