Christopher Bollen's Last Resort

Season two is in full throttle now and we cannot wait to keep spoiling you listeners! In this episode of the Book Maven: A Literary Revue, Bethanne Patrick sits down with Christopher Bollen to talk about writing characters of all ages and grounding them with location and setting.

King Lear is discussed in this week’s Pop! Goes the Culture, and all of its various adaptations. From queens to musicals, John Lennon to fictional rewrites, there is a version of King Lear for everyone to love.

Can Bethanne beat the clock? She gives us 6 Recs for our To Be Read lists. Titles include The Book of Love by Kelly Link, The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The Garden by Claire Beams, Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst, and Wild Houses by Colin Barrett.

Find Bethanne on X, Substack, Instagram, and Threads.

The Book Maven: A Literary Revue is hosted by Bethanne Patrick, produced by Christina McBride, and engineered by Jordan Aaron, with help from Lauren Stack.

All titles mentioned: Havoc by Christopher Bollen, Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie,

Shattered and My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, Lucy Greeley's Autobiography of a Face, Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones, In the Forest and A Pagan Place and The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien, Dublin Murder Squad (series) by Tana French, Small Things Like These and Foster by Claire Keegan, Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor, King Lear by William Shakespeare, “The Yiddish King Lear” and “Mirele Efros” by Jacob Gordin, “Vision of Lear” by Tadashi Suzuki and Toshio Hosokawa, A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, “Succession” by Jesse Armstrong et. al, The Book of Love by Kelly Link, The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleischman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The Garden by Claire Beams, Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst, and Wild Houses by Colin Barrett

Episode Transcript:

BP: Welcome to season two of The Book Maven, a literary review. This season, we'll talk to leading authors, dive into the classics to decide which should stay in the literary canon, and I'll recommend some of my favorite books to you. We'll have all that and more in this episode, but first…

CB: At first, I was thinking, "Let's talk to Chris about writing a character who is not at all like you. Okay, you know, an elderly woman." But then I thought, maybe it's more interesting to talk about writing a character who seems not to be like you at all, but really is like you.

Yes. I mean, I think those are almost the same question.

BP: Thank you. Please elaborate.

CB: Um, well, you know, you always hear that old chestnut, "Write what you know." And I feel like, without meaning to, I sort of did in all of my previous books—uh, all five of them. Without really realizing it, they all kind of involve young people, semi-good-looking urbanites moving through the world. You know, that—

BP: That can't be you, Chris, because you are totally good-looking. Okay, go ahead.

CB: I did not mean to turn that into a compliment for myself. No, but just like my own age, and, um, it's sort of like these travelers, and, uh, I was actually, you know, so inspired to do Maggie that, once I got outside of myself—once I kind of stepped into the shoes of this 81-year-old, maybe homicidal widow—I felt like it was finally freeing.

I finally felt like I could reach for high branches and do wild turns. It somehow opened me up and