This week, I spoke with the Irish-Canadian author Joanna Pocock, whose new memoir, Greyhound, absolutely blew me away. The story follows Joanna as she recounts two journeys – one from 2006, and one from 2023 – that she took across the United States of America. However, unlike the classic ‘roadtrip’ novel, Joanna undertook the entirety of both journeys by Greyhound bus. What follows is an incredible portrait of a nation and its people: a feminist, ecological, anti-capitalist, profoundly humanist elegy that left me desperate to buy a ticket and head for the open road.

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Joanna’s four books were:

• Bear, Marian Engel (1976)

• Silent Spring, Rachel Carsen (1962)

• Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, Terry Tempest Williams (1991)

• America Day by Day, Simone de Beauvoir (1948)