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11 December 2023

For the final episode of Between the Covers' seventh series, Sara Cox's guests recommend: John Steinbeck’s classic Cannery Row, which paints a profound picture of life in Depression-era California; a story of lives upended in Nazi Germany; a portrait of marriage inspired by a Robert Browning poem; and a fantastical account of a couple in New Zealand who survive the end of the world inside the carcass of a whale.

In the final Between the Covers of the current series, Bill Paterson, Ellie Taylor, Geri Halliwell-Horner and Miles Jupp each reveal their personally chosen reading recommendations.

Episode six - Favourite books from our guests

Bill says: It’s quite short - I’m better at short books than long, so I picked this up. It’s set in the Depression era in California. Monterey and Cannery Row, named here because it was a big centre for the sardine fishing industry.

The setting is the joint where these things are canned, and there's a lot of men sitting around getting canned at the same time. They live in a kind of flophouse, it’s a sort of down-and-out story. But there's a central figure in it called Doc, who was based on a real character called Ed Ricketts.

Doc is a marine biologist and the decent beating heart of the community. He collects samples to send to various universities, a really grizzly but essential job. And the boys just flop, they gather around him – these slowly disintegrating men. They need him to keep them going.

And there's the Chinese grocer, Lee Chong, and there's the brothel which is run by a madam called Dora, and their lives revolve around the place. It’s like a meditation on time passing. And the writer, Steinbeck, wrote about how close it was to watching the pond life that the biologist was looking at while he was surrounded by a type of pond life. I go back to it.

Ellie says: I saw a synopsis online of what this was about; it was a dystopian, feminist novel about a woman surviving the end of the world by hiding, initially in the carcass of whale, which sounds absolutely bats! But the thing is, it's written so brilliantly and so realistically.

So it flits back - it's got a dual narrative - between the protagonist’s Ruth’s life in London that she left, she's a teacher and she gets a bit bored in London and moves to New Zealand, where it’s set.

There is some kind of apocalyptic event - a big blast of light happens - and her and this guy who she’s wandering along the beach with in New Zealand... there's a massive, massive blue whale carcass. They hide inside it (apparently this could actually, if you ever get in that situation!) and they survive. And it’s their story of survival.

It becomes about family, and love, and rebuilding. And I found it so moving and brilliant and interesting, and so cinematic. It really stuck with me. I just absolutely love it.

Geri says: This book was so original for so many reasons: One - the narrator is Death, and it’s beautifully written, so that when they paint the description of the sky as vanilla, or chocolate, you’re sort of transported. That’s beautiful - so original.

The other thing is that it’s set in Nazi Germany, and it’s about this little girl, and she hides a Jew in her cellar. What I love is when a story transports you to another time and place, so you’re getting all the vegetables wrapped up in chocolates, you’re learning something but also you’re getting tension - whether he was going to get caught, or whether she was going to get caught…

I was learning something; I was immersed and it was breaking my heart. I was invested in the characters. It’s probably one of the most original books that I've ever read. I think there’s something poignant, and tragic, and sad at the same time. I like it when books make me cry, as well.

Miles says: I just found this book stunning. It’s about a young girl in Italy, in Florence, from this grand family, and a man from another grand family is going to marry her older sister.

The older sister passes away and she actually ends up becoming the bride to this man, and from the beginning of the novel, which is so vividly drawn and that sort of novel of the mind, you really get a sense of what the character is thinking.

She becomes acutely aware, she's absolutely certain, that she is going to be murdered by this man. And there's a real vividness to the way she writes. And you get to that point where you know the characters in it well enough that you're enjoying spending time in their company, and you feel like you are in the rooms that she’s describing.

And part of the thing is, as was done in those days there has to be a portrait done of her, and so there's a lot of time that she spends sitting for it.

It's influenced partly by this Robert Browning monologue, My Last Duchess, which I remember my English teacher at school teaching us. That was one of her inspirations for writing it... I think she's completely brilliant. I do think she's wonderful.