You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one.

I'm Sadata Sese, an assistant commissioner of podcasts for BBC Sounds.

I pull a lot of levers to support a diverse range of podcasts on all sorts of subjects,

relationships, identity, comedy, even one that mixes poetry, music and inner city life.

So one day I'll be helping host develop their ideas, the next fact-checking, a feature,

and the next looking at how a podcast connects with its audience, and maybe that's you.

So if you like this podcast, check out some others on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.

This week we're encountering women in dire circumstances, from the troubled heroines of Jean

Reese, who are still finding passionate new readers today, to a young mother whose life is

derailed by illness in the latest novel

by Attica's Lish. Lish erupted onto the scene in 2014 with his debut preparation for the next

life, published by the upstart imprint Tyrant Books. It went on to garner rave reviews and won

the Penn Faulkner Award for fiction. The novel stood out for its unsentimentality

and the way it vividly captured immigrant neighborhoods in New York, wartime Iraq and rural China.

But the war for Gloria, Lish's new novel, restricts itself to Boston. Corrie is 15 when his mother, Gloria,

herself not yet 40, is diagnosed with amiatrophic lateral sclerosis,

or ALS, an untreatable and fatal disease. Alongside dealing with Gloria's illness,

Corey is battling with his estranged father, Leonard, a self-proclaimed physics genius.

The novel draws heavily on Lish's own experiences. His mother was diagnosed with ALS when he was

Corey's age, and just like him Lish had a difficult relationship with his father, the renowned editor,

Gordon Lish. The war for Gloria is a novel about being and caring for the ill, engaging with modern

...