London Review Bookshop Podcast

In her first novel The Last Sane Woman (Verso) poet Hannah Regel investigates the pains and pleasures of artistic practice carried out against the odds. While researching in a small archive dedicated to women’s art young graduate Nicola Long happens upon one half of a correspondence, conducted half a century before, written by a recently graduated ceramicist to a friend. As Nicola reads on she becomes obsessed with the parallels between her own life and that of the woman she encounters in the letters.

Regel was joined in conversation by LRB contributor and art critic Emily LaBarge.

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In her latest semi-autobiographical novel Playboy (Tuskar Rock, translated by Holly James), leading French writer Constance Debré describes how a woman, at the age of 43, abandons her apartment, her marriage and her successful legal career to lead a new life as an out lesbian and a writer. In a series of short, sharp vignettes the narrator describes a series of meetings with lovers, with her father and with her son and ex-husband, exploding heteronormative assumptions about what it means to be queer in a straight world. Debré was joined in conversation about her work by writer and critic Alice Blackhurst.

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In her debut novel Scaffolding (Chatto) Lauren Elkin – ‘The Susan Sontag of her generation’, according to Deborah Levy – presents two couples occupying the same Paris apartment, five decades apart. Lauren Elkin’s previous works include Art Monsters, a landmark study of women artists, Flâneuse and a translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Inseparables. She was joined in conversation by writer and broadcaster Octavia Bright.

Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod

Get the book: https://lrb.me/scaffoldingpod

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Anne Serre’s latest novel to appear in English, brilliantly translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson, was written in the aftermath of the death of the author’s younger sister, and recounts the tortured relationship between an unnamed narrator and his close childhood friend Fanny, a young woman suffering from profound psychological distress. Hailed in Le Point as a 'masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance’, A Leopard-Skin Hat (Lolli Editions) is a bewildering rollercoaster of hope and despair, calling into question the form of the novel itself.

Serre, Bordeaux-born author of 14 previous novels, was joined in conversation about her work with novelist and LRB contributor Lucie Elven.

Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod

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Born in Belgium in 1954 to conservative, Catholic parents, Lucy Sante migrated to New York in the 1960s, where she became associated with the Bohemian artistic milieu of the city. After producing several highly acclaimed works of history such as Low Life and The Other Paris and translating Félix Fénéon’s feuilletons for NYRB as Novels in Three Lines, she announced in 2021 that she was transitioning: ‘Yes, I’ve known since at least age 11 but probably earlier and yes, I suppressed and denied it for decades’, she wrote at the time. In I Heard Her Call My Name (Hutchinson Heinemann), ‘a generous, fearlessly revealing book’ (Samantha Hunt), she describes with great grace, wit and humility her decision to begin living the life she knew was truly hers.

Sante is in conversation about her memoir with writer and filmmaker Juliet Jacques.

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Born in the pandemic lockdown of 2020, when Britain’s restaurants had closed their doors, Jonathan Nunn founded the online newsletter Vittles, which rapidly established itself as the premier platform for exploring food cultures in Britain and around the world. Out of Vittles was born London Feeds Itself, a fascinating collection of essays written at the intersections of food, architecture, history, and demography. First published by Open City in 2022, London Feeds Itself now appears in a new edition in association with Fitzcarraldo.

In this episode, Jonathan Nunn speaks about the project with architectural historian Owen Hatherley, whose essay ‘The Housing Estate’ from the book serves as a springboard for the discussion.

Get the book: https://londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/london-feeds-itself-jonathan-nunn

Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod

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