Hello and welcome to another book club episode of The Book Review.

I'm MJ Franklin.

I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review,

and for Book Club this week, we're chatting about The Renovation by Kanan Orhan.

The Renovation is a bold, ambitious debut novel with an instantly intriguing conceit.

It's about a woman who discovers that her bathroom has been transformed into a prison cell.

And I read it on a whim just because I heard that conceit, I had a free weekend, and I wanted to get lost in something.

But then, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

And then I was like, I want to talk to other people about it.

And then I realized, wait a second, MJ, you run a book club, just make it your book club pick.

And you can force people to talk with you about it. So that's what we're here to do today. And joining me in that adventure are two of my esteemed colleagues, Jumana Ketev. Hi, Jemana. Hi, MJ. You are a fan favorite. You're here last week talking about on the calculation of volume. That's right. And also, the reading for last week's podcast did have the feeling of like a hostage negotiation. But you did not force me to read this at all. Like, I enjoyed every page of this book. I'm so excited to dive in more. And also with us is Dave Kim. Hi, Dave.

Hello. I'm stoked to be here. I'm Jay. Thank you for inviting me. Of course. It's been a while. I think you were here last in, what, November to talk about book awards? Is that the last time you were? Maybe. Tragic. No, was it Adam Ross? No. That was that was a big good. That was, that was, Yeah. Yeah, my sense of time is completely off.

We just let Dave out of prison. Adam Ross? No. That was as a big kid. That was. Yeah. Yeah, my sense of time is completely off.

We just let Dave out of prison. That's right. Thank you for joining us. It's been a long time, but welcome back.

So that's our panel, but before we dive into the book itself, I have a few typical admin notes. You know the drill. First, there will be spoilers

in this episode. However, we know that this is a brand spanking new book. Readers are still discovering

it. We don't want to put off anyone who doesn't want to be spoiled. So, the first half of this

conversation will be spoiler free. We'll talk about set-up stuff. We'll talk about opinions,

and ideas and themes, and all that good stuff. But we will hold revelations about the ending to the second half of the episode, which will be spoiler-filled. That's note number one. Note number two is, at the end of the episode, we will reveal our May Book Club book. So stay with us to find out what we're reading next. And without further ado,

let's talk about the renovation. To get started, Jumana, can you set the table and tell us,

what is this book? What is the renovation? Oh boy. Oh boy. I'm so excited. Okay, so even just from the

shortest of summaries, I knew I was going to like this book because the conceit is crazy.

...