Catherine Raynes: Don't Let Him In and The Phoenix Pencil Company

Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell  

He’s the perfect man. It’s a perfect lie. 
 
Nina Swann is intrigued when she received a condolence card from Nick Radcliffe, an old friend of her late husband, who is looking to connect after her husband’s unexpected death. Nick is a man of substance and good taste. He has a smile that could melt the coldest heart and a knack for putting others at ease. But to Nina’s adult daughter, Ash, Nick seems too slick, too polished, too good to be true. Without telling her mother, Ash begins digging into Nick’s past. What she finds is more than unsettling… 
 
Martha is a florist living in a neighboring town with her infant daughter and her devoted husband, Alistair. But lately, Alistair has been traveling more and more frequently for work, disappearing for days at a time. When Martha questions him about his frequent absences, he always has a legitimate explanation, but Martha can’t share the feeling that something isn’t right. 
 
Nina, Martha, and Ash are on a collision course with a shocking truth that is far darker than anyone could have imagined. And all three are about to wish they had heeded the same warning: Don’t let him in. But the past won’t stay buried forever. 

  

The Phoenix Pencil Company by Alison King  

Monica Tsai spends most days on her computer, journaling the details of her ordinary life and coding for a program that seeks to connect strangers online. A self-proclaimed recluse, she's always struggled to make friends and, as a college freshman, finds herself escaping into a digital world, counting the days until she can return home to her beloved grandparents. They are now in their nineties, and Monica worries about them constantly—especially her grandmother, Yun, who survived two wars in China before coming to the States, and whose memory has begun to fade. 
 
Though Yun rarely speaks of her past, Monica is determined to find the long-lost cousin she was separated from years ago. One day, the very program Monica is helping to build connects her to a young woman, whose gift of a single pencil holds a surprising clue. Monica’s discovery of a hidden family history is exquisitely braided with Yun’s own memories as she writes of her years in Shanghai, working at the Phoenix Pencil Company. As WWII rages outside their door, Yun and her cousin, Meng, learn of a special power the women in their family possess: the ability to Reforge a pencil’s words. But when the government uncovers their secret, they are forced into a life of espionage, betraying other people’s stories to survive. 
 
Combining the cross-generational family saga and epistolary form of A Tale for the Time Being with the uplifting, emotional magic of The Midnight Library, Allison King’s stunning debut novel asks: who owns and inherits our stories? The answers and secrets that surface on the page may have the unerasable power to reconnect a family and restore a legacy. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to this Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at be.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Catherine Rains is here with her book pick for this weekend.
Hey Catherine, Morning Jack. Let's begin with a novel by
Lisa Jule tell Us about Don't Let Him In.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
But this is a really twisty mystery, and it begins
with the death of Paddy Swan, who's this very successful
restauranteur who's pushed in the path of an oncoming train
by a man in his thirties, and it leaves behind
his wife, Nina, and his daughter Ash, who's in her
mid twenties and has just returned home after a psychological breakdown,
and his son Arlo, who's in his early twenties. And

(00:45):
sometime after the funeral, this beautifully wrapped gift arrives for
Nina from a man named Nick Radcliffe, who says that
he used to work with Paddy, and Anna thinks he's
lovely and handsome and charming and very kind to her,
even though his job takes him away a lot, but
Ash isn't quite so convinced. There's also a second storyline
that follows this woman, Martha, who's in her early fifty

(01:06):
and she's a florist, and she's got two teenage sons
from her previous marriage and a baby girl. And she's
also struggling in her marriage to Alistair, and he's this
very demanding job which keeps him constantly traveling and unreachable,
and their relationship is falling apart. And the book is
told through the third person narration of Ash and her
search for answers about Nick. And then there's Martha and

(01:29):
Nina stories that are interspersed in there that reveal all
these past events. And as the storylines begin to intertwain,
the revelations are really revealing and unpredictable in this very
tangled web, and there's lots of secrets and lies and
manipulations and it's quite riveting. It's shocking. It's really well written.
And this book has everything you could want in a thriller.

(01:49):
And I promise you you will need to stay awake
to finnish it.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Oh really, it sounds great? Okay, cool? So that's by
Lisa Juwel the books called Don't Let Him In. You've
also read The Phoenix Pencil Company by Alison King.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
And this is a dabut novel from Alison King and
it's got family secrets, a bit of magical realism, and
a dose of espionage in the story, and it begins
with this reclusive student called Monica Sai who's stuck almost
between two worlds. She's trying to decide whether she should
stay with her computer science degree or pause it for
a moment to care for her beloved grandmother, Yun, who's

(02:23):
been diagnosed with Alzheimer's And then she thinks that life
can't get any more complicated for her, and she discovers
her grandmother's very intriguing secret that the woman and their
family have the special power where they can reforge the
pencils that their business, the Phoenix Pencil Company, has created
and uncover all the memories from the user of this pencil,

(02:45):
and it leads Monica on this real voyage of discovery
about her grandmother's life, and it flips between two timelines,
Monica's struggle in the modern day and her grandmother's past
life in Wartaorn, Shanghai and as a young girl, Yun
and her cousin men survive by selling these handmade pencils
and using their mysterious power that helps them navigate this
life of espionage and as her grandmother's facing her final days,

(03:09):
Monica wants to reconcile her relationship with her cousin men
because she left after the Chinese Civil War and she
moved to California, leaving her cousin behind. And it's a
really interesting story about how they kind of their lives
intertwine and people going in different directions, and it's about
the bonds within a family and the stories that create
and that power of shared memories and lessons, and yeah,

(03:31):
a story kind of has these concepts of storytelling and
memory and family history and with a bit of spy
and stories thrown in, you know, it's really really well told.
It's quite intriguing. I'm not a massive magical realism faci.
This actually worked and I don't really quite know. I mean,
obviously you have to suspend reality, but it really worked.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, okay, well it sounds interesting. The Phoenix Pencil Company
by Alison King, that's her first book. Hey, Catherine, are
you a Jane Austen fan?

Speaker 3 (03:56):
I am a Jane Austen fan.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Have you ever been to the Jane Austen was it
Jane Alston Festival in Bar No? I haven't, No, Okay,
we've just been discussing bath and in the UK and
our travel segment this morning, and I see you I've
been and has flipped me a note to say the
Jane Austen Festival is on from the twelfth to the
twenty first of September, so I'm sure for Jane Austin
fans that might be a bit of a special event
to get too. Thank you very much for that, and

(04:19):
and thank you Catherine for your recommendations this week. So
Don't Let Him In by Lisa Jewel was Catherine's first book,
The Phoenix Pencil Company. The One with a bit of
Magical Realism was her second. That's by Allison King, and
all of the details for those books is on the
News Talks.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
He'd be website for more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame.
Listen live to News Talks He'd be from nine am Saturday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.