The Book Club
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½ 〰️
Dominic Sandbrook and Tabitha Syrett’s new podcast, The Book Club, is rather playful. Sandbrook tells Syrett she is “well-read but has awful judgement”: Syrett quickly retorts “you are very poorly read and have bad takes”. It’s this kind of irony and wit that runs through the podcast. Clearly, they are both very well-read and, in my opinion, have very ‘good takes’. The listener (in my case, poorly read with worse judgement) is left to cheerfully tag along, all the while gleaning fresh insights into books they may, or may not have read.
The Book Club is the latest franchise featuring Sandbrook, who co-hosts the beloved The Rest is History with Tom Holland. Syrett, the producer of The Rest is History is the fresh voice that a podcast about books needs. She keeps Sandbrook on the ball and prevents him from going Mark Corrigan on the first book they discuss, Wuthering Heights. Artfully, their first episode is on a book which is currently receiving its ‘media moment’, with Emerald Fennel’s film rendition of Wuthering Heights currently in cinemas.
Perhaps Emily Brontë would be beguiled after watching Fennel’s distorting adaptation of her novel. Nonetheless, after a brief character and plot outline, the podcasters dig into some lesser-known biographical information about Emily Brontë, that manages to go beyond the weird fixation on Branwell Brontë’s wasted potential. They are keen to emphasise that Emily was ultimately a difficult and prudish woman, who, whilst a student in Brussels, responded to the other girls’ jokes with “I wish to be as God made me”. So, we can guess Fennel’s lustful film would not have pleased Emily.
Elsewhere in the podcast, a good effort is made to connect Brontë’s life to the “last great gothic novel”, in an effort to explain how such a dark novel could have arisen from her mind. Patrick Brontë, Emily’s father, apparently “cat-walked around the moors with a gun” and didn’t let the girls eat meat because he thought that it would make them entitled. Sandbrook and Syrett also underline the absolutely mad nature of the book, which is a tour-de-force of emotional and physical abuse, and not the romance that Fenell makes it out to be. They do a particularly good job of highlighting what I think is the most harrowing nature of the novel, the cycles of revenge that take place, and noting its parallels to Greek tragedy. The very fact that all the characters seem to have the same name e.g. Cathy Linton and Cathy Earnshaw, is a point of comedy for the podcasters. Nonetheless, it is artfully connected to the obvious fact that Brontë was keen to underline that revenge must be played out, even over multiple generations.
Overall, The Book Club is a cracking new podcast. What I think is its particular strength is the ability of the hosts to not take themselves too seriously. Talking about literature can become competitive, snobby and triumphalist. The Book Club proves itself to be anything but.