George saunders

Tuesday

Genevieve Gaunt

Sad girl story: Sophie, Standing There, by Meg Mason, reviewed

From our UK edition

Sophie Pattison, 37, is not in a good place: heartbroken, childless, mid-divorce from ‘arsehole’ Paul, with her self-esteem and bank balance low. As her best friend Emma says: ‘You have a lot of love and nobody to take it out on.’ This is Meg Mason’s third work of fiction. Her Sorrow and Bliss (2020)propelled her on to the global literary stage. Sophie, Standing There opens as ‘sad girl fiction’ that satirises the contemporary literary festival. But then the book takes a turn and explores something more savage: parasocial relationships and the courage required in the Age of Instagram to be simple but happy. It opens with Sophie in the wings of a theatre, mic’ing up celebrated, often rude, authors before they go on stage.

Thursday

John Phipps

The Literary Disco podcast made me want to throw my laptop at the wall

From our UK edition

One of the stranger things that happened in the period just before lockdown was the sudden disappearance of audiences from TV and radio shows. Late-night hosts told jokes to silent rooms in front of a white background, dutifully pausing for a laugh that never came; panel shows were broadcast without so much as the sound of tumbleweed. Punchlines flopped, charisma evaporated. It was as if Earth’s comedians had been banished to some purgatorial realm, where they would be forced to tell jokes to no one as a form of penance. Comedy needs an audience. It’s not clear that the same is true of short stories. In Selected Shorts, well-known actors read short stories to a room full of people.