Welcome to Literary Friction on NTS. I'm Carrie Plitt here as always with my co-host, Octavia Bright. Hello, Octavia. Hi, Carrie. Can you tell our listeners about our guests today? With pleasure. Today we're being joined by the fantastic British author and psychiatric doctor Joanna Cannon,

who we first introduced to you at our Faber social event a few months ago.

Her debut novel, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, is fantastic,

and it's about two girls who decide to investigate a housewife's disappearance from their tight-knit estate

during the heat wave of 1976 in Britain.

And it was a Sunday Times best set of this year and has done really, really well.

Yeah, and it's a fabulous book too.

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep is about the fingers were quick to point at anyone who doesn't

fit in.

And so our theme today is Black Sheep in Literature.

After our interview with Joanna, we'll be discussing our favorite literary characters who

stand on the margins from Holton Caulfield to Jane Eyre to Oscar Wow, and why outsiders

crop up so often in literature.

Plus, there are all the usual book recommendations, so please stay tuned to literary friction.

Joanna Cannon, thanks so much for coming on literary friction. We've asked you to start with the reading, so could you set it up for us, please? I certainly can. The reading is from my book, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep. And the story has a narrator, a 10-year-old narrator called Grace, and she has a best friend called Tilly. And this is a little bit where Grace is telling you how she first met her best friend Tilly.

I have known Tilly Albert for a fifth of my life.

She arrived two summers ago in the back of a large white van, and they unloaded her along with a sideboard and three easy chairs.

I watched from Mrs. Morton's kitchen, whilst whilst I ate a cheese, scone, "'and listened to a weather forecast for the Norfolk Broads. "'We didn't live on the Norfolk Broads, "'but Mrs. Morton had been there on holiday, "'and she liked to keep in touch. "'Mrs. Morton was sitting with me. Will you just sit with grace while I have a little

lie down, my mother would say, although Mrs. Morton didn't sit very much at all. She dusted

and baked and looked through windows instead. My mother spent most of 1974 having a little

lie down, and so I sat with Mrs. Morton quite a lot.

I stared at the white van. Who's that then, I said, through a mouthful of scone.

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