The Women's Podcast
Ep 451 The Book Club: Just Like You – Nick Hornby
In this book club podcast Róisín, Ann Ingle, Bernice Harrison and Niamh Towey discuss our latest read, Nick Hornby’s ninth novel, Just Like You. The author, known for his portrayal of the interior lives of men in books including the much loved, High Fidelity, is back with a funny age-gap love story set to a backdrop of Brexit London. In it, Hornby attempts to inhabit the point of view of a black man in his 20s and a woman in her 40s, with excursions into football and music.
Does he successfully embody the lives of the two protagonists? In the era of Black Lives Matter, has the author managed to handle the issue of race appropriately? And, how does Brexit work as a literary device?
As usual there were some strong opinions among our book clubbers, minor disagreements and even a slightly uncomfortable exploration of a hypothetical age-gap love story involving two of our panelists.
We’ll have details of our upcoming Christmas book club meeting in a later episode and on our social media channels.