Summary
Mariella Frostrup talks to celebrated American novelist Celeste Ng, whose new book Little Fires Everywhere explores what happens when a calm and ordinary suburb is disrupted by the arrival of a new residents - a teenage girl and her artistic mother. Ian Rankin shares his passion for Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow and we hear from the Sharjah Book Fair which has just closed its doors in the UEA. While the Icelandic crime writer novelist Lilja Sigurdardottir explains why the financial crash of 2008 inspired many authors to explore the society's underbelly.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In Northern Ireland, from the late 70s to the early 90s, the IRA killed over 40 alleged informers. |
| 0:08.0 | But the man who often found, tortured and sometimes killed these people on behalf of the IRA |
| 0:12.0 | was himself an informer, a secret British army agent with the codename Stakeknife. |
| 0:18.0 | Who gets to play God? And why me? Why my family? |
| 0:21.3 | When lies are still being told to this day, who do you believe? |
| 0:25.1 | I wouldn't even know where to start, and I'm with the IRA. |
| 0:28.5 | Steakknife. |
| 0:29.7 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.6 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:37.0 | Hello, today why the financial crash brought crime fiction to Iceland and Ian Rankin |
| 0:42.7 | on Thomas Pynchon's challenging opus Gravity's rainbow. But first, an author whose |
| 0:47.8 | 2014 debut, Everything I Never Told You, shot to best-selling success, beating the likes of |
| 0:53.4 | Hillary Mantel to be named Amazon's |
| 0:55.7 | number one book of the year, among many other accolades. No pressure then for Celeste Inge with the |
| 1:01.9 | publication of her follow-up, Little Fires Everywhere. Once again, a mystery kicks off the action, |
| 1:08.0 | with the burning down of the well-to-do Richardson's family |
| 1:11.2 | home in the progressive neighbourhood of Shaker Heights in Cleveland. |
| 1:15.6 | Ng then explores the events leading to the tragedy, in particular the arrival of artist |
| 1:20.7 | Mia, a single mother, and her teenage daughter Pearl, into this enclave of well-intentioned |
| 1:26.5 | but suffocating conformity. |
| 1:28.3 | A compelling Paige Turner, Inge manages to embrace themes as broad as racism and belonging, |
| 1:34.3 | mother-love, adoption and the smug veneer of liberalism at its most delusional. |
... |
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