Joe Haddow welcomes two more authors to the Book Off studio - for a war of the words!

This week, he's joined by debut novelists Fran Fabriczki and Sam Beckbessinger, who discuss their new books, writing processes and inspirations.

They talk about Los Angeles (the loves / the hates), wry humour, peri menopause, forging anger into stories and legendary mums. We also get some pretty great book recommendations too.

THE BOOK OFF

'The Book Of George' by Kate Greathead

VS

'We Have Always Lived In The Castle' by Shirley Jackson

Here's a little more info on our guest's books:

'Femme Feral' by Sam Beckbessinger

EVER FELT READY TO HOWL?

Hyper-competent start up CFO Ellie is 46-year-old and like most women, is already juggling too much. Daughter's not talking to her, husband's not listening to her, and she's got a promotion coming up at work. It's an inconvenient time to be beset by mid-life symptoms: coarse hair in new places, hot flushes, insomnia, losing time . . . finding bloodstains on all her clothing, howling at the moon.

Her doctor diagnoses perimenopause. But it's another 28-day cycle that's taking hold. One involving fur, and teeth, and a not insignificant amount of rage.

Suddenly the troubles in her life - hot flushes, thankless family, spiralling to-do list, oblivious husband, the w*nker promoted above her at work - seem almost . . . bite-size.

'Porcupines' by Fran Fabriczki

Los Angeles, 2001. Sonia is raising her daughter, Mila, alone in the sunny but somnolent suburbs of LA. Her days are a blur of not-quite-illegal business activities, avoiding other moms, and baking birthday cakes laced with rum: minor mistakes that nevertheless remind her she doesn’t belong.

Mila, meanwhile, is juggling violin and swimming lessons and navigating the treacherous social politics of school – all the while trying to get her mother to share something, anything, about her past.

But there are just too many things that Mila doesn’t know:

• She doesn’t know that her mother grew up in Soviet Hungary (where getting your hands on a banana was one of the greatest thrills in life)
• She doesn’t know that her mother has a sister called Rina (whom she hasn’t spoken to in 10 years)
• The only thing she does know about her father is that he was a ‘good time’ (according to her mother)
• Crucially, she doesn’t know that there is a very good reason why her mother dodges everyone, from traffic cops to vice principals.

So, Mila concocts a scheme to get her mother, and the man Mila is kind of sure must be her father to reconnect. It involves corralling Sonia into chaperoning an orchestra of ten-year-olds (most of whom seem to be called Megan) on a road trip from LA to San Francisco, and it may just cause their carefully constructed lives to implode.

Moving between Budapest before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Washington, DC in the tense years of the Cold War and the bright sunshine of early 2000s Los Angeles, Porcupines is an irresistible novel about mothers and daughters, belonging and reinvention, the things we carry with us, and those we tell ourselves we’ve left behind.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.