Take Four Books

The award-winning English writer Gwendoline Riley speaks to Take Four Books, about her new novel The Palm House, and, together with presenter James Crawford, they explore its three influences.
The Palm House follows the friendship between Laura Miller and Edmund Putnam, known as ‘Putnam’, who both work in the London media landscape in 2017. Over the course of a long weekend, they meet several times for drinks and crisps, and discuss the state of their lives, and share stories from their past.
Gwendoline Riley won the Betty Trask Award for her debut novel Cold Water in 2002. Subsequent works have seen her win the Somerset Maugham Award and she was recently given the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize from Yale University in recognition of her life’s work to date.
For her three influences Gwendoline chose: Annie Ernaux's short non-fiction book about her experiences of having an abortion called Happening from the 2000; Charles Dickens's last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend from 1864; and Penelope Fitzgerald's novel Offshore from 1979, which won the Booker Prize that year.
Producer: Dominic Howell
Editor: Gillian Wheelan
This was a BBC Audio Scotland production.

Presented by James Crawford Take Four Books speaks to the writer Solvej Balle from her home on an island off the coast of Denmark about her latest instalment of the 'On the Calculation of Volume' series. The novels tell the story of Tara Selter, an antiquarian bookseller who wakes up one morning to find she is endlessly reliving the same day: the 18th of November.
Solvej's influences for this episode are all Danish. She chose: Stories About Tacit by Cecil Bødker from 2016, which is a novel about social outcasts who form a reluctant alliance on an abandoned farm in 1850s Denmark; Inger Christensen's poetry collection, Alphabet, from 1981; and a book of philosophy first published in the year 1843 - Either/Or - by the man often described as the 'father of existentialism' - Søren Kierkegaard.
Producer: Dominic Howell
Editor: Gillian Wheelan
This is a BBC Audio Scotland production.

Scottish novelist and poet Jenni Fagan tells presenter James Crawford about her new novel, The Delusions, in which she takes readers to the afterlife - or, at least, to its entry portal. It is a place where the newly dead are required to queue up and account for the truth of their lives - and extract all their delusions - if they are to have any chance of passing into eternity.
Jenni’s three chosen influences are Nina Cassian’s poem Temptation (1966), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), and Jeanette Winterson’s Weight (2005).
Producer: Rachael O'Neill
Editor: Gillian Wheelan
This was a BBC Audio Scotland production.

The much-loved Canadian writer and former Booker Prize winner, Yann Martel, speaks to Take Four Books this week about his new novel, and first for a decade - Son Of Nobody - and together with presenter James Crawford, they explore its connections to three other literary works. The book follows a classical scholar, Harlow Donne, as he gets a chance to study at Oxford and uncovers a lost account of the Trojan war. The fictional Homeric poem unfolds across the top of the page, while Harlow's often heartfelt footnotes, addressed to his young daughter, Helen, run below.
Yann, who won the Booker in 2002 for his novel Life Of Pi, chose as his three influences: Stephen Mitchell's 2011 translation of The Iliad; Alice Oswald's Memorial, which is her translation of the Iliad's "atmosphere" and was also published in 2011; and Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, which was first staged in 1962.
Producer: Dominic Howell
Editor: Gillian Wheelan
This was a BBC Audio Scotland production.

Northern Irish writer and multi‑award‑winning novelist Jan Carson talks to James Crawford about her new book and the three key influences that shaped it.
Her latest novel, Few and Far Between, transports readers to an alternative Northern Ireland, where the country’s great inland loch is partially drained in the 1960s, leaving behind a chain of islands that become a refuge for those seeking to escape political strife.
For her influences, Jan chose: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (1971); Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (2017); and Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (1951).
Producer: Rachael O'Neill
Editor: Gillian Wheelan
This was a BBC Audio Scotland production.