Dear walking book clubbers,
I’m excited to discuss Penelope Mortimer’s bullet of a novel, The Pumpkin Eater with you this Sunday, 11.30-12pm.
Thanks so much to those of you who’ve already emailed me thoughts on this very affecting book about a wife (to many husbands) and mother (to even more children), who has a nervous breakdown in Harrods’ Linen Department, despite seeming to have it all. It’s a slim book, so you still have time to read it before Sunday if you’ve yet to begin.
You can join the Zoom via Eventbrite here (which gives me an idea of numbers, allows you to pay if you’d like, and also gives you handy reminders):
Or just click on this link here at 11.30am on Sunday:
Thanks so much to those of you who have signed up!
A reminder that these emails will always be free to those who need them to be, but if you are able to support Emily’s Walking Book Club by paying £15/year to subscribe, or £50/year to include a literary consultation with me, then please do.
More on Penelope Mortimer
There’s been something of a reignition of interest in Penelope Mortimer over recent years, sparked in part by publishing The Pumpkin Eater as a Penguin Classic in 2015.
The wonderful Lucy Scholes has written at length, absolutely brilliantly, about her for The New York Review of Books, here. (Some of you might remember meeting Lucy when she came along to our walking book club about Barbara Comyns a few years’ ago.)
Here is Lucy again in conversation with Jessie Burton, for Daunt Books, talking about their newly published collection of Penelope Mortimer’s short stories, Saturday Lunch with the Brownings. The audio quality improves a lot after the slightly shaky intro. And here is ‘The Skylight’ - one of the stories from the book, available in Granta. Lucy Scholes is also on the latest Backlisted podcast, with John Williams from The New York Times, discussing Mortimer’s earlier novel Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, published by Persephone Books.
Rachel Cooke wrote this piece for the Observer, in which she reveals that Mortimer was living in Swiss Cottage (a stone’s throw from our beloved Heath) when she wrote in her diary about the trip to the linen department that inspired the breakdown in the book. Rachel Cooke was also on Woman’s Hour discussing the novel just before it aired as a BBC drama. Sadly the drama doesn’t seem to be available anymore (please correct me and send the link if I’m wrong!), but here is the Woman’s Hour link - skip through to minute 34.45.
And the other Penelope …
While hunting down these Penelope Mortimer links, I stumbled across THIS - a BBC Radio dramatisation of Penelope Fitzgerald’s At Freddie’s, which is of course our May book club pick! I’m including it here, as it’s only available for the next 13 days. Enjoy a taste of things to come.
In case you missed it…
I hope this will be our final Sunday morning Zoom for the forseeable. Looking ahead to the Spring and Summer, we will go back to our monthly Sunday Heath walks, with the Zooms continuing on the following Monday evening.
Here is a short intro to our Spring/Summer books.
Next up is Gavin Maxwell’s nature masterpiece Ring of Bright Water on Sunday 25th / Monday 26th April.
Looking forward to seeing you on Sunday,
Emily