Max Porter

be a much shorter film yeah

yeah um so i think we we agreed on doing this when it came out last year uh yeah and recently i've read max porter's source novel which is called shy and i think if you've seen actually yeah can we talk about that title it's like they're daring people to watch it

It's just a much better title because obviously it's the name of I want to say, yeah, the central lad.

I mean, he's not the central character in the film, but he's the central lad.

I'm sure some of you have read Corduroy, that wonderful book that Adrian Bell wrote about rural life in East Anglia, or even better, Aikenfield by Ronald Blythe, both of which are great books about village life in East Anglia, in Suffolk, this sort of very similar part of the world to what Harrison's writing about here.

Well, Kate, I was also thinking of Max Porter and Patrick Gale and maybe even Sarah

Moss.

Yes, I've only read part of it, but as I started it, I was thinking about the way that Max Porter builds all these voices, particularly in Lenny.

where you're in a place and you're right in the sort of the detritus and the leaf litter as you move through it.

But I'm also, I'm really struck that you mentioned a sundial because there's a sense of time embedded in it from the very first page that we're in a place.

And I think we should probably wrap up with a play that's opening in Bristol in October, which really appeals to all the things that I love.

So Max Porter's Booker long-listed novel, Lanny, is being adapted for the stage by B. Roberts.

This is... all the things you would want in a theatre show.

It's sort of set in a mythical woodland following an entity called Dead Papa Toothwort.

I just looked at the recording time.

[laughs] Super, super quick last final recommendation, more on the topic of actually going through, um, the experience of grief and, and death itself, is a book, one of my favorite books, which is Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter, which is essentially poetry.

We talked about this, we did a whole episode on this book, um, Episode 45, which we will link in the show notes because it's, it's one of my favorites.

So I made, um, Jenny and Sarah, uh, read it.

I love Lincoln in the Bardo.

I love Lanny by Max Porter.

I loved Exit West, right? Give me like a little bit of magic.

Community, which is where a lot of the prize reading comes in.

Yeah, but I, you know, yeah, good on David Sedaris, I would say.

And then I listened to Grief is the Thing with Feathers on Audible, which is the Max Porter book.

You know, it's been out for a while and it was read by Russell Tovey.

And again, like Starlings, it's one of these things that Audible have done, like a really high class sort of production kind of reading slash drama of it.

[gentle music] Welcome to the Service95 Book Club with me, Dua Lipa.

From the archive today, it's Max Porter, who I spoke to in April 2025 about his groundbreaking novel, Grief is the Thing with Feathers.

We talk about the tricks we play to manage our grief, taking a crow dive on YouTube, and the complicated legacy of poet Ted Hughes.

My conversation with Max coming up.

... looking like this or-

Uh-huh

... related to fa- for fans of Max Porter.

Like, who is that?

Um, and it's a, uh, as you will discover, it's a cool podcast in all senses of the word.

It, um, it features Max Porter, uh, and the great Norwegian, uh, novelist, memoirist, Karl Ove Knausgård, on one of the great...

In fact, two.

You get two for the price of one on this podcast, 'cause although it's about The Ice Palace, it's also, we, there's a fair bit of discussion of his other great translated novel, The Birds.

And I'm Andy Miller, author of Year of Reading Dangerously, and today we're joined by two guests.

One returning and one making their debut.

Welcome back, Max Porter, and welcome Karl Ove Knausgård.

Hello, both of you.