Whether it’s a single action that reverberates around a community, or the rupture of a break-up, literature is filled with memorable instants after which everything changes. Our guest this month is Amy Liptrot, who joined us from Orkney to talk about her second book The Instant, a memoir of Amy’s move from Scotland to Berlin, where she searches for racoons, tracks the moon, goes to techno clubs, looks for boyfriends, falls in love and has her heart broken. It’s also about connectivity and the instants that change our lives, and so in honour of Amy’s book our theme today is ‘the instant’ - we’ll be thinking about those moments in literature when things turn on a dime. Sit back, enjoy, and let us change the course of your life over the next hour on literary friction.

Recommendations on the theme, The Instant:

Octavia: All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

Carrie: The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

General Recommendations:

Octavia: Body Work: the radical power of personal narrative by Melissa Febos

Amy: Time on Rock: A Climber's Route Into The Mountains by Anna Fleming

Carrie: Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl

Find a list of all recommended books at:

https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/april-2022-the-instant-with-amy-liptrot

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/litfriction

Email us: [email protected]

Tweet us & find us on Instagram: @litfriction

This episode is sponsored by Picador: https://www.panmacmillan.com/picador

The theme for this minisode was suggested by our patron Maria and it's a subject very close to our hearts: bookshops. We love bookshops - those magical places where you can get your hands on the books you want, the books you don’t yet know you want, the books that want you, and everything in between. Listen in for this ode to everything we love about bookshops and booksellers, including our earliest memories of hanging out in bookshops, our favourite bookshops in the UK and around the world, plus all the usual cultural recommendations. Enjoy!

We love a good satire here at LF, so we're thrilled this month to bring you a show dedicated to the form. Argentine writer and novelist Pola Oloixarac joined us from Barcelona to talk about her latest novel Mona, which has been translated from Spanish by Adam Morris. It's the story of a young Peruvian novelist invited to Sweden, where she's in the running for one of the most prestigious literary awards in Europe. There, she has a number of hilarious run-ins with authors from all over the world, but lurking beneath the surface is a memory of violence which

cannot be fully suppressed. It's a biting and very funny satire of the literary world, so in honour of Mona this show is all about our favourite satirical work, from The Master and the Margarita to Catch 22. We'll get into what we think makes satire successful, and also some of the times it can fall flat, plus all the usual recommendations. Enjoy!

Recommendations on the theme, Satire:

Octavia: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Carrie: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

General Recommendations:

Octavia: The Liars' Club by Mary Karr

Pola: Borges by Adolfo Bioy Casares, translated by Valerie Miles (NY Review of Books)

Carrie: Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy

Find a list of all recommended books at: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/mar-2022-satire-with-pola-oloixarac

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/litfriction

Email us: [email protected]

Tweet us & find us on Instagram: @litfriction

This episode is sponsored by Picador: https://www.panmacmillan.com/picador

Our last minisode was about mothers, so in the name of equity (and riffing on Octavia’s statement that she’d rather be a dad) we’re extending the conversation to fathers in literature. The figure of the father has its own heavy symbolism, wrapped up with masculinity and the need to provide, and literature is filled with fathers from the admirable to the monstrous. We ask whether we expect as much from fathers in life and in books, and whether being a ‘bad’ father might pose a different kind of threat. Plus we get into the father memoir, how expectations are shifting, and the power of shame in creating more equal parenting roles. Enjoy!

This month's show is about East and Southeast Asian identity in Britain. We spoke to journalist Helena Lee about East Side Voices, the anthology of writing she edited that celebrates the diversity of these voices in the UK. We also spoke to poet and writer Will Harris about the poem he contributed and some of the other pieces from the collection, which features writers including Mary Jean Chan, Sharlene Teo, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan and Catherine Cho. These essays and poems cover a range of experiences and settings, from the set of Harry Potter to the NHS frontlines, and seek to combat the absence of representation in British culture in which East and Southeast Asian lives are often, to use Salman Rushdie’s words, "visible but unseen". Listen in for readings, music, plus all the usual recommendations.

Recommendations:

Octavia: Pisti, 80 rue de Belleville by Estelle Hoy

Helena: Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda

Will: Ultimatum Orangutan by Khairani Barokka

Carrie: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

Find a list of all recommended books at: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/feb-2022-east-side-voices-with-helena-lee-and-will-harris

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/litfriction

Email us: [email protected]

Tweet us & find us on Instagram: @litfriction

This episode is sponsored by Picador: https://www.panmacmillan.com/picador

In honour of the fact that a lot of our friends are suddenly becoming parents, this minisode is dedicated to mothers in literature. The figure of the mother is seriously heavy with symbolism - whether she’s the perfect mother or the monstrous mother, the mother we’re supposed to long for or the mother we’re supposed to fear. Then there's motherhood as an experience in all its complexity, with all its ambivalences and sacrifices and joys, and the politics that surround these choices and identity shifts. There's a lot to talk about! We definitely don't get through even half of it in a single show, but if you’d like some book recommendations about mothers and motherhood (or want to find out which of us would rather be a dad!) then this one’s for you.

It’s our last Literary Friction of 2021, so as usual it's time for our year in review show, packed full of recommendations just in time for your holiday shopping. 2021 may have been a bad year for going out, but it was a great year for books, and the voices that lifted us out of our lockdown torpor are particularly special to us now. Listen in for some of our favourite reads from the last year, a gentle check in on how our reading resolutions from 2020 went (clue: patchy), plus books we are looking forward to in 2022. We've posted a list of all the recommendations on our page at Bookshop.org so click the link below to see everything lined up, and please remember to support your local independent bookshop! Happy holidays everyone, catch you in the new year with our exciting 2022 programme.

List of books recommended in this episode: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/2021-year-in-review

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/litfriction

Email us: [email protected]

Tweet us & find us on Instagram: @litfriction

This episode is sponsored by Picador https://www.panmacmillan.com/picador

Regular listeners will know that we love to get a little meta here on LF, and this month author Ruth Ozeki gave us the perfect excuse to indulge ourselves as we slide into the holiday season. Ruth's latest novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, is about a boy named Benny who loses his father and shortly thereafter begins to hear the voices of inanimate objects, including the voice of the novel itself. In honour of Ruth, and Benny, this show is all about books about books. We'll dig into the ways that literature can be about itself, from books set in libraries to stories about writers to metafictional texts about their own means of creation, and ask what the joys and the pitfalls of this kind of self-referentiality can be - plus all the usual recommendations.

Recommendations on the theme, Books About Books:

Octavia: The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco

Carrie: Writers & Lovers by Lily King

General Recommendations:

Octavia: The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial by Maggie Nelson

Ruth: The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges

Carrie: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Find a list of all recommended books at: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/december-2021-books-about-books-with-ruth-ozeki

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/litfriction

Email us: [email protected]

Tweet us & find us on Instagram: @litfriction

This episode is sponsored by Picador: https://www.panmacmillan.com/picador

In the wake of the COP26 summit in Glasgow we are thinking a lot about climate crisis and the role literature can play in galvanising people to take action. We want to think about how fiction, poetry, and non-fiction writing can approach climate crisis beyond showing how terrible it will be in the future - is there a way to write about the subject that's not only disaster fiction? How do we move out of what Jenny Offill calls 'the twilight knowing' into full comprehension? Listen in for our thoughts on all this plus lots of recommendations for books that address the climate crisis either directly or indirectly.

Find a list of some of the books we talked about at: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/minisode-26-twilight-knowing

Social hierarchies and the metrics of status and success are a part of life accepted by some and rejected by others, but whatever your position, they are hard to escape. There are lots of novels about characters climbing proverbial ladders, from Patrick Bateman rising through the ranks in the workplace in American Psycho to Becky Sharpe social climbing in Vanity Fair. Our guest this month is Natasha Brown, whose debut novel Assembly follows a Black British woman preparing for a garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, and thinking through the stories she exists within - stories of class, race, and the meaning of success. She's ticked all the 'right' boxes, went to a good university, has a cushy job in finance, owns her flat, and yet she begins to question the cost of her complicity in a system that will never fully accept her. We get into how books can enforce these kinds of social norms or subvert them, and whether fiction is a good place to question these structures, plus all the usual recommendations.

Recommendations on the theme, Climbing the Ladder:

Octavia: The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Carrie: Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

General Recommendations:

Octavia: No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute by Lauren Elkin

Natasha: Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy

Carrie: Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

Find a list of all recommended books at: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/november-2021-climbing-the-ladder-with-natasha-brown

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/litfriction

Email us: [email protected]

Tweet us & find us on Instagram: @litfriction

This episode is sponsored by Picador: https://www.panmacmillan.com/picador