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- [00:00]
A
Hey, this is Jonathan Fields, host of the Good Life Project podcast. Boost Mobile reminds me of what I love when someone reimagines what's possible. Offering reliable nationwide coverage backed by a 30 day money back guarantee. While other carriers spend millions on flashy super bowl ads, Boost Mobile puts those dollars towards what matters more, delivering reliable nationwide coverage at prices that make you wonder why we've been paying so much for just $25 a month. You get unlimited service that will never go up in price, not next year, not ever. And they're so confident you'll love it, they back it with a 30 day money back guarantee, no questions asked. Want to see if Boost Mobile is right for you? Visit your nearest Boost mobile store or boostmobile.com customers who cancel within 30 days of activation will have Boost service fees refunded, activation fees if applicable, and and phone payments will not be refunded.
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B
I think it is a book that does ask you to think about women, motherhood, what that really means, what women's leadership can mean. It is a book to challenge you and make you think on all of those questions. Hello and welcome to this month's book club episode. Today I have a very special guest joining me as my co host and it's very fitting because I'm back in Canberra at the Australian National University, which is home to the Global Institute for Women's Leadership. So of course I'm joined by Professor Michelle Ryan, our fabulous director. We call the institute Jewel and Michelle is the director of Jewel. She's also a voracious reader who started a book club in Canberra. Michelle, welcome to the podcast.
- [01:48]
C
Thanks so much for having me on. It's such a pleasure in person book group but this is very exciting.
- [01:54]
B
Now you've been a podcast guest in the past and so we've had the opportunity to talk about your life and how you came to Canberra. But for those who haven't listened to that episode, just give us the highlights and tell us how you created your very own book club.
- [02:09]
C
So I lived in the UK for quite a long time. I'm originally Australian, but academics often go further afield. So I was in the UK when you started up Jewel and in the UK at King's College in London, but then the follow up in here at anu in in Australia and when the call came out for that directorship job, I was very excited. The idea of being able to return to Australia, return to Canberra and of course take on the director role of Jewel, which has been amazing. So I've been back in Canberra for the Last three and a half years or so. And one of the first things that I did when I knew I was moving back was on Twitter, when Twitter was still Twitter and not what it is today. I put out a on Twitter to my followers and I said, oh, does anyone have a book group I can join when I get back to Canberra? And there was just crickets. No one? No, unfortunately. I'm sure there's lots of fabulous book groups, but no one, no one sort of came forward. So instead I put out a second tweet and I said, does anyone want to join a book group in Canberra? And I had about a dozen people say, yep, absolutely. And from that we've got a, I guess a rotating stock of book groupers and we meet once a month. It's very Canberra, so lots of public servants, so from most departments, but we've also got academics, art curators, artists themselves, people from NGOs. It's such a fabulous group.
- [03:33]
B
And how disciplined are you about talking about the book? Or is it, you know, sort of mostly chit chat and a bit of book?
- [03:39]
C
We're pretty, pretty good. So we definitely talk book, but we definitely go off piste as well. Often related to. So it might be about travels to the country where we're reading or talking about food, if it's a food related book. But yeah, it definitely sort of moves here and there. We've also got great side quests for this book group. So we have artistic side quests. So we do things like we did a pottery class the other day, we did a life drawing course at the National Gallery of Australia. So it's a great, great group of people.
- [04:11]
B
It sounds amazing. Well, hello to all your book club friends. You might want to be discussing this book with them. We're going to discuss the Book of Guilt, which is by award winning Kiwi author. So a New Zealander, why not? Katherine Chidgey. Chidji's ninth book is the one that we'll be talking about and it's a dystopian fiction. We can only really talk about this book with a kind of plot spoiler. I'm sorry about that. There are more plot twists than we will reveal, but there is one central plot twist. We really can't have any sensible discussion about the book without telling you. So if you're the sort of person who wants to keep that for the book, hit pause. Now go and read the book and come back. But the story of the Book of Guilt is that it's set in an alternate Britain, Britain in 1979, but not Britain as we know it. This is one that has been shaped by a different World War II history. In particular, the history is that an assassination attempt against Hitler was successful. That led the new leaders of Germany to enter peace negotiations. And instead of World War II playing out, as we all know it did, there was a peace deal. And that that did mean that things like the science undertaken by Nazi scientists was viewed differently than it was in the wake of World War II, as we know that history. At the heart of this story, there are three absolutely identical boys. The only way to tell them apart is they have to wear different colours. Vincent, William and Lawrence. And they live in a crumbling state children's institution called Captain Scott House, which is part of a broader government expansion experiment known as the Sycamore Scheme. The boys are raised in complete isolation. They don't go to school. They have strict daily routines, endless surveillance and a steady dose of medication which is said to protect them from a mysterious bug. Their nightmares are recorded in the Book of Dreams. Their lessons are taken from the Book of Knowledge, which is an encyclopaedia. And their sins are reported in the Book of Guilt, hence the title of this book. They're looked after by three women who they refer to as Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night. There's an extra major character, a girl called Nancy, who is kept in complete seclusion by her overprotective parents. And we are also introduced to the Minister for Loneliness, a government official who is overseeing the wind down of the Sycamore scheme, not because it's viewed as cruel or odd to keep kids in this kind of isolation, but because it's costing the government too much. The twist which is unveiled from a very mysterious start of the book. The first line of the book is actually a line from Vincent and he says, before I knew what I was, I lived with my brothers in a grand old house in the heart of the New Forest. And we come to learn what he was. He was. So another twist in this alternate reality is that DNA and cloning is a technology available in the 1970s. Michelle, against that backdrop, how did you find the sort of start of this novel? It's very moody. We're trying to work out what's going on. And did you see in advance the cloning?
- [07:59]
C
I mean, it was definitely portentous, wasn't it, the way that it started off? And I quite enjoyed. It was such a page turn of the book and I quite enjoyed, enjoyed that you really were trying to unveil it as you went. I must Say the cloning bit I picked up on pretty early. So they talked about triplets, identical triplets. And then when they talked about the other Sycamore boys and girls, they said that there were a lot of twins and a lot of, you know, so. So it started to get you thinking that there was something going on. So whether it was clones or whether it was sort of in vitro or, you know, there was something definitely genetic manipulation going on there. So. But I still wanted to turn those pages.
- [08:45]
B
And these boys, they're physically identical, but slightly different characters. In fact, in some ways very different. The narrator, Vincent, is a clever, thoughtful, often very kind boy. And he's the one that slowly unveils the mystery at the heart. William, one of the brothers, is actually prone to violence and causes some very grievous problems throughout the book. And then there is another brother, Lawrence, who is the most introverted, the most rule following. And Lawrence is always very focused on following the rules because what the boys are promised is if they're very good, then at some point they'll get to go to a paradise, to Margate. People may have visited Margate in the uk, might have their own about whether it's actually a kind of paradise. But there is a brochure that shows it as the kind of place that children would only see in their imagination, their dreams. Did you foresee that Margate was not actually a great destination of choice?
- [09:56]
C
I mean, it's an interesting one, isn't it? Seaside resort. And as an Australian who spent a lot of time in the uk, seaside resorts, a very interesting sort of proposition. But I do think it is how they sort of hang that, you know, as the carrot in front of them. And, and this is about, if you're good, then you get to go to Margate. And it's a way of control, I guess, with the carrot rather than the stick. But yes, it sounds one slightly suspicious that Margate is. Is the holy, you know, grail of where you want to be. But yes, also, we never hear from anyone that goes to Margate, so there's never a follow up of what it's actually like. So it's. It seems a little threatening as well.
- [10:39]
B
It is very threatening. Now, the way the book plays out with the Book of Guilt, Book of Knowledge, Book of Dreams. There's a big focus on the boys dreams. And every morning, Mother Morning comes in and wakes them up and the first thing she says to them is, what did you dream of last night? And the boys tell her, and they can be very simple things that kids would dream of, or the kind of, you know, confused dreams that we all have. You know, you think you're in the Arctic, but really it's because you've kicked the blankets off and you're feeling cold. So, you know, they record all of these dreams. But the boys each start to have a dream involving what sounds like the same girl. And we learn throughout the course of the book that their father is a violent man, the man whom the genetic material has been taken from to create these clones. And he is actually engaged in a series of sexual offences and murders, and that's why he's in jail, and he's actually slated for the death penalty. And so through this device, we're really asked to interrogate what's nature, what's nurture. Admittedly, in a very atypical situation, they're clones and they've had a very different upbringing from children, as usual. And how did you find all of that? There were bits of that that made me quite uncomfortable, because there is the proposition in the book that, you know, your genetic material, the father's violence, it's not necessarily inherited. You can have a different life, but it can be inherited and the dreams are shared. You know, bit weird, bit creepy.
- [12:37]
C
Yeah, definitely a bit creepy, but also fascinating. So I'm a psychologist, so actually, nature nurture, and a psychologist that specializes in gender. So nature nurture is one of the key things that we really sort of think about. So are gender differences, for example, innate, or are they learned? So half my bread and butter is nature nurture debate. So I think in this novel, it's really fascinating. So partly we can look at the three boys, and even though they're genetically identical, they're also very different from each other. But I also think the point of the dreams or the book of dreams or interrogating these dreams is also to look at the difference between, say, genetics, you know, what. What we are, and our psychology. Because the, The. The dreams sort of tell you more about not what your genetics are telling you, but what your mind is doing and those sorts of things. And it's very interesting because even though the three boys dream about the same girl, they dream about her in quite different ways. So William's dreams are quite violent. So there's. There's blood, there's a component sort of there. Lawrence's dreams are a bit more romantic, right? So there's this sort of romantic aspect, and Vincent's are a little bit more introspective. So again, there's this similarity between the three of them. So Maybe going to their shared genetics, but their psychology, how they interpret them, where the dreams go, are also really different. So I think it's a really interesting play. So nature, nurture, mind, body, all of those sorts of things. But yes, I agree, ultimately what we're really doing is saying is there a sort of genetic inevitability? And they talk about that a lot. There's talk about what makes someone a real person as well. So there's a lot of talk in the book about where sort of humanity comes from. And they, some of the villagers or some of the public talk about the boys as not really being human. So what is it that makes them human? Why is it that being a clone makes you non human or able to be treated in non human or inhumane ways? So I think there's some really interesting sort of tensions there that she's exploring.
- [14:48]
B
Yeah, she does take us, Catherine, to the ethics of science and also who we see as the other, who we see as different. And for me, that was in many ways the most captivating theme of the book. So the purpose of these boys being cloned is that they are, are effectively being used as lab animals. The medication they take to hold off this mysterious bug is not for that purpose at all. There is no bug. They are testing things like chemotherapy drugs. And at one point, one of the boys is thanked when he's in the village by a baker who says that the drugs have helped save a young boy in his family. And this is one of the pieces of information that then helps the boys work it all, that they're actually clones and this is their purpose. And, you know, there is an ethics science debate there about what level of cruelty is justified in pursuit of scientific truth. And we're familiar with that debate in terms of how dogs and mice and monkeys and other animals have been used in scientific experiments. But more profoundly for me was this sense that the outside world viewed them as not human. There's a dark reference which never quite fully explained, but one of the other homes, a sycamore home, where the clones worked out who they were and that they were being experimented upon. And it sounds like they ran amok and engaged in some acts of violence against the local community. And the fact they're clones, the fact that there's been this violence, seems in the mind of the villagers and people generally to justify treating them as not human. And there is, during the book, a major act of violence against one of the boys. And a neighbour says, oh, you know, for a second I thought it was happening to a Real boy. But she realises it's happening to one of the. One of the clones. And so all of that I found, you know, very jarring in the sense that you are turning the pages thinking, how can people be so mean to boys who would look, you know, beautiful young boys, like everyone other child you've ever seen. And yet we know as human beings we're capable of that. I thought it laid that out really well, I think.
- [17:22]
C
Absolutely. And I think because the backdrop of it is, you know, and part of the premise of the whole book is the. Is World War II and sort of, where do we go and what does that look like? And do we learn lessons from that? Where do we go? And there's a little bit of an inevitability of that. Right. So even though the history of World War II changes, we still see it echoing over and over again. So I thought it was really interesting that. Margate. So when the boys go to Margate, they get picked up by a van and they all go in very willingly into the van to be taken to Margate, because they've been good boys. But actually it's a way of disposing of the boys. I know, sorry. Even that word disposing makes it sound like they're litter, you know, not humans. But it's done through gas. So they talk about how the vans are sealed and the boys are gassed and they go in willingly. And of course, we all know about world war war II history and the parallels there. So I think there's some really interesting thoughts in there about how we treat people, but also some of the inevitability or the destiny of humanity to treat people in this way as well. And I think that's kind of fascinating.
- [18:34]
B
There is a character that leads us to the conclusion that perhaps people can be better than that. And that is the woman who is the Minister for Loneliness. And she's ambitious. She's been instructed by the woman who. Prime Minister. So this is an interesting twist in it all, to have two women leaders. She's been instructed by the woman who is Prime Minister to get this sycamore scheme sorted out. It's costing too much money. They need to find a way of either dealing with these children. And unfortunately, in the Prime Minister's estimation, dealing with the children equals that one way trip to Margate, which is really in the gas van, or socialising them in a way, which means they can be released into the community, into a future of, you know, very unskilled jobs and that kind of stuff. So not, you know, Full and equal access to opportunity. And so, as part of that scheme, the Minister for Loneliness starts having socialisation days where the three boys, the centre of the book, Vincent, Lauren and William, Vincent, Lawrence and William, are meeting three girls who are kept in a comparable home and who are also clones, so they can get used to dealing with girls, dealing with women, socialising. And yet the Minister for Loneliness, through her exposure particularly to Vincent, clearly comes to see that pigeonholing these children as something lesser, something different, isn't right. Did that give you a sense of hope?
- [20:16]
C
I quite enjoyed that redemptive arc that we saw from the Minister for Loneliness because she really started off very cold, extremely cold, very ambitious. And like, we always portray ambitious women, right. She was very unlikable, all about what she wanted to achieve. She was very clear about calling the boys residents as well. So it was very, you know, it was dehumanizing them and all of those things. But, yes, as she got to know Vincent, as she got to think about the process a little bit more, you could really see her come, coming around till we got to the end, where she was really leading the force in sort of reintegration and rethinking about how the copies or the clones were thought about. So, yes, that redemptive arc was interesting.
- [21:01]
B
Yeah, I like that. And I think this book did need some of that uplift, because some parts of it are quite heavy going when you think all of this is happening to children. I mean, whilst this is a book with three boys at the centre of it, there are plenty of very important women characters. We've just talked about two of them, but we also get to know the three mothers well, Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night. And they're quite different characters. Mother Night in particular, is very sympathetic to the plight of the boys and forms a bond with Vincent and lets him have an insight into the fact that there's a bigger world out there. They think that the encyclopaedia, the Book of Knowledge, is the sum total of human knowledge, that there's nothing more than that. Whereas she lets him sneakily read things like passages from James Joyce. You couldn't get further away from an Alphabet encyclopaedia than James Joyce's style of writing, I don't think. And he is just amazed, Vincent, that anybody can put words together in that kind of flow. And so that gives him a sense that he is being denied, denied so much. We also get Nancy's mother, Nancy's mother and father, who have faced a tragedy in their lives. And as A result, keep Nancy, who also goes on a process of working out who she really is, locked inside their home, dressed in pretty dresses, acting out scenes that they dictate for her. But this woman, her mother, is also capable of enormous acts of revenge against people she feels have done her family wrong. The women characters. I'm here with the director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership. It would be negligent not to ask you about that.
- [22:53]
C
I think that it's really fascinating the way in which they play with that. It's almost like there's archetypes there. So we've got these sort of women leaders. We've got the Prime Minister and the Minister for Loneliness. We've got the sort of mothers. So it's almost like those two extremes of what women can be, as if they can't be somewhere in between or both. And I think then the different types of mothers that you can be. So again, we also get that real stickler for the rules. So it feels like Mother Morning, I think, is very much the stickler for the rules, making sure everyone's got their medicine and all of those things and they're on their way. We've got Mother Afternoon, who's in charge of learning and all of the teaching. So that's the sort of passing on of information. And then Mother Night is quite a absent character at the beginning because the boys are sleeping at night, so they don't really see her. But Vincent's got insomnia, so he gets up at night, he can't sleep. Partly the dreams, partly the medicine, I imagine. And yes, and I think there's that lovely relationship. And what I loved there as well is, yes, her sort of conscience that comes out and whether he should know more or whether it's her responsibility to sort of tell them more and give them some of the truth as well. But I thought that was fascinating, all those different archetypes and how they play.
- [24:12]
B
Yeah. I think it is a book that does ask you to think about women motherhood, what that really means, what women's leadership can mean. Are women different leaders to men? That's something we talk about a lot at the Institute. And certainly the Prime Minister is showing no empathy, no compassion. So many feminists who barrack for women leaders would look at that and be so disappointed. It is a book to challenge you and make you think on all of those questions. And of course, a book with science at its centre would not be complete without a mad scientist. And all of this program of cloning and experimenting on these boys is the work of Dr. Roach, who comes and visits and checks up on the boys from time to time. He clearly seems to have lost political support, having been right at the centre of politics when the Sycamore scheme was set up. He is now viewed with some sort of disdain, Though that doesn't seem to be so much because of the ethics of this kind of experimentation, but because for all of the cost for these sycamore homes, the drugs that are coming out of it, the new medical procedures, aren't viewed as sufficient. He is a chilling character. I did wonder whether he's a little bit too thinly drawn, almost cartoon character. Like, in his capacity for evil, he loves his dog. Loves, loves, loves his dog, but is capable of, you know, huge acts of cruelty and disdain towards the children. How did you find him? He was the only character that jarred for me, that. I just thought we could have heard more from the author, Catherine, about what was going through his mind.
- [26:12]
C
Yeah, I think so. So he was sort of the specter of. I don't know whether he sort of represented the state a little bit or science in general, but definitely an evil specter that hung over. But he only made an appearance every now and again, you know, to come in and do some tests and to do a little bit. So he was almost like the architect behind it all. But we didn't really hear much about his psychology or what he felt or how he thought, only that he was very driven to get the outcomes and really willing to step on anyone to get there. So, yeah, it would have been nice to maybe have that as a. You know, was there a redemptive arc for him? I don't think so. We certainly didn't get any of that. But it would have been interesting to explore that a little bit.
- [26:55]
B
Yeah, and I would have liked an extra exploration of the concept of the other two. I know that it's a problem in books to introduce too many characters, then you end up, you know, writing Middlemarch or something, which, of course, is a fabulous, fabulous book. But you've really got to be concentrating to keep your mind on all those characters. George Eliot set us a challenge with Middlemarch, but I would have liked to have been taken inside the homes of some of the villagers and perhaps been a fly on a wall for a discussion about Sycamore and the boys. The boys, as part of their socialization now, do come to the village sometimes alone. They're sent on an errand, you know, go to the baker's and get us some bread. Sometimes with one of the mothers. So the villagers must have been discussing them and you would hope in. In fact, we do see through the character of the baker that thanked the one boy for the scientific research. But you would have hoped that there was more division of opinion in the village and that in discussions over morning tea or dinner, families, community groups, were saying to themselves, are we treating these boys right? And people were taking different sides of that. I would have liked that fleshing out a little bit.
- [28:15]
C
Absolutely. And maybe from the mothers as well. You know, what. What was it like to care for those boys, to make those decisions? What did that feel like? Because there, I think there was a real tension there between the caringness of the mothers, but also, I guess the. The real lack of care that they had in telling them. You know, the whole foundation was on lies. You know, they were giving the medicine that was making them sick. So I think some interesting tensions that could have been and explored there a little bit.
- [28:43]
B
I think that's true as well.
- [28:49]
C
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D
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- [28:56]
C
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- [28:56]
B
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- [29:03]
C
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- [29:15]
B
Now, this is an act of world building, building an alternate Britain. It's an act of character building. And it does have a plot that keeps you turning pages. And I do want to reassure that whilst we have unveiled a major part of that plot, that it takes the boys some time to work out that they are, in fact, clones and they being used for scientific experimentation. There are many more twists and turns we have not unveiled. And I did find myself doing that. Ooh, just one more chapter. One more chapter late at night when I really should have gone to bed. So it does keep you reading with all of that. There are elements in this book which I think will remind people of other books, other, you know, creative works, movies. I mean, certainly the device of people being promised a paradise if you obey the rules is a pretty commonly used one. I'm thinking of movies like Logan's Run, which is ages old now, but, you know, people are gonna go into the light. I think it is in Logan's Run, and they think a paradise is the other side, but of course it's not. So there are things in this that will remind, you know, I think. I think it's original, but some of the elements are well worn.
- [30:40]
C
Yeah. I mean I'm a big fan of Ishigiro, so. And his book Never Let Me Go. I think there's definitely some parallels there. So if you haven't read that book, that's a book very similar premise. So I know that Chidgi has said that she hasn't read this book so that it's not influenced by. But I mean maybe it's a sort of more general sort of societal influence. But in that book there's a boarding school, so not a home but a boarding school. Three main characters who are clones and they're set up as not in this case for medical sort of pharmaceutical testing, but as ability to be organ donors. So they're cloned from individuals so that they can then donate their organs to those individuals as they get older and sicker. So a very sort of similar premise and I feel like right at the beginning I had these echoes of Never Let Me Go there. It was also made into an excellent movie. But it is interesting because the Never Let Me Go is narrated mainly through one of the carers. So we were talking a little bit about wanting the carer or the others sort of input on that. And I think you really get that in Never Let Me Go. But I think it stands aside, I mean they're Both set in, in 70s UK so that again there's quite a lot of over overlaps there. But I think it stands enough on its own. It. It's exploring slightly different issues. I think the nature nurture aspect of it that really runs through the Book of Guilt is. Is a sort of different theme. I think the idea of alternative histories and, and that is, is again a different device that's in there, but definitely some parallels. But I wonder whether, you know, even if she'd never read that book, whether this is something that we as humanity are struggling with. What is what makes people human? How can we use individuals for our own gains and those sorts of things?
- [32:35]
B
Well, we should put a link to that in the show notes. He is a marvellous author. He's a Booker Prize winning author for the Remains of the Day. He may have won the Booker more than once, I'm not sure, but he definitely won it for the Remains of the Day. And if you haven't read that or watched the movie with Anthony Hopkins and I'm pretty sure it's Emma Thompson, that is an extraordinary movie, it's an extraordinary book. And he has in other books interrogated the question of what it is to be human. He wrote Klara and the sun which is about basically a robot, an Android, and how much humanity can Clara have? And I guess in the world in which we live, where robotics, you know, people like robots not that far away. Artificial intelligence is asking us to think through what it is to be human as opposed to the artificial intelligence that will exceed us in its capability to do a lot of tasks, including. Including potentially creative writing or some form of writing. People would debate the creative and medical technologies that are going to take us further and further down the issues of cloning and DNA and what it means to gene, edit and those sorts of things. I guess it's not surprising many authors are coming at all of these questions from different angles. And it's good that we're exploring them in fiction because it always helps us think, think them through.
- [34:18]
C
Absolutely. And I think ethics is a. Is a key thing within this book. So one of the things that runs through it, but also tackled head on as well. So the boys have ethics lessons, so I think Mother Afternoon gets them to think about ethics. And as some of the story unfolds as well, we have Vincent thinking a lot about ethics and what is the right decision to make. And of course he's doing this on an interpersonal level. How should you treat people? You, you know, what's the right thing to do in this interpersonal way? But of course, that much, you know, higher level societal ethics about how we should be treating each other, how should we be treating different groups of people, is in there as well.
- [34:56]
B
I'm worried we may have made this sound like a very grim read and in some ways it is. But there's, you know, kids, hijinks, there's humour, the tensions, particularly in the first time that the boys are meeting the girls and the mothers have drummed them up to go and formally ask the girls if they'd like to dance and all of that kind of stuff. So there's some whimsy in it as well. And it is, despite the dark content in, in many, many parts, it is an easy read. It's not something that I think people will struggle with. The plot does keep you moving. Who do you think would like this book and who might put it aside?
- [35:40]
C
I mean, I think there's something in that for everyone, isn't it? I think you could read it on a sort of more everyday sort of level, like not getting too bogged down in the ethics of just seeing what happens. How does this all relate? How do the characters relate to each other? Because there's a lot of really different moving parts that all come together, sort of beautifully at the end where it all sort of comes together. So I think there's some, yeah, you can read it as that thing, you could probably read it at a more philosophical level and that, that ethics level as well. But I feel like there's something in for everyone. The bit I really quite liked about it is that the teenagers, you know, they're all 13 as well and as someone that's had, I've got a 16 year old now, but I do think it's interesting that where they're all starting to learn and think about and unpack the story and maybe not take on a surface level everything that they've told. I don't think it's any surprise that that comes at 13 years old. I feel like that's an age where they're questioning everything, they're really working out who they are and it's quite nice to see that sort of play itself out. And I think there is a real humanity in, in the boys that we see and, and I enjoyed that part of it particularly.
- [36:50]
B
Yeah, I, I, I enjoyed that too. And there is a character towards the end of the book, someone who's been completely outside this sycamore home process but is talking to someone and says, I mean, how dumb would they have had to have been to just think, you know, there was one encyclopaedia and one book of knowledge and which is so unfair because if that's all you've known as a 5 year old, 7 year old, 10 year old, why wouldn't you 100% accept that? And yet we know around, you know, 12, 13, 14, different kids, different times, that pushing back against the, you know, received wisdoms in your household, in the place that you live in this unusual sort of family and the questioning, it portrays that really well. I think most people will very much, you know, enjoy this book. They'll read through it, they'll read through it quickly. If you are hugely, hugely squeamish, if you're the sort of person who as soon as you know any sort of gunfire, chase, unpleasant scenes, start the on Netflix or whatever, you turn it off. There might be some parts in this you find a little bit hard going, but I think most people will take it away and find it a really good read.
- [38:14]
C
Absolutely.
- [38:15]
B
What are you onto next? What's book club doing?
- [38:17]
C
Oh, the next book club is Heat Lamp. So that was just shortlisted on the, I think on the Booker, so I can't remember the author, I'm really sorry. But it's a book of short stories which is a little bit unusual for us, but the book we just read on the weekend, just finished last weekend, was Ocean Vuong's new book, so the Emperor of Gladness. And I would definitely recommend that. So I think he's a wonderful author. So Vietnamese American. His first book, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, is one of my most favorite books. It's just so poetic and really thoughtful and lovely. And this, this is his sort of second novel, which was. Was beautiful as well.
- [38:59]
B
Interesting. Well, I've just finished the original by Nell Stevens, so plenty to keep people going on with that. Some very interesting books around always, but lots of fiction to read by women. And I think the author you've referred to is one of our male authors, and we do refer to male authors from time to time. Of course we do. But the book you love the most about of his, just give us a sense of the plot.
- [39:30]
C
On Earth, I'm briefly gorgeous, so I love the title. So it's so nice. He is a queer Vietnamese author. So, you know, we do read men, but generally queer, you know, migrant men. I'm just joking. So he was a poet to start off with. And this book is very poetic. So it's not a sort of standard narrative that you follow, but lots of reflections on what it's like to be a queer young man in the US what it's like to communicate. Communicate that with your mother, for example. So a lot about sort of mother son relationships, a lot about dealing with sexuality. A lot of doing all of that with layers of the migrant experience. But it's just so poetic and so beautiful and little snippets of it just. Yes, really. It feeds your soul, I think.
- [40:19]
B
And we love our poet, Sarah Holland Batt. We're talking about you. Well, thank you, Michelle, for joining me for this special episode of A Podcast of One's Own. A special book episode. We will be back talking with more books with Sarah Holland Batt and with Kathy Lett. But we hope in the meantime that people enjoy the Book of Guilt. Please let us know what you thought about it. And as always, if you've got a suggestion of a book you think we should be reading and talking about on a podcast of one's Own where all ears, please send the suggestions in. What's the day holding for you?
- [40:54]
C
Oh, I think back to work. So a good day.
- [40:57]
B
A good day. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing the Jewel team, so off to do that. Thank you. Thanks.
- [41:04]
D
A Podcast of One's Own is created by the Global Institute for Women's leadership at the Australian National University, Canberra, with support from our sister institute at King's College London. Earnings from the podcast go back into funding for the Institute, which was founded by our host, Julia Gillard, and brings together rigorous research, practice and advocacy as a powerful force to advance gender equality and promote fair and equal access to leadership. Research and production for this podcast is by Becca Shepherd, Alice Higgins and Alina Ecot, with editing by Liz Keen from Headline Productions. If you have feedback or ideas, please email email us@giwlnu.eduau. to stay up to date with the Institute's work, go to giwl.anu.edu au and sign up to our updates or follow us on social media ulanu. You can also find A Podcast of One's Own on Instagram. The team at A Podcast of One's Own acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today. Thanks for listening and we hope you'll join us next time.
- [42:32]
E
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