Lost in Redonda

We’re joined today by Josh Cook. Josh is a bookseller and co-owner at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has worked since 2004. He is the author of the critically acclaimed postmodern detective novel  An Exaggerated Murder  and most recently of The Art of Libromancy: Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-First Century , published by our friends at Bibl...

We’re joined today by Lara Ehrlich , a writer, editor, and longtime friend (she and Tom go back 20 years, which seems impossible). Her first story collection, Animal Wife , was published by Red Hen Press back in 2020, and her first novel, Bind Me Tighter Still , will publish in 2025, also from Red Hen. She also hosts a conversation series, Writer Mother Monster , and is the founder and director of...

We’re joined today by Mark Haber of Coffee House Press (formerly of Brazos Bookstore in Houston). Mark is the author of two novels, Reinhardt’s Garden and Saint Sebastian’s Abyss , and the forthcoming novel Lesser Ruins , as well as a forthcoming novella, Ada . We chat about his work as well as Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell. A quick note that there was some construction nois...

Today Spencer Ruchti of Third Place Books joins to chat about The Tanners by Robert Walser, translated by Susan Bernofsky. We actually recorded this back in November and are glad to get it out into the world. Early on Spencer dips out momentarily due to an alarm in the store, but all ended up being right with the world. At least in that instant. This is another wide-ranging chat as we dig into The...

Kicking off 2024 we welcome Tara Cheesman to the podcast with her recommendation, Being Here Is Everything: The Life and Times of Paula Modersohn-Becker by Marie Darriussecq, translated by Penny Hueston. Tara is a freelance critic, former judge of the Best Translated Book Award, and she brings us our first work of nonfiction. We have an absolutely fascinating conversation on art, motherhood, repre...

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is upon us and it does not disappoint. Too much to say about this one and, as always, we could have gone an hour longer and still not covered it all. An absolutely fantastic novel and one that certainly lives up to the hype and praise that surrounds it. Titles/authors mentioned: The Secret History by Donna Tartt O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker Aunt Julia and the Scriptw...

We stand on the precipice, one episode away from THE PRIME ! Before that, though, we discuss The Bachelors , a fantastic novel chock full of some of the strangest characters Spark has written, which is really saying something. Mediums, epileptics, blackmail, criminality, and much, much more abound in this one. And one of the funniest scenes yet involving a gentleman’s club, a game of hide-and-seek...

We’re edging closer to THE PRIME , but today we chat about The Ballad of Peckham Rye . Spark’s novels are incredibly fun, but this might be the wildest, featuring an incredible character name (Dougal Douglas), a lot of absenteeism, a textile factory, a Nun Tunnel, and dancing. Lots of dancing. Click here to subscribe to our Substack and find us on the socials: @lostinredonda just about everywhere....

This week we discuss Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants , an absolutely wonderful gem of a novel from French author Mathias Énard, translated by Charlotte Mandell. In 150ish pages Énard recreates the Constantinople of the early 16th Century and the brief time Michelangelo resided there to build a grand bridge. If you’ve not read Énard before this is an absolutely fantastic jumping on point...

This week we discuss Memento Mori , Spark’s third novel and, as we’ve come to expect, it’s a really fun ride. This go-round she brings us into the lives of septuagenarians and octogenarians as they fume, backbite, explore their sexual proclivities, and all come to terms (or not) with their impending deaths. And, of course, it’s very, very funny. Click here to subscribe to our Substack and find us...

Episode 5 of Season 2: we get to chat with Robin McLean about Ceremony by Leslie Marion Silko. And, yeah, this is probably our best episode so far, which isn’t shocking because we’re talking about talking with Robin McLean. So, all that aside, it’s a great conversation and one that could have gone on for hours and hours yet. We could have gone deeper into nuclear weapons/testing, the residential s...

In Episode 4 of Season 2 we dig into Muriel Spark’s sophomore effort, Robinson . Gotta say: it’s incredible and we couldn’t be more excited to keep on keeping on with her work. This time around we trade London (mostly) for a lonely island in the Atlantic and a story that is funny, tense, clever, whimsical, and just an all-around masterclass in writerly control. None of which is surprising at this...

Having sorted some annoying technical issues, herewith Episode 3 of Season 2 (our way of apologizing for the delay in uploading this episode) in which we discuss The Conqueror by Jan Kjærstad, translated by Barbara Haveland and published by Open Letter Books . And to kick off our series of guest hosts, Chad Post of Open Letter Books (and Dalkey Archive Press (and the Two Month Review )) joins to c...

We kick off our season-long read of Muriel Spark's novels this week and what a start! The Comforters is Spark's debut, published in 1956, and is, quite simply, magnificent. Lori and Tom wax heavily on how impressive this novel is and how incredibly fun it is, too! It's going to be quite a great season judging by this title alone. Click here to subscribe to our Substack and do follow us on the soci...

And we’re back! Welcome to Season Two of Lost in Redonda. We kick things off with a backlist conversation on Chronicle of the Murdered House by Lucio Cardoso, translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, published by Open Letter Books. It’s probably one of the fastest moving 600 page sagas of a Brazilian family you’re likely to encounter. And it’s funny. And gothic. And very campy. Our b...

Here it is, folks, our final episode on Your Face Tomorrow and the last part of our Marías project. It's a longer one, but very worth it if we do say so ourselves. Our next season and new project will kick off in a couple weeks' time, but before that a thank you for listening along. It's a fun project and one we hope folks are getting as much out of as we are (and do let us know what you think and...

It's very strange to be this close to the end of our Marías focus, but that's rather how time moves, ever forward (unless you're Marías and can make time a rather fungible thing in your novels...). This is a fun episode, touching on East End gangsters, Spandau Ballet, the Spanish Civil War, swordplay, and more. And a couple of characters from the previous volume make appearances, though we rather...

And now we enter the homestretch. Over the next few episodes we'll tackle Marías' masterpiece, Your Face Tomorrow . Starting, of course, with the first volume, Fever and Spear . Once we wrap up the Marías project we're going to take a week or so off and then we'll be back with more backlist dives and a new author whose work we'll spend some time digging into. As always, thank you for listening. Cl...

This week we dive into Christian Kracht's Imperium , and boy do we ever go deep (sorry/not sorry). It's an incredible piece of historical fiction (one of Tom's favorites and, now, one of Lori's) that follows one man's attempts to manifest his destiny to live in the tropics and subsist only on the noble coconut. And walk around nude. In the German South Pacific holdings at the turn of the 20th Cent...

A fun discussion this week of two novels published almost 30 years apart in The Infatuations and The Man of Feeling . We walk down some interesting paths and may get ourselves into a moral quandary or two (wouldn't be a discussion of Marías without some moral murkiness, now would it?). These are the last two Marías novels we discuss before wrapping this season with a three episode discussion of th...

We're going weekly! As the episodes have grown longer we've decided to split them up so instead of discussing two titles per episode (and delivering a 2+ hour podcast) every other week we're switching to one title every week. A guide to the next few episodes will be up on the Substack shortly. This week we dig into Marie NDiaye's My Heart Hemmed In , translated by Jordan Stump and published by Two...

In our sixth episode we discuss Gob’s Grief by Chris Adrian for our backlist deep dive. In the Marías portion we dig into Thus Bad Begins (spoiler alert: it’s phenomenal). This is a doozy of an episode, so stay hydrated and do be a hero: listen to the whole 2+ hours in one go! Books mentioned in this episode: Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States by George R....

Lori and Tom discuss Marías' final novel, Tomás Nevinson , just published in the US on May 23rd. A warning that spoilers do occur, especially after the 37 minute mark, so listener beware. Next episode we will return to discussing backlist in addition to our Marías deep-dives. Click here to subscribe to our Substack and do follow us on the socials, @lostinredonda across most apps (Twitter and Insta...

To mark the publication of Marías final novel, Tomás Nevinson , we're spending this episode and our next episode diving into the twinned works of Berta Isla and Tomás Nevinson . On this episode we dive deep into Berta (warning: we do rather go into the plot in a more significant manner than we have with other titles discussed thus far). And in two weeks' time we'll be back to chat about Tomás Nevi...

Welcome back! In our third episode we discuss House of Splendid Isolation by Edna O’Brien for the backlist deep dive. In the Marías portion we dig into Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me and A Heart So White . We really hit it out of the park in both sections, if we do say so ourselves. Books mentioned in this episode: The works of Edna O’Brien, specifically: Girl and The Little Red Chairs Chronic...