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Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leif, the literary editor for The Spectator.

I'm very pleased to be joined this

week by the writer Siri Hustved, whose new book is a memoir of her relationship with and the death

of her husband, Paul Oster, the novelist, and it's called Ghost Stories. Siri, welcome.

Thank you.

Towards the end of this book, you write, which I think is a sentence that jumped out

at me.

You say, it's a need, not a choice.

This book is a need, not a choice.

Can you talk a bit about what need you feel the book was answered?

Yes.

I realized days after Paul died that the half-finished novel that is still waiting for me was something I couldn't

return to. I am returning now, but it was this absolute urge to write about Paul and the two of us.

And I think now it was a resurrection urge.

I wanted to bring something of this man who had meant so much to me,

not the persona novelist Paul Oster, but my Paul. And that inspired me, actually.

And I think it was also a way to contend with my own grief. And you talk about the persona versus my Paul.

I mean, one of the things that is really kind of run through this book,

...