Elisabeth Egan, an editor at the Book Review, curates our Group Text column — a monthly choice of a book that she feels is particularly well suited to book clubs and their discussions. On this week’s podcast, she talks about her latest pick: “Jackie & Me,” by Louis Bayard, which imagines the friendship between Jacqueline Bouvier and Lem Billings, a close friend of the Kennedys.
“This is rooted in reality,” Egan says, “but Bayard runs with it and imagines conversations between Lem and Jackie, and just shows this, on one hand, fabulous life of parties and museums and fun they had together, but also sets up this ticking clock where you come to understand what Jackie really has at stake, and has to lose by committing to this life with the Kennedys.”
Matthew Schneier visits the podcast to discuss Paula Byrne’s new biography, “The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym.” Pym, a British writer, began publishing novels in the 1950s.
“She published six novels in pretty quick succession, and they’re great,” Schneier says of the first decade or so of her career. “Very clever, very witty, she was often compared to Jane Austen — which was a writer that she loved and appreciated, but also a kind of very easy comparison, whereas Pym’s ironies can be a little bit darker than some of Austen’s. And there’s a sense in her work that she is spotlighting characters who are not the Emma Woodhouses, who are beautiful and rich and effervescent. They’re what she ended up calling ‘excellent women,’ which is the title of I think her best starter novel. These women who are well brought up and very proper, a little bit pious, but can also be a little dowdy, a little dreary, a little bit easier to overlook.”
Also on this week’s episode, Alexandra Alter talks about the filmmaker Werner Herzog and his first novel, “The Twilight World”; and Jennifer Szalai and Molly Young talk about books they’ve recently reviewed. John Williams is the host.
Here are the books discussed by The Times’s critics this week:
“The Facemaker” by Lindsey Fitzharris
“Meet Me by the Fountain” by Alexandra Lange
Let's Talk About Percival Everett's 'James'
Writing About NASA's Most Shocking Moment
Fantasy Superstar Leigh Bardugo on Her New Novel
Colm Toibin on His Sequel to 'Brooklyn'
Book Club: Dolly Alderton's 'Good Material'
100 Years of Simon & Schuster
Looking Back at 50 Years of Stephen King
Books That Make Our Critics Laugh
Talking to Tana French About Her New Series
Talking ‘Dune’: Book and Movies
Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘Erasure,’ by Percival Everett
Tommy Orange on His "There There" Sequel
The Rise and Fall of The Village Voice
Let's Talk About 'Demon Copperhead'
4 Early-Year Book Recommendations
'Killers of the Flower Moon': Book and Movie Discussion
Talking the Joys and Rules of Open Marriage
Our Early 2024 Book Preview
Steven Soderbergh on His Year in Reading
Book Club: 'The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store'
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