Backlisted - Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Our guests are publisher Alexandra Pringle and Simon Thomas, editor and co-host of the Tea or Books? podcast. They are here to discuss Cassandra at the Wedding, the fourth and final novel by Dorothy Baker, first published in 1962 by Houghton Mifflin in the USA and Victor Gollancz in the UK. What is it about this darkly funny tale of two devoted sisters that continues to appeal to generations of readers? Also in this episode John enjoys Notes from an Island by Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietila, newly reissued by Sort Of Books, while Andy returns to early 1980s London via Michael Bracewell's new book Souvenir (White Rabbit). Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)15:36 - Souvenir by Michael Bracewell. 20:49 -Notes from an Island by Tove Jansson. 27:07 - Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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There are also balance balls, bikes, cables, kettlebells, and TRX equipment. But, like, no pressure. Get started for $1 enrollment and then only $15 a month. Hurry this $1 enrollment sale of Planet Fitness and July 18th. $49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. so the informal chat is normally we ask you where you are. Alexandra's answer last time was exemplary and will be the same.

Maybe we can move on to something else instead. We need to come up with some new material. You need new material. Yeah, you're right. Where aren't you calling from, Alexandra? You're not in France. I'm not in France. And I'm not in Polignano.

I am in Chelsea on the River Thames on my houseboat called Veronica. And people often think that Veronica is Alexandra and Alexandra is Veronica. It's quite confusing. Veronica. Yeah. What is the source of the name I don't know you know boats you don't change their names it's very unlucky

it was just called Veronica so we call it Veronica and I like names that end in A thank you it was very generous of you Alex, I think this is going to be a good episode thank you, Simon where are you I am in is going to be a good episode. Thank you. Simon, where are you? I am in a little flat in a little village in West Oxfordshire.

Are you getting out and about now, Simon? I never really got out and about before the pandemic, but I am doing a little bit of it now. I did go to the Cheltenham Literary Festival yesterday. That was rather lovely. Oh, that was exciting. Who did you see? That was rather lovely. Oh, that was exciting. Who did you see? I went to because my friend Karina Licorice Quinn was speaking about her new book, The Dust Never Settles, which she was on a panel of people talking about magical realism,

a genre about which I know almost nothing, but now know a little bit more. I'm not even going to say anything about magical realism, such as my... Aversion. Hatred. That's bad, isn't it? That's's bad i went to a literary festival last week and i had an absolute whale of a time as anyone who follows me on twitter will know god i have fun it was it was great i interviewed hayley

mills and steve van zandt from the eastern band. I met Hayley Mills two years ago at Gifford Circus and I was nearly fainted with excitement. Yeah. Because obviously she was my heroine when I was a young woman. It was amazing to meet her. How exciting. I have very similar feelings, Alexandra. Me too.

In fact, I think my feelings are somewhat more suspect. Yes, I think yours are. Yours? I don't want to know yours, John. But of course, the parent trap leads into the book that we're talking about because, you know, identical twins. Indeed it does. But I had the most exciting week last week because an author of mine won the Nobel Prize. Don't, no, hang on. No, that's coming up in the intro. You're not getting away that easily. We can't cut to that straight away. We're not wasting.

Yeah, you're not. You tried to just, as though that were the lightest thing. I mean, there is nothing. There is no trophy, not now that you don't have on your shelf. It's unbelievable. What amazing. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it later.

Right. Let's go. Let's crack on, shall we? Oh, okay. It's me. It's it. We'll talk about it later. Right. Let's go. Let's crack on, shall we? Oh, okay. It's me. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today, you find us driving across the sun-baked plains of Southern California, heading towards the Sierra. It's late June in the early 60s and we're on our way to a wedding. The top is down on the Riley as we speed through the dark green fields of alfalfa. Our sense of foreboding grows. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And we're joined today by two guests, one new simon thomas and one returning alexandra pringle welcome to both of you simon thomas co-hosts the tea or books podcast tea or books where he and rachel debate the

difficult decisions of reading and books from whether to read one book at a time or many to whether they'd keep austin or Wolf if they could only have one. What did you decide when you had that debate? Well, that was maybe the hardest decision we've done. And I did keep Austin in the end with the belief that you can read Austin in any mood, whereas Wolf, if you're looking for something light just before bed, probably not. Let me turn to you, Alexandra Pringle. Austin or Wolf?

Austin. For the laughs, you know, you've got to have laughs yeah you have to have the laughs well we've managed to get at least 30 seconds out of that debate obviously teal books do this much better than we do uh he is series consultant so i'm a serious consultant for the british library women writers series brilliant series which reprints neglected books by and about women from the early to mid-20th century, including lesser-known titles by E.M. Delafield, Rose McCauley and Elizabeth von Arnim, as well as almost totally forgotten authors like Winifred Boggs and Dorothy Evelyn Smith. I've read two of your books, Simon, and they are My Husband Simon by Molly Pantadown, which I absolutely loved.

Brilliant. And he is so... Intoxicating. And who was that? Mary Essek. Yes, that's right. And she wrote about 200 books, didn't she? 500, I think. Oh, forgive me.

Yes, you're shortchanging her. I really am. thing forgive me yes you're short-changing her i really am uh yes ursula bloom was her real name and mary essex one of her many pseudonyms that book was not at all what i expected it to be i thought it was going to be ever so nice and it wasn't it was really nasty in an enjoyable way village life in fact simon and john it's sort of about the you bet backstabbing ways of village life isn't it and very little has changed absolutely yes it's sort of about the backstabbing ways of village life isn't it and very little has changed absolutely yes it's frothy and lovely at the same time as being venomous yeah yeah and grudges held for years so I recommend that and also very excitingly next

month you are republishing a great favorite of many people who listen to this podcast, and I reckon Alexandra's as well, which is... Appendice of the Picture by F. Tennyson Jesse. Yes, one of the Viragos from the old days. Exactly, yes, about the Thompson Bywaters murder case. Made into a very, very good TV drama, I think, with Francesca Annis playing, the young Francesca Annis playing Edith Thompson. Simon, do we know why that hasn't been available for a while? Was it just

lying fallow until you made inquiries? Well, as far as I know, it was a very complicated rights issue that luckily I don't have to deal with at all. I can just say, this is a wonderful book. Wouldn't it if we reprinted it and they and some someone very clever went and sorted it out is this person available for uh for hire uh well anyway that series is lovely and if people who listen to this podcast aren't aware of it they they should definitely go and explore the the you're up to about 13 or 14 titles now aren't you i think yes i think that's that right one that's just i want to mention the winifred boggs if i may just because i think it's seldom has an author had such an unprepossessing name such a wonderful book sally on the rocks from the 1910s and it's this wonderfully

proto-feminist book about a love triangle that doesn't go at all how you'd expect so hardly any recommend that one and she completely disappeared I must definitely read that one but what is your favourite of all the ones you've done? I think it probably is Oh the Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith which is written in the 40s and set before the First World War and after 1900

never exactly clear when and it's sort of I would describe as a meeting point of I Captured the Castle and Jane Eyre it's one of those books that fully envelops you in that world. It's largely set on the Yorkshire Moors. This young girl growing from, I think it's seven to 18. And just a wonderful, wonderful book. Listeners will be wondering why it's taken us 150 episodes to get Simon on here.

I'm actually resigning and he's taking over. Brilliant. I was just wondering, would it have been helpful, Alexandra, back in the day to have had Simon kind of as a resource? It would have been amazing, wouldn't it? Definitely. I don't know how we live without him. Well, fortunately, to follow that,

Alexandra Pringle joined us on Backlisted last year for episode 113, 112A, to discuss The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy. The controversial Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy. But we picked our way through it, didn't we? It was one of our favourite episodes last year. It was great fun. It was amazing.

She's Bloomsbury's executive publisher, having been editor-in-chief there for more than 20 years. She joined Virago Press in 1978, where she edited the Virago Modern Classics series, becoming editorial director in 1984. In 1990, she moved to Hamish Hamilton as editorial director, and four years later, left publishing to become a literary agent, joining Bloomsbury again in 1999. Her list of authors includes, good heavens, Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford,

Esther Freud, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sheila Hancock, Khaled Hosseini, Celia Imri, George Saunders, Camila Shamsi, Patti Smith, Kate Summerscale. And just last week, Alexandra won the Nobel Prize for Literature via her proxy, Abdurazak Gurnah. Just the most incredible. Where were you when you found out he had won? I was on the boat. I was in a meeting and my phone was going crazy. And then these emails popped up and I can't remember which email I read. And then I just literally nearly fainted. And I can't remember which email I read. And I just literally nearly fainted. It was the greatest shock of my entire professional life. It was the most unexpected thing that has ever happened to me.

And particularly, I have to say, because I was getting to the point after publishing Abd al-Razak Gurnah for 20 years and loving his work and feeling that he was one of the most important living writers, certainly the most important living writers, certainly the most important living African writer. Although he's always got wonderful reviews and people do know about him, but in the larger world, he was completely ignored. And last year, I was absolutely sure that he would get on the book along list at the very, very least because what he writes about, what he's always written about, which is displacement of people through politics and world events and so forth, and how he writes about it, and the fact that

he's such a beautiful writer. Last year with the ever-growing refugee crisis, and then with Black Lives Matter, I thought, at last, this is going to be his year. It's going to happen. And guess what? He didn't make the long list and he didn't make the Costa list either. And he made the long list of the Walter Scott Prize. Nice. And the shortest of the Orwell Prize.

And that was that. And the shortest of the Orwell Prize. And that was that. And then literally the week before, I mean, 10 days ago or something, there was a piece in The Guardian about reinventing the canon of black writing and people like Bernardine Evaristo and Bernard Cree chose, you know, who they thought were important black writers. And guess what? No one mentioned Abdul Razak.

And it was a very, very low moment for me. And I did feel the nearest I've ever felt to despair. And I'm not much given to despair. I'm insanely optimistic as a human being. You have to be if you're a publisher. And I tweeted about that. And then literally like four days later, you won the biggest bloody price there is

could you could you this will this seems obvious to us but could you just say tell listeners pretend that you know they don't they probably don't know because they won't they won't necessarily necessarily know what it means in terms of publishing his work into the UK market? I think it's much more important in terms of the international market than the UK market. Although in the case of Abdul Razak, it's incredibly important for the UK, but not necessarily for other Nobel winners. Because as we know, we are a pretty insular nation here. And we don't, on the whole, read much in the way of translated work. We're not very outward looking. And so, the Nobel Prize will increase sales in America and every country in the world. And it doesn't necessarily touch that much in the UK. But in the case of Abdul Razak, not only, of course, is he here

and has been here since the 1960s, but he writes these beautiful stories and they're books that anyone can read. And they are about things that we need to think about at the moment. So I absolutely know that nothing will ever be the same for him again in Britain as well as around the world. Fantastic. Fantastic. Anyway, let me finish this introduction,

because we've got to crack on. Alexandra is a patron of Index on Censorship, a trustee of Gifford Circus and the charity Reprieve, and an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The book that Alexandra and Simon have chosen to discuss with us today is Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker, first published in 1962 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the US and Victor Galantz in the UK, reissued in the US in 2004 by the New York Review of Books Classics List, and in 2018 by Daunt's Books. Those two lists, obviously, pillars of contemporary

backlist taste and discernment. So, Cassandra and the Wedding was Dorothy Baker's fourth and final novel. She's best known for her 1938 jazz tale, Young Man with a Horn, which was made into a movie, more of that later, and her lesbian-tinged romance trio. But Cassandra at the Wedding is Dorothy Baker's masterpiece. It's a dark family comedy based around the imminent marriage of Judith Edwards, a 24-year-old Californian musician, to John Thomas Finch, a recently qualified doctor from Connecticut. They plan to marry at Judith's family Californian ranch, but her troubled and troublesome twin sister, Cassandra, hurtling home from the flat they once shared together in Berkeley,

has other ideas. In Baker's careful uncovering of the layers of family life, we find that both sisters are still in the throes of grief for their mother, Jane, a mercurial writer who died of cancer three years earlier. Despite the valiant attempts of their brandy-soaked father, a philosopher who has exiled himself from academic life, and their waspish but devoted grandmother, the family tensions come to a head. As an early fan of the book Carson McCullers observes, it is the exquisite pyrotechnics of Baker's prose that lift a domestic drama to the status of a literary classic. But before we plunge into the shark-infested pool of family politics, let me pose the old question. Andy, what have you been reading this week?

Well, I've been reading a book by Michael Bracewell called Souvenir, London, 1979 to 1986. And it's an account of London in the period after punk, but before the rise of digital technology. It's nonfiction. It's quite hard to categorise. And so I would say there's elements of geography, style writing, music writing, but fiction as well. Bracewell is a novelist,

though he hasn't published a novel for 20 years. The last novel he wrote is fantastic little book called perfect tense about an office worker in the city of London, which I think was published by Cape, which I strongly recommend if people don't know that book. He also wrote a nonfiction book called England is mine, which is terrific book about Roxy music or remake remodel. book about Roxy Music called Remake Remodel and he mostly works now as a as a an art critic I really love his writing he hasn't published a new book for quite a long time so I was really excited when Souvenir came out and what I like about it is I'm going to read you from the beginning of the book it starts off as one kind of book and then as it goes on, it becomes like, it's very hard to describe, but it's almost like it dissolves into something more impressionistic or something more abstract. So it starts with specifics, pop culture specifics, as you'll hear, but then it becomes like, it's almost like an early 80s video. It's like a John Fox video, or it's like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. That things you think you remember begin to blur a bit and fade. And it moves from being descriptive to impressionistic. and I when I was reading it I was thinking in the words of Eric Morkham well this is fine but it won't sell many ice creams going at that speed and I genuinely thought who is going to

buy this this is I mean this is wonderful but who's going to buy it I'm really pleased I heard yesterday that they've reprinted that it looks like they're going into another printing after this one, that it seems to have caught something, and it's caught people's imaginations because guess what? The thing that sells books is selling this, which is word of mouth. So this came out, by the time you hear this, a couple of months ago, but people are talking about it and reading it and being intrigued by it and maybe a bit perplexed, but in a good way.

So I'm just going to read you the beginning and I can't help thinking that many of us gathered here today will prickle with recognition at some of this. So anyway, Souvenir, Michael Bracewell, chapter one, Movement. After the freezing winter of 1981, with its hard frosts and clear icy twilights of intense stillness, and quiet skinny boys hunched in old raincoats always having to walk listening to New Order, reading John Wyndham and J.G. Ballard and pale art school girls in the thrall of Sheila Erte and David Sylvian there occurred in the pop-style zeitgeist a role-playing fantasy.

This took the following form and proved a sharp contrast. A received idea of London's West End during the mid-20th century, mixing a concentrate of bebop to beat-boom modes from the late 40s to the early 1960s. This reminds me of your friend Christian from Blue Rondo à la Turc. And making a dressing-up box of their glamour. Zoot suits, pinstripes and keychains alma kogan spivs julie london old compton street espresso bongo and the talk of the town a streetwise fast-talking cool proletarian notion of jewish tailors baker light beat girl pomade strippers d mob and d mop coffee

bars beehives impresarios modern jazz taffeta nightclub stephen ward rockabilly stout diamante and upright bass this fantasy building in exuberance over two or three years to embrace samba salsa disco tinsel cocktail bar palm trees tans and tennis shorts good times party carnival showbiz the sound of a bright new britain occurring alongside this period costume drama of pre-Swinging London, pre-Beatle Pop, meanwhile, to pursue an independent but occasionally overlapping course was a cult of the abject, industrial, occult, transgressive, clever, days in a tower block east of Old Street,

nights in heaven or the final academy counter-fantasy which seemed the shadow side, confrontational, smug, oppressive, highly wrought of all that jazz-samba-good-times-showbiz shit. The shadow side knelt at the altar of Burroughs, De Boer, Pasolini and Bataille. The samba side rather to Bernard Delfont. That sounds brilliant.

If you like that, it's a kind of high wire act for the whole book. I thought it was wonderful. So that's Souvenir by Michael Bracewell, and that's published by White Rabbit. John, what have you been reading? I've been reading Pure Indulgence this week, but I picked it up. It's sent to me by Nat Jantz of Sortoff Books, who has done an amazing job bringing all of Tove Jansson's work into print. And this is notes from an island by Tove and Tuliki Pietila, known as Tutti. They lived together as partners. And this is the recount of

their life on each summer they would go. 26, they spent on this tiny little rocky island called Klovharon in the Gulf of Finland. And they built a house there. And in the end, they became too old. In 1991, they were too old to stay there and they left in their late 70s. But it's, as well as Tove Jansson's wonderful prose, there's also these beautiful copper plate and wash paintings of the island

by Tutti, who was a painter and a sculptor. And there's also a wonderful kind of logbook from a man called Brunstrom, a man so laconic that he uses no adjectives in everyday speech. He's the guy who plays Ericsson in Tove Jansson's famous, he's Bailey Ericsson in the summer book. So this is not the island that the summer book is based on, but it was their kind of home and their refuge. It's a beautiful book. It's a beautifully made book. Yes, it looks amazing.

Sort of have done it wonderfully. And it's just that thing, you know, one evening I picked it up and I was transported to the Gulf of Finland, to the rocks and the sea and the sound of the sea. And she writes with such elegance. I'm just going to read a tiny little bit to give you the flavor. Also, I thought this would amuse you about the, it starts with about them, not on their waiting to see if they can get planning permission to build. So this is back in the 60s. While we waited, we lived on Harrow in a tent it rained the whole time tutti read the

vicomte de braglon volume six there's nothing like the classic she said re les miserables unabridged and then you'll understand you have to be loyal we know i know that tutti is loyal to what she believes, even afterwards. We'd pitched our tent right next to the big boulder, which is so massive that it had become a landmark, at least for people who navigate by hearsay. The boulder is estimated to weigh about 50 tonnes. It lies in a huge frog pond at the only spot suitable for building a cabin that's out of the ocean's reach.

It rained all week. The pond overflowed and trickled down the rock face right past our tent, and it smelled awful. We dreamed about what our new cabin would look like. The room would have four windows, one in each wall. Towards the southeast, we'd need to see the big storms that rage right across the island. On the east, we'd see the moon's reflection in the lagoon, and on the west side, a rock face with moss and polypoddy ferns. To the north, we'll keep watch for the approaching boats, so we'll have time to get ready. We figured that if we were going to build a cabin, it ought to be fairly high up on the slope,

but not at the top, because that's only for the navigation marker, maybe just a little way down, so that from the gulf and from the boats that rush past for no good reason only the chimney is visible in silhouette against the light late one evening we heard a motor shut down at our beach and someone with a flashlight came slowly up the slope he introduced himself brunstrom from cracow brunstrom was out salmon fishing and was going to spend the night on his boat then he saw a light on the island we made tea on our primer stove. Brunström is rather small. He has an austere, weather-beaten face and blue eyes. His gestures are quick but measured and he uses no adjectives in everyday speech. His boat has no name. We trusted him immediately.

Brunström told us we wouldn't need much time, although you never knew with the autumn weather. He'd bring sioblom and maybe charlie and helmer and for starters they'd have to blow up the big boulder runstrom said that dynamiting and excavating for a cellar doesn't count as construction construction means framing and framing won't last the winter without a roof so we'd have to hurry before it snows he said and so it goes on it's just it's it's that simple i'm always happy to read more to the and it's yeah i mean if you if you if you love the that the pitch of her there is a melancholy always that runs through her work which is there through this

and the actually the it's very moving the fact their farewell to the island and leaving it is beautifully done but uh yeah it's it's a it's a small but i think really beautiful addition to the tove jansen canon and hats off to sort of for producing it so beautiful when you said you were reading this i uh i had it rang a bell with me and i i thought i could remember that simon was a huge fan of tove jansen am i right you've remembered correctly yeah i think she's so wonderful as you say there's I thought I could remember that Simon was a huge fan of Tove Jansson. Am I right? You've remembered correctly, yeah. I think she's so wonderful. As you say, there's that melancholy,

but there's always a complete lack of sentimentality to everything she writes. And humour, you know, she's funny. I mean, like the Moomin Trolls themselves. Her relationship with Tutti, which, I mean, I don't know if you've seen, the film is an amazing film as well, the Tove film. And Fair Play is the novel that's based on them, isn't it, which is another, well, they're all wonderful. And she's been so lucky as well, posthumously. Look, Thomas Teal, I don't

know if he's translated this one, but he's translated all the others, I think, and he's... Yes, I absolutely should say that, translated by Thomas Teal. I was looking to see if her american novel sun city was coming back because i think i read somewhere that it is though it might not be sort of that are doing it i typed in two of our yanson sun city twitter and the first result that came up was simon thomas well there you go yes that's you it's it is me it's one of those times when you think gosh there might be a neglected gem and perhaps this is the best of her work and it absolutely is the worst of her work but unfortunately it is

yes i agree work still very good but fascinating though fascinating well we've done that now the main event the book chat will continue on the other side of this message. Right, John, where are we? We're in Bakersfield, aren't we? I think we're in Bakersfield. No, I think we're in a ranch. We're a ranch somewhere between Putnam and Bakersfield, aren't we?

So, Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker. This was published in 1962 as john was saying earlier uh this is the main book we're talking about today alexandra you chose the book for us do you want to say where you first read it was it a virago it was a virago modern class but i read it way before that um in the literally when i was a teenager in the 60s, must have been the late 60s. I dread to think, I must have been really young actually, but my parents had the Penguin paperback of it. I remember it really clearly with a drawing of Cassandra,

I guess, in her white dress. And both my parents loved the book. And so I picked it up and I read it. And I can't have understood very much of what was in the book, but I loved it because it felt so incredibly sophisticated. I love the darkly glittering humour, and it felt very exotic to me. It wasn't like any book that I'd ever read. And it stayed with me me and it's haunted me

ever since then, literally ever since the late 1960s. So when I was at Virago, we did it and it was Carmen who had decided to republish it. But of course, it was this old friend to me. And Georgina Hammack wrote this wonderful introduction to it and got to know, as she told me recently, she got to know Howard Baker, Dorothy Baker's husband, as a result. What is it that stayed with you? So you've talked about what it was then, but what is it that you keep coming back to? Well, obviously then I think I didn't understand anything

of what was going on sexually in the book when I read it as a teenager. And I read it simply as a book about sisters. And I am very interested in sisters, possibly because I don't have one. I'm a girl between two boys, which I've always really liked. I haven't wanted a sister particularly. I think of myself as the jam in the sandwich in my family. But I've always been really interested in sisters. And they are mysterious creatures to me.

And there's something about very close sister bonds that is not like any other relationship in this world. And of course, this is more so. It's like it's squared a million times over because they're identical twins. But, you know, in my publishing life, well, obviously Esther Freud, who I talked about earlier, Hideous Kinky and Peerless Flats are both novels about sisters.

Lucy Ellman's first, wonderful first novel, Sweet Desserts, is about sisters very much based on her sister relationship. And then of course, I've spent much of the last 20 years watching very close quarters of the relationship between my stepdaughters, Clover and Nell. And Clover Str stroud um has written nell died two years ago nearly and clover has written the most astonishing book about sisters i've really ever read called the red of my blood which is coming out next spring and she writes about how they were as as if they were sort of one flesh and that the parting of them, the anguish that that brings, the parting of them in real living life, not just in death, but how passionate their relationship was, but also how angry it could be and how confused and how complicated. And I think it's these things that have always fascinated me.

And that is part of Cassandra at the Wedding, isn't it? The idea of the divided flesh. I'm sure we'll talk about that. Simon, when did you first discover this book or Dorothy Baker? I read Young Men with a Horn first probably about six years ago, I think just because I'd seen a book blogger write about it. And I happened to stumble across it. I then read a book called The Street by Dorothy Baker that I was halfway through when I discovered was a different Dorothy Baker.

And not a very good writer. I'm thinking, she's really gone off the boil on this one. really gone up the boil on this one. I bought Cassandra at the Wedding in a charity shop maybe 10 years ago on the basis that one always buys a Virago Morning Classic if one doesn't already own it. And it was when Daunt republished it, I thought, well, they have such impeccable taste in their choices that I should get my copy off the shelf and read it. And well, like Alexandra, these years before, I was completely beguiled by it. I'd enjoyed Young Man with a Horn a lot, but this felt to me in a completely different league. And would you like to reveal to the panel your particular connection to the book? I'd love to.

So one of the things I love looking out for in our books about twins is because I am a twin. And I'm always very keen to see how other people do it. And the answer is often very badly. I'm an identical twin, although we only discovered that out five years ago. We were told, the doctors told our parents that we were non-identical and we had a DNA test done just before our 30th birthday

and discovered we were identical. Now looking at photos, I could have saved myself 200 pounds. But one believes what one is still old. And I think what a lot of novelists do when they are writing about twins, they're either exactly the same or they're exact opposites. And the thing that really annoys me is that they're often surprised that they look like each other or surprised that they're twins.

And it's not a daily surprise to me that I'm a twin. And the thing that Dorothy Baker does so well is that she's not imagining what it would be like to be a twin from the outside. She somehow completely gets under the skin of what it's like to be a twin. I assumed she was a twin when I was reading it. And it was only afterwards discovering that she was an only child, I was very surprised. It's that thing of having your own identity and a dual identity and those things coexisting for your whole life. It's truly wonderful how she manages to understand the glory and the tension of that relationship. Neil and me and my brother are married, so we haven't got to this point yet. But there's

certainly been times in my life of leaving home I found extremely difficult for that reason. And she really captures, yeah, how it's both a wonderful bond, but also any bond is restricting in some ways. I don't know if it's too early to go into a passage, but if I, maybe I could read the passage. If you've got a bit of the book on being a twin, that would be wonderful i have granny looked sad i've never been able to see anything wrong with your being don't say it i said don't say that word nobody else who is one feels this way about it gran said in the agreed voice she always uses for this particular conversation the conversation about our condition so to call it i'm sorry to grieve her or deny her her pleasure but I have to make

things clear because no one of my grandmother's temperament and sensibilities can understand what it's like to be bound to a way of life like ours, a situation we inwardly glory in, but one that we have to protect at every turn from the menacing mass of cliches that have thrust on us from the outside. To be like us isn't easy it requires constant attention to detail i've thought it out we thought it out together i've tried to explain to my doctor but it's a question of working ceaselessly and being as different as possible because there must be a gap before it can be bridged and the bridge is the real project so i i that's actually such a great passage to choose, I think, Alexandra and Mitch,

because you get the flavour of the narrative voice and so much of the appeal of the book from the first couple of lines is the fully developed personality that's coming at you off the page. And don't you think that the the writing it's so interesting that Dorothy Baker was obsessed with jazz she was a woman of obsessions and jazz was a very big obsession but I think that the writing is like jazz it's she riffs the rhythm is incredible she improvises she's really bold in the way that she writes. And she sometimes have paragraphs where you almost can't take a breath in them. So for me, that prose is electrifying and stays with me. I mean, technically, one of the things that just blew me away about this book,

I mean, Cassandra's voice, which is most of the book, is, I mean, that kind of wit parker like as you say the riffing the kind of the the intelligence but then to manage to go into the other twin the dollar let's be honest the dollar of the two twins and to make a person aer consciousness not dull in the writing. I had to read Judith's bit twice just to reassure myself that it was of what she did. I think that is extraordinary. And then when you come back to Cassandra's voice,

you have no idea what you're going to get. And what you get is, I just think it's sublime. I think one of the most moving and powerful endings to a novel I've read in a long, long time. We'll come on to the ending. I'd just like to state my credentials as an only child who's read this book three times. It had nothing to say to me as an only child,

but what I found with it, when I knew we were going to be doing it, I was like, I've read this book twice already, which on one level is good because you've read it, so you kind of feel you're across it. But I thought, I'd better read it again. Every time I read it, every time I've read it, it seems unfair to say it's leapt up every time.

I thought it was very good the first time I read it. This time, third time through, I was like, God, this is a fantastic book. This time, third time through, I was thinking, God, this is a fantastic book. The consistency of the imagery within it, which you couldn't possibly see the first time you read it, but the stuff about the use of, I mean, to take such a potentially boring image as water and to make it work so hard all the way through the book in different contexts this time really blew me away i thought wow this is so tight and so careful and yet as you say alexandra has all the breath of jazz in it at the same time has all the energy and the rhythm and

and it's absolutely first rate it's not not, you know, sometimes we might say, well, neglected literature, neglected for a reason. But I get the sense this book is better known in America, is that right, than it is in the UK? It is because she's American. But what I find really interesting is when I go to the Frankfurt Book Fair or the London Book Fair and I go through the lists of foreign publishers, Frankfurt Book Fair or the London Book Fair, and I go through the lists of foreign publishers,

of European publishers, so many of them have that book on their lists. So it's not just Britain and America. That book has an incredible sustained life across the world. And how is it that that's possible? It's been very quiet, but there are all these editors who love it as much as I do. And that's been a great bond. You know, they're my friendships with editors who love Cassandra at the wedding. It's very simple. But I found reading it this time, what struck me that hadn't stayed with me so much is how incredibly sad the book is. incredibly sad the book is um and i was i was devastated by it this time round um in a way that i hadn't been when i read it two or three times before and i think that's partly because everything that cassandra does to try and preserve her that relationship is so self-destructive and

she is conscious of it being self-destructive while she's doing it but can't can't stop herself even those conversations where she says, a witch wedding or witch man or something where it's just going round and round in circles. She seems to be trying to resurrect some sort of sisterly flippancy but it's really just putting all these barriers back in place. She's a brilliant self-editor, Cassandra. Painfully so.

That she'll say something and then she'll reflect on what she said and she'll go that was too strong or that landed, I'm quite pleased it landed She's a writer, isn't she? Like her mother and that's the other thing is that their dead mother is there through the book All through the book

I mean I have to say Alexandra I thought of N nell and clover all the way through yes and also in that strange way that i think sometimes as a man it's almost an envy that you have for that bond that sisters have you know it's kind of it it it is of a different quality and a different intensity and i think that i mean i'm i'm very close to my brother but it's not quite the same yeah well i'd'd also like to point out, this will seem so basic if you haven't read the book, but I thought this was a stroke of genius. Cassandra's name begins with a C. All the other main characters' names begin with a J.

Right? other main characters names begin with a j right jude jack jane james and her ex-friend liz janko right they're all it's such a tiny simple thing to put her on the outside of everybody else because i kept thinking wait a minute judith jane is jane the mum yeah jane's the mum no jude's the sister but jack is jack or or James the father? Her sense of outsiderdom, her own sense of outsiderdom, is represented by something as rudimentary but effective as that. And I thought that was incredibly, what a bold thing to do, to just let lie there, the idea that her name, and all their names are pretty much like cassandra what cass like

three syllables jude jack james jane liz they're all single syllables she doesn't she doesn't fit in what is so you've got to be a really good writer to be brave enough to do that that's to get away with it and to get away with it exactly yeah this is a clip of the writer peter flannery who you'll probably know best for writing our friends in the north and he adapted cassandra at the wedding for radio four about five years ago and he hadn't read the book before and what do you think of this it's a family but it's a highly dysfunctional family. And it's set in California about 50 or 60 years ago. It feels very modern and yet very alien at the same time. That's partly because the family is so quirky and unusual

and their concerns are so strange. But they're living at a time which it's history now, but it somehow doesn't feel like history. It's an odd mixture of new and old and then and now. And I found it unputdownable. It was one of those books that I read from cover to cover straight away. The other thing about it is its tone. It's a very unusual piece of work. I mean, there's an attempted suicide in it, which makes it sound immediately like it's a piece of graphic, which makes it sound immediately like it's a piece of graphic, maybe even melodramatic drama.

But it's not. It's really quite unexpected. And it doesn't, in a way, even when you get to that point, it's not entirely serious. It's treated in such an odd way. It's not done flippantly at all. I mean, you feel for the girl and what she's going through. But it's not a melodrama and it's not a tragedy. It is not a tragedy. It ends actually not comically or even romantically, but it ends with a kind of growing up, I think, is what happens and a moving on. She picks herself up and moves on. up, I think, is what happens. And a moving on. She picks herself up and moves on. Now,

we're going to talk about two elements of this book which contain spoilers, so you might want to fast forward for the next five to ten minutes. If you are spoiler-phobic. But we can't talk about the book without talking about these elements of it. The first of which

is the suicide attempt that takes place in the book. What did you think, Alexandra, about what Peter Flannery said there about the tone of that event within the book? I think that was very good. It's because you're in Cassandra's head when she's when she's taking the pills and she can't do anything without actually being funny and a bit flip about it and and and dry dry as anything and so you're sort of kind of there with her in the bed when it's happening so you're not you're not at a distance and and you're almost living it with her and you think, oh, I can do this. It makes you think about what it would be like to take those pills.

Yes, I absolutely agree. I think that's really accurate. There's a spontaneity to the way it is told to you, the reader, that it seems spontaneous. And Baker's so good at that time and elsewhere at states of consciousness, I reader, that it seems spontaneous. And Baker's so good at that time and elsewhere at states of consciousness, I guess, whether it's getting more drunk or if it's waking up or if it is there as she's going into a coma, I guess. I think the bit that really stood out for me there is where she's writing the suicide note, but she can only do it by tracing her finger on the sheet of the bed. And she's hoping that might somehow be readable later. Did you get my note? Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Sean, I know you wanted to read a bit, didn't you, that's related to this? This is, I think, one of the most convincing and beautiful accounts of what we would call a near-death experience. So I'll read it. So much for the passing in review she's had uh she's obviously been looking bits of her life have been passing by it was quick i think a great deal of it but

soon finished and then though it's not simple or even sensible to try to reconstruct nothingness i believe i almost achieved it for a while. A great stretch of purest black velvet, smooth, soundless, the very piece of black velvet I'd been looking for for so long. I can remember feeling it drop weightless over me, swathing and swaddling me and then becoming one with me so that there was no way to tell which was velvet and which was Cassandra. But I never made it all the way to nowhere. There was a dogged spark of consciousness, very small, very feeble, but dogged, and it could just

as well be called conscience, damn it, as consciousness, because I knew in some beating depth that I was engaged in illicit communion with the one great howling beauty of them all and that there would have to be what there always has to be in this kind of affair repercussions there would be jealousy accusations recriminations the full deck of threats and noises i couldn't stay all night and have to leave by an inconspicuous exit and try not to kick anything over on the way out and remember to pick up my things my bag my lipstick all marks of identification including the ostentatious monogrammed items my friends are forever giving me collect them and leave without lingering because nobody will bless this union not even granny who will bless practically anything if you set it up right

no no chance for me in the one of my choice my calm sweet quiet black velvet love no receiving line no friends to wishes all the happiness and success in the world in our new life which of course is the wrong word but how would they know enough to believe i could prefer the opposite number it's just amazing I think again jazz right? you can hear it as mournful the mournful solo piece

but still funny, she's still funny, she's still cracking jokes so Dorothy Baker's first novel was called Young Man with a Horn and was published in 1938 and is still thought of as being one of the great pieces of jazz writing based on the life of Bix Beiderbecke, the trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke. And it was made into a film in 1950 starring Lauren Bacall,

Doris Day and Kirk Douglas. And we've got a little bit from the trailer here just to give you a flavour of that. And then we'll talk about the relationship between the two books, I think. Music. The kind you can't write. The kind you just gotta feel.

He played it. And the world cheered at his feet. Listen. It's haunting beat is telling the whole story of his fight to rise above the past, of his climb from Dixieland jive joints to Broadway's starlit roofs, of the strange adventure that brought him

into the lives of two different and exciting women, two dangerous and demanding loves. Keep away, Richard. Better not take any chances with me. Only people who respect themselves can ever give love fully, freely. I don't happen to respect myself. What are you trying to do, Rick? Kill yourself?

Because you tried for something that didn't exist. That's what you've done all your life. You cheap... What a dope I was. That's what you've done all your life. You cheap... What a dope I was. I thought you were class. Like a real high note you hit once in a lifetime. That's because I couldn't understand what you were saying half the time. Why, you're like those carnival joints I used to work in.

Big flash on the outside, but on the inside nothing but filth. Wow. Can I just say, Young Man with a Horn is absolutely brilliant. The film and the book are both brilliant. Alexandra, you were saying that Cassandra in Cassandra at the Wedding is like a writer. And Rick, the protagonist of Young Man with a Horn, is a genius cornet player. It seems to me that Dorothy Baker has a really deep veneration, Simon, of the artist.

That's the spiritual element of her work. And that's, I mean, in Cassandra at the Wedding, made sort of very overt by this half-owned piano that represents the soul of the two of them or something. And the idea that either would give it to the other is unbearable, even though it can only be in one place at a time. And I think she doesn't get, it's not as heavy-handed as

making this metaphor but it does feel a bit like the two sisters had been a harmony and then had to play solo i guess and and um judith is as as john mentioned earlier the duller of the two but sort of the more measured sort of background beat keeping cassandra's more sort of improvisation on the top of it, tethered to the ground, maybe. That's too fanciful. But I did feel when she switched voices to Judith, you could see it was the same gene pool, but she was that much more restrained and that much more keeping in time, I guess, when Cassandra was more all over the place. Perhaps the most, for me, devastating moment of the book is when cassandra says to judith you can have my my half of the piano and judith says that jack doesn't like music

yes yes and how early did you know that almost immediately yes and why but could you expand on that alex? Why is that devastating, do you think? I think it's devastating because I believe it means actually that the marriage can't last or if it lasts, Judith's soul will be squashed. And she, in a way, as a child, was a violinist and she had polio and her hand was damaged so she could never play it properly. But there must have been in her soul, a musician was in her soul as well. And I think she played the piano later on. But yeah, I just think that at the end of it, you think actually Cassandra is going to find her way into life. She will, despite all the difficulties.

And Judith is the is the one in peril because her spirit is likely to be squashed. you're so right about that that that there's a brilliant passage where where judith imagines that the only thing that would help cassie she says would be for me to go to paces the same way she has and she says if it were if right now there were nothing for me but blankness and despair meaningless love pleasureless drinking no faith in anything except the decayed memory of us as a family living in a fortress being self-sufficient and superior if if it were that way for me Cass would take over and get me out of it bring me back convince me get me to the shore turn me into a great musician a whole-souled human being a teetotal anti-barbiturate true believer she would she'd do it for me i think god that's that's why that scene why she can't stay at the wedding reception i mean you're right it's it's this

is supposed to be the the happy denouement but she can see it and i think what what we haven't said is that is that judith is the artist mean, she's an incredible pianist. She's a real artist. So it's not giving up a hobby. It's giving up everything that she is. So it's horrific, that moment. And it's not just that he doesn't like it. It's that he doesn't seem to respect it, isn't it? I had a look through the various contemporary reviews

of this novel, and what's really striking about it is, I mean, you would expect some variation, but no two reviews in 1962, certainly in the UK, could agree about the book. It was published here by Galans. They're wildly different.

You've got somebody in The Guardian, a reviewerer in the guardian saying this is a perfect novel the technically on a technical level i agree with carson mccullough's on the cover it's perfect but i thought i'd just read for you the review by anthony quinton in the telegraph and ask you to respond to this i put it i put it to you so this is from 1962 in a roundup uh guys of titles including novels by robin jenkins chisere pavezzi mary boson kett and dorothy baker in cassandra at the wedding, Dorothy Baker arranges a surprise for her readers which somehow rebounds on herself. It's a great start. The book begins with the narration of one of a pair

of handsome American twins in their young womanhood. Daughters of a deeply thoughtful philosophy professor who has retired from the world. I.e. a cowardly and pretentious drunk. This girl, the Cassandra of the title, is magnificently nasty, believing that the world has come to an end when the other less dominant and fascinating twin plans to marry a worthy young doctor.

Can I just say people are really laughing, but you can't see it. So this is a magnificently off review. Let's just spoil it, right? So to foul things up, she stages a suicide attempt. Stages? Gosh. When her pained, concerned sister takes over the narration, a shock is administered with the disowning of the original eye figure.

But while we are invited to deplore Cassandra's emotional cannibalism, we are still expected to regard her as somehow wonderful, and in particular to believe that she is entitled to her piteous intellectual snobbery in fact it is impossible to dissociate cassandra's obscenely egocentric attitude to other people from the complacent more cultured than now preciosity for which the whole family stands now i would like to make the point, Alexandra, that every single review of this book,

regardless of how good, bad or horrible it was like that one, was written by men in 1962. Why does that surprise me? Right. The world before the raga. That's why we were founded. Yeah, it's so true. But is true isn't it like there is a particular sensibility to uh i don't even want to say novels like this to certain novels which the dear chap

there at the telegraph is simply not equipped to be able to deal with but i also think that this novel was way ahead of its time one of the things when I read it was I was at that point reading British modern novels. I was reading Nell Dunn and Margaret Drabble and all those women that were publishing at the time and loving them. But this was something else. So the modernity of it, I think, was exceptional. And that's why it doesn't feel dated in any way at all and in fact you know later you have you know Nora Ephron and there's a particular sort of layer of smart wisecracking women writers that come mainly out of America but I think I mean there's a novel that's so like this it's extraordinary which I adore which is Miriam Tave's All My Puny Sorrows. Oh yeah one of my two or three favorite novels of of the last 20 years isn't it incredible and i was told to read it incredible by meg rossoff who said you must read this book and of course meg writes brilliantly about families

and the great god and her most recent one i think is exceptional about that but But All My Puny Sorrows is about a pianist, about sisters, pianists, and one tries to kill herself. And that sort of crackle, that dancing prose, comes out of Dorothy Baker. But I think Dorothy Baker was, you know, obviously she does come out of Dorothy Parker. It's allothy's around here literally um but um but but there but there is a modernity that i think is completely new

and sort of you know in 1962 yes the similarity with all my puny sorrows is also a lot of the humor shouldn't work which is why it's so funny. The crackle that you describe is coming from somebody facing down bleak subject matter with absolute clear-eyed truth. That is what makes it funny. There's not gags. The gags aren't the thing. It's like the same with Cassandra's narration, Cassandra at the wedding. Gags aren't the thing. It's like the same with Cassandra's narration in Cassandra at the Wedding. The thing I was talking about, her self-editing, that's where a lot of the humour comes from. It's that apprehension of her own motives for saying what she's saying while being able to analyse them while she's doing it. That seems very of a piece with All My Puny Sorrows.

It also seems almost to be humour in the plotting, that the wedding is such an afterthought. It's there in the title, and then it just sort of happens in a few minutes when cassandra's not even there despite being cassandra at the wedding that's really true yes cassandra at the wedding but not at the reception yes yeah well the other way around yeah yeah yeah yes yeah yeah do you i was just gonna one i just wondered why she didn't write more there There's an interesting review in the London Review suggesting that she was kind of plagued by feelings of inadequacy. She had had many good reviews and she had had commercial success,

but you feel, though, that that Cassandra type, what you said at the beginning of the show, that she's a self-editor, an extreme self-editor. And she wanted to be the best. And there's a really telling quote she was asked in an interview. They said, why do you have to be a writer, the interviewer asked. She said, well, maybe I don't, Baker said. That's what I'm hoping.

Every writer knows that feeling. But also, as a writer, presumably she has a crush on genius. You know, that's one of the themes we were talking about earlier. You know, and perhaps if you're a writer and you, you know, you're saying, well, you know, I'm a trumpet player, but am I Miles Davis? Am I Mick Spiderbecker? If I'm not those people, then why am I bothering?

Has anyone here read Trio? No, no. So she wrote four novels and that's the second and seems perplexingly unavailable. It does sound from the accounts that it is rather disappointing as a novel. But who knows? Lesbian pulp is one of the things I agree with. Yes, absolutely.

But I think we should all hunt it down and share it and see what we think of it because it would be very interesting. It's interesting looking at the Wikipedia entry on her. They're obsessed with the lesbian aspects of her writing and herself. And you just think, honey, get over this. And somewheres, I think it might be in that, they make out that actually Cassandra is sexually obsessed with her sister, which I think is completely wrong.

Completely wrong. I didn't agree with that. Yeah, I didn't agree with that. This is one of the things I often find whilst reading books about twins is they turn into twin-cest. And I was worried starting this one because she's obsessed with her, for sure. But I don't think it's sexual obsession. Not at all.

Yes. Yes. I mean, I want us to see the sisters together. So I'm going to read a bit about that. So Cassandra's been drinking all night along with her dad. It's a great drinking novel as well, can I just say? descriptions of drinking are exquisite and at this point she's in the garden and um she's on a bench and then she wants to look at the stars which are very important to her and then she climbs up on the table and i have to admit that when i drink which of course is scarcely ever i i am given given to getting up on chairs and tables there's something about the height that it gives you. So I'm really with Cassandra here. So she's standing on the table and Judith returns. What are you doing up on the table? My sister said.

I hadn't heard her come out of the house. I turned around and looked down and there she was in her bikini holding a hairbrush. Nothing special, I said. Well, I'm not getting up there and brush your hair. You're not, I said, as if it was the one thing I'd counted on. But I got right down and sat on the bench and Jude got up and sat on the table above me at my back and started brushing. She was using a brush of Jane's, Jane is

their mother, with long stiff whalebone bristles. At first I thought she was sculpting me but it was a very effective brush and after a few tearing jerks it was getting through and pulling away quite smoothly and pleasantly. I was glad I hadn't yelled because I was now wanting this to go on as long as might be. Two hours, three weeks, forever. Just go on brushing and keep on brushing off what's coming. I don't know how long it went on, the whale boning, nor exactly when it stopped. And Judith got off the table and put down the brush and sat down beside me on the bench. We'd have to do it now, I supposed. Ask the natural questions. When's the wedding? What's he like? Do you have an apartment? And get the proper answers to the natural questions. But we didn't. For a while there we were, quiet, perfectly quiet.

The frogs weren't and the crickets weren't, but we were. We've sat quiet a lot in our time and it was that way again. We could have been 11 years old or seven, all at ease with our house behind us and the river bottom down there and everything together with itself. It was the way it should be. And I stopped worrying and let myself be grateful at last to Judith for fixing it. How had she done it? How had she managed to get it to be this way? Just us. When I'd been expecting to come back home as an outsider and have to meet entrenched invaders. I wanted to thank her, but it wouldn't have sounded right, so I didn't try, just relaxed and took a long swallow of my drink and went back to being 11 years old and 7 and 13, all the ages we've ever been. A lot of days gave their lives to get

us all the way to 24. And I sat here now and felt intimately the accumulation of two times 24, which is 48, taking us together a double 24 years of facing responsibilities, learning to walk and talk, then read and write, button up and unbutton, put on, take off, drive, dive, swim, judge, jeer and worry. The world's gift of learning. I don't think the Telegraph reviewer really caught this book. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Before we go, can we just, again, slight spoiler alert, I'd just like to talk about the end of the book, which Peter Flannery was saying, you know,

is about her, Cassandra, moving on. I find that last page, every time I've read it, I've read it a few times because it does that amazing thing that literature does of meaning one thing and everything, and I'm not quite sure what it is, but yet it's incredibly fulfilling and satisfying. What is the outcome for Cassandra at the end of the novel? You know, Alexandra, you were saying you feel the outcome for Judith is potentially disastrous. What is the outcome for Cassandra? I think the outcome for Cassandra is that she will find a way of taking her life into her own hands and it will

never be an easy life but I think she will become a writer and a lot of the fact that she's unable to write is to do with the fact that her mother was a writer and her mother has died and there's an amazing line uh in this which is I could never write any of this until i could tear up the porn ticket on the ghost of my mother ah yes yeah magnificent yeah yeah simon what do you what do you think do you think it's a do you think it's a hopeful conclusion um i think i'm a little more ambivalent i think perhaps because that that sock never quite reaches the water in the last line and it seems this i just always sound as almost doing something or almost plunging into something else almost dying and i get the sense that she will almost achieve

things for a very long time um and maybe just the sort of decades of suspended animation or something she she doesn't seem to me to have the the quality to be able to reach fulfillment but i but i hope for her sake that's not the case i'm gonna read that last paragraph so again if you're still listening you might want to skip i'm just going to read that last paragraph as a way of bringing us to the conclusion because for me i find this incredibly moving and yet if if you were to ask me why like all great arts i probably can't tell you and all i can say is like my silly like the idea about doing these brave things this is sort of ludicrous the imagery is kind of ridiculous the twins the socks the water and yet how it's got that inevitability that great literature has,

that you read it and you think, of course, that's how it has to end. There's no other way, it had to end like this. So here it is. This is the final paragraph of Cassandra at the wedding. I was wearing loafers and socks, and on the way back I was walking faster, and one of my socks kept crawling down behind my heel. I stopped and pulled it up two or three times and finally I slipped the shoe off and dropped the sock over the side and stood where I was and watched it go or tried to. It took immense concentration to stay with it. When I thought I'd lost it for good, the wind caught it far down, and I saw it flash in the sunlight once and again, and maybe even a third time.

But after that, I don't know. It was out of sight a long time before it could have hit the water. Oh, it's Gatsby good yeah isn't it it's superb it is it's a great ending and brave as you say

yeah yeah well that's all we have time for huge thanks to Simon and Alexandra for this excuse to lounge by the pool

and listen to a family tearing itself apart. To Nicky Birch for weaving our four-part harmonies into a single piece of music. And to Unbound for all the brandy and sodas. Special thanks to them. You can download all previous episodes of Backlisted, plus follow links, clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website, backlisted.fm. And we're always pleased if you contact us on twitter and facebook and now in sound and pictures on instagram too you can also show your love directly by supporting our patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted

we aim to survive without paid for advertising your generosity helps us do that all patrons get to hear backlisted episodes early and And for the fraction of a price of a new silk dress from Saks, lot listeners get two extra lot listed a month. Our three-way poolside conversation about the books, films and music that have illuminated our week

like autumn sun on leaves. Lot listeners also get to hear their names read out on the show as a mark of our thanks and appreciation. And this week's batch roll call is katherine mckinney rob christopherson helen hawken sarah lopez stephanie class and thank you all tom hurst hannah gray bridget rogers james steve wilson simon is there anything you would like to

add that we haven't covered about Cassandra at the wedding or Dorothy Baker just that it has a twin smug approval if you're looking to read Twinlets this is the one to go for the best one more than The Shining I should confess I've never read The Shining perhaps that will displace it

Alexandra anything you would like to add before we say goodbye nothing but read it. What a book. So true. Simon and Alexandra will be here next time, not as the guests on this, they're taking over from me and Mitch because they're so brilliant.

Thank you both. Thank you so much for coming in. Amazing. Thank you. And listen, we're going to leave you with a piece of music by Bix Beiderbecke, which seemed appropriate to Cassandra at the wedding. Bix on cornet from 1928.

Frankie Trumbauer and his orchestra playing Bless You Sister. See you next time. Bye. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 ¶¶ If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts, you can sign up to our Patreon. It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted,

which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.