London Review Bookshop Podcast

The kitchen has always been a complex space for women: a place of labour and gendered expectations, as well as a site of nourishment, care and company. But how does this change when you’re alone, not cooking for family or friends, but simply for yourself? In The Spinster Cookbook (Indigo Press) Eli Davies explores what happens when food is uncoupled from domestic duty and romantic relationships and what it means to cook (or not) for yourself and by yourself. Davies was in conversation with Rebecca May Johnson, author of Small Fires and editor at Vittles magazine.
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Rachel Long’s debut collection, My Darling from the Lions (Picador), was nominated for the Forward Prize, the Costa, and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Sparrow on the Rooftop (Chatto & Windus) is the eagerly-awaited follow-up: Saba Sams has described it as ‘gruesome and intimate, alive to the rot, funny’. Long read from the collection and was in conversation with Sarah Howe, poetry editor at Chatto, whose own second collection Foretokens was published last year.

You can buy a copy of Sparrow on the Rooftop from the London Review Bookshop.
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In Michael Bracewell’s new novella The Smiths an anonymous narrator recounts the impact of the iconic pop group on his life. Accompanied by the French actress Carole Bouquet he embarks on a picaresque journey from the old Selfridge Hotel to West Hollywood, via a park bench in Cavendish Square. Deeply romantic and laced with comedy - not unlike the band themselves – The Smiths is an affectionate celebration of a pivotal episode in popular music history. The author read from his work, and discussed it with the novelist and journalist Leo Robson.

You can buy a copy of The Smiths from the London Review Bookshop.
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The poetry of the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, John of the Cross, has inspired and consoled for hundreds of years, influencing writers from James Joyce to Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill to T.S. Eliot. Dark Night (Penguin Classics) gathers all of John’s poetry, together with a selection of his prose. The book’s translator, poet Martha Sprackland, joined LRB contributing editor James Butler for a discussion of the life and work of John of the Cross, and his abiding influence.

You can buy a copy of Dark Night from the London Review Bookshop.
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Venice, September 1974. A chance meeting between a young English artist and Danilo Donati, production manager for Fellini and Pasolini, leads us into a tale of queer love, political intrigue and brutal murder. Emily Watlington wrote in Art in America ‘In our own era of rising fascism, of increasing violence and conservatism, Laing's novel feels eerily timely.’ To mark the paperback publication of The Silver Book Olivia Laing was reading from their work, and in conversation with Jack Parlett, author of Flamboyance, Fire Island and The Poetics of Cruising.

You can buy a copy of The Silver Book from the London Review Bookshop.
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