Elizabeth Strout is our author this episode – and we also dip a toe in the worlds of Canadian and Irish literature. Spoilers: we know a lot less than we should. Suggestions welcomed, please!
I’m off to Canada shortly, which is why we chose the first topic – and nothing much links Canada and Ireland other than the fact that I’ve thought they’d be interesting nations’ literature to talk about. In the second half, we turn to an American writer – a modern one, no less! – Elizabeth Strout. She’s literally still alive, guys. That modern.
Check out our iTunes page – rate/review through iTunes and all that – let us know which you’d pick in each category, and any other topics or authors you think we should cover in future episodes.
Look out for an inelegant bit where I sub in a clip because I got the title of a Stef Penney novel wrong. #Professional.
Here are the books and authors we mention:
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Ulysses by James Joyce
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
The Folded Leaf by William Maxwell
Jacob’s Room is Full of Books by Susan Hill
Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill
Agatha Christie
Another Part of the Wood by Beryl Bainbridge
Sweet William by Beryl Bainbridge
Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge
Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh
I Follow But Myself by Frank Baker
Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker
Margaret Atwood
Alice Munro
Elizabeth Bowen
Molly Keane / MJ Farrell
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Seamus Heaney
Carol Shields
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
Over the Footlights by Stephen Leacock
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Translations by Brian Friel
Oscar Wilde
George Bernard Shaw
The Gingerbread Woman by Jennifer Johnston
My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Anne Tyler
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson (who is Canadian!)
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
A Compass Error by Sybille Bedford
A Favourite of the Gods by Sybille Bedford
Pleasures and Landscapes by Sybille Bedford