Maggie O'Farrell, writer

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2021

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Maggie O’Farrell has written eight novels, a memoir and a children’s book. In 2020 her novel Hamnet won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and was also named Waterstones Book of the Year. Maggie was born in Northern Ireland. Her parents moved around during her childhood, and she grew up in Wales and Scotland. As a young girl, she was very ill and almost died from encephalitis. She says her lifelong love of reading comes from her long stay in hospital followed by an extended convalescence, when she missed a year of school. Her illness also left her with a stammer, which she believes has profoundly affected her relationship with language. She studied English at Cambridge University, and then looked for work as a journalist, writing poetry in her spare time. When she chanced upon a discarded computer, she decided to write a novel. She attended a creative writing course, where her tutors encouraged her to get her first manuscript published. She lives in Scotland with her husband, the writer William Sutcliffe, and their three children. DISC ONE: Elephant Gun by Beirut DISC TWO: Sit Down By The Fire by The Pogues DISC THREE: Lovesong by The Cure DISC FOUR: Chopin: Scherzo No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 31, composed by Frédéric Chopin, performed by Martha Argerich (piano) DISC FIVE: The Bends by Radiohead DISC SIX: Little Star by Stina Nordenstam DISC SEVEN: Feeling Good by Nina Simone DISC EIGHT: Prophet (Better Watch It) by Rizzle Kicks BOOK CHOICE: Selected Stories by Alice Munro LUXURY ITEM: National Museum of Ireland - Archaeology CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Elephant Gun by Beirut Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts
0:04.7	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Disks Podcast.
0:08.4	Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them
0:13.6	if they were cast away to a desert island. For right reasons, the music is shorter than the
0:18.9	original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.
0:42.4	My cast away this week is the writer Maggie O'Farrell. She's the author of eight best-selling novels
0:48.2	and her latest Hamlet won the Women's Prize for Fiction last year. Hamlet tells the story of
0:54.1	William Shakespeare's lost son who died when he was just 11. It's the story of a life told through
1:00.1	a death and it's not her first. Maggie's hit memoir, I Am I Am I Am, relayed 17 of her own
1:06.7	brushes with mortality including her experience of a childhood illness so severe she was not expected
1:12.8	to survive. It was this episode and the protracted period of convalescence that followed it that made
1:18.8	her a voracious reader. Even as an adult with books of her own to write she can still get through
1:24.0	four novels a week. Her career as an author grew out of this love of reading and a desire to subvert
1:29.9	the standard advice, write what you know. She says you have to write to satisfy some urge in you
1:35.9	to answer some question about something that you don't comprehend. I find I have to write in
1:41.0	her unconscious vacuum where I pretend it's just for me. Maggie or Farrell, welcome to Desert Island
1:46.9	Discs. Thank you very much Lauren. Now presumably novelists are usually, well even if it's subconsciously
1:52.2	sort of collecting and percolating ideas that might eventually turn into a book. How does that
1:57.2	process work for you? When do you know that your next book is starting to take shape? Well I think all
2:03.2	books creep up on you actually and I think you don't necessarily choose the books I think the books
2:08.4	choose you. I think the best book you can possibly write is the one you can't not write is the one
2:14.4	that's demanding your attention it's tugging your sleeve it's hanging onto your coat it's the
	...

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