Episode 233 || Family of Origin

From the Front Porch

The Bookshelf Thomasville

Fiction, Society & Culture, Books, Arts:books, Arts

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2019

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chris and Annie are joined by longtime friend of the show CJ Hauser to talk about her new novel, Family of Origin, available now from Doubleday. They discuss millennials, dysfunctional families, healing from trauma, wacky scientists, baseball, and Anglo-Saxon poetry. By now you've probably seen her viral essay, "The Crane Wife," published at The Paris Review. You can snag your copy of Family of Origin in The Bookshelf's online store. Thanks, as always, to Forlorn Strangers for the use of our theme music. Learn and listen more here. Listen to a full back catalogue of our show here, and, if you're interested in some exclusive content like Chris and Annie's Unpopular Opinions, consider supporting us on Patreon here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey.
0:02.2	Hi.
0:03.0	We, uh, we're doing something different this week.
0:04.9	I was out to say, you've flummoxed me now.
0:06.9	Ha ha ha ha.
0:08.9	Um, we like to do things out of order lately.
0:11.4	Yeah.
0:11.9	Um, and this week we have a very special episode with author C.J. Hauser, whose book Family
0:17.6	of Origin came out last Tuesday, July 16th. It is one of Annie's favorite books of the year.
0:25.6	Yeah, yeah.
0:26.6	It is the only contemporary novel that I have read this year,
0:28.6	which makes it automatically my favorite.
0:31.6	But even if it had not been that, it would still be one of my favorite books of the year.
0:35.6	I think this is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful book that I want all of you to have your hands on. I went back in
0:42.6	preparation for the interview and, like, I got my arc and I was, like, looking at the parts
0:47.1	that I had underlined or whatever. And I, you know, you read, I read so many things.
0:53.8	Then I was like, okay, trying to get like a refresher. I remember how this book made me feel. I remember the characters. But anyway, so I went back. And every page that I had like torn, you know, and made marks, I was just struck by, I literally sat at my desk and said out loud. I was like, yeah, this is one of my favorite
1:11.5	books of the year. It's so good. Yeah. And there are so many themes in it. And even talking to her, I felt like I was kind of all over the place. I just wanted to like pick her brain. Like, tell me how you did this and why you did it and what it means and is it as personal to you as it was to me because it feels very personal to me. We were both fanning over this thing.
1:11.3	Fanning and fawning. Fawning. We were both fanning over this thing.
1:23.8	Fanning and fawning. Fawning and fan-girling. I was trying to do like fan-girling and fan-boing without gendering yet, so I just said fanning. That's fine. Dakota fanning it. We're Dakota fanning it. You're welcome. I prefer L. I don't know anything about the fanings. That's fine.
1:44.2	But no, we both really love this book, and it is so complex. I prefer L. I don't know anything about the fannings. That's fine.
1:50.7	But no, we both really love this book, and it is so complex and beautiful and tragic and interesting and about these beautiful broken people.
	...

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