The Bookshelf
The Bookshelf
ABC Australia
Mothers and Sons...is the story as fraught as the title suggests?
53 minutes Posted Feb 20, 2025 at 6:00 am.
0:00
53:46
Download MP3
Show notes
An examination of family dynamics through three novels...Adam Haslett’s Mothers and Sons reflects on unspoken stories and familial divides; The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr, set in 1970s Ireland, tells the story of a family that takes in a child washed ashore, and Robert Lukins’ Somebody Down There Likes Me depicts an uber-rich family who gather together as their wealth and corruption begin to unravel.
BOOKS
Adam Haslett, Mothers and Sons, Hamish Hamilton
Robert Lukins, Somebody Down There Likes Me, Allen & Unwin
Garrett Carr, The Boy from the Sea, Picador
GUESTS
Claire Mabey, founder of NZ’s Verb Wellington literary organisation and writers’ festival; books editor at The Spinoff; writer whose middle-grade children’s book The Raven's Eye Runaways was published last year. And, here's a link to the NZ book awards Claire mentions: https://www.nzbookawards.nz/new-zealand-book-awards/)
Jonty Claypole, CEO Red Room Poetry; co-host of podcast The Secret Life of Books; author, Words Fail Us: In Defence of Disfluency 
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Percival Everett, James
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead
Samantha Harvey, Orbital
Robert Lukins, The Everlasting Sunday; Loveland
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
Audrey Magee, The Colony
Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
Paul Lynch, Prophet Song
Colm Toibin, works
Niall Williams, Time of the Child
Fiona McFarlane, The Sun Walks Down
James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
Susannah Clarke, Piranesi
Damien Wilkins, Delirious
Harriet Baker, Rural Hours
CREDITS
Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer: John Jacobs, Ann Marie Debettencor
Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown