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On June 19th Wendy Erskine’s long awaited debut novel The Benefactors is published. Many of you will already know Wendy from her two acclaimed short story collections Sweet Home and Dance Move and you’ll find The Benefactors filled with the same deep curiosity for people, the same raw laughs and the same unsparing honesty.

Set, once again, in her much loved Belfast it is a broad and embracing portrait of a community that moves from the sexual assault of one of its central characters ‘Misty,’ to explore the isolating and insulating effects of class and money and the regenerative power of love.

At its heart The Benefactors is a novel that asks us to consider both the unknown and far reaching effects of our actions and the enduring place we hold in each other’s lives.

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On this episode Holly Dawson speaks to us about her debut All of Us Atoms. Faced with the prospect of losing her memory Holly set out to revisit the moments that had shaped her, from the earliest recollections of childhood to her diagnosis.

What follows is the documenting of a ‘felt’ life. In a series of essays, letters and short stories she weaves together memory, dreams, and reality, grasping hold of the consolations of science and discovering a deep love for the forgettable and forgotten moment.

At its heart All of Us Atoms is a rejection of the forms and rationalities we are offered for something altogether more satisfying. An archeological dig site, where Holly turns over the soil and sieves it through her fingers to rediscover what’s there, before its lost.

‘Brilliant, brave, wild and marvellous.’

Juliet Nicholson

‘To read Holly’s writing is to live it.’

Helena Bonham Carter

‘I loved this. The smarts, lyricisms, surprises and deep humanity of it all.’

Susie Orbach

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On this episode we meet Lucia Lijtmaer to hear all about her upcoming novel Cautery. Published for the first time in English by Charco Press, it is a novel filled with apocalyptic fantasies and a deep mistrust of the supposed greater good.

Set between modern day Barcelona and puritan New York Cautery follows the stories of two women (one real, the other imagined) who, although separated by 400 years both share a vision of either escaping the confines of society or burning it to the ground.

It’s a novel that shares some of the same ‘end of days’ terrain as Ali Millar’s Ava Anna Ada as well as the critique of bourgeois, hipster lifestyles found in Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection, as unnerving as it is compelling.

'A searing, twisted feast.' Laura Fernández

'Masterful,' CLARIN

Get your copy here

https://charcopress.com/bookstore/cautery

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