Point Of View

Carlo Gebler has written many novels, along with short stories, plays, memoirs, essays, reviews, biographies and works of narrative history.  As the son of the grande dame of Irish letters Edna O Brien and the writer Ernest Gebler , Carlo has  impeccable literary pedigree, as a lecturer in Trinity College Dublin he has opened the windows of wonder to a legion of students by imparting his knowledge, he discusses,À la recherche du temps perdu by Proust, as being a transformative reading experience .If the past is another country – what happens when we revisit it, one day a year? Carlo Gébler has done just that. Here is the story of Ireland – from the tail end of the Troubles to the Good Friday agreement, to the glory days of the Celtic Tiger to the recession to Brexit and on to the present, where, it appears, everything we thought we could take for granted is no longer a given. Drawing from journals he has kept for over four decades, Gébler stitches together days of his life into something bigger than his own lived experiences – a vivid patchwork history of the island over thirty-five years, capturing those sweeping changes in sharp, funny, slantwise pieces that will prompt readers to reflect on the strange process of how we got here. This intelligent and affectionate compilation, written in Gébler’s sparkling prose, is a joy. Whether read from beginning to end or dipped into, it will appeal to anyone with even a passing interest in the astonishing evolution of our island.

On this episode of Point of View I talk to Mia Levitin,a London based cultural and literary critic and the author of The Future of Seduction, which looks at the multifaceted ways in which phones and tech have changed romance, Mia reads beautifully from the introductory chapter to give a flavour of the book. She also talks about All Fours by Miranda July, and the changing and empowering depiction of older women in film and lierature. She talks about some of her favourite reads , she reads about 200 books a year as part of her work writing for the Financial Times, the FT magazine among others , and gives superb book recommendations ...

Liz Nugent is a writer of award-winning psychological suspense novels Unravelling Oliver (2014), Lying in Wait (2016), Skin Deep (2018), [Our] Little Cruelties (2020) and Strange Sally Diamond (2023). All five books topped the Irish bestsellers list and Liz has won multiple literary awards. We chat about her first foray into publishing as a child in the comic Bunty, Liz recounts great anecdotes from her visits to literary festivals as well as giving us an insight into the process that creates some brilliant best sellers...

I was so excited to talk to Rachel Cusk this week about her new book Parade , just published by Faber, a novel that surges past the limits of identity, character and plot to render insights about art family, morality and gender, I've been a devotee of Rachel's since 1994 when I devoured Saving Agnes in one sitting ,  and knew I'd found a singular new female writer.Rachel Cusk is the author of Second Place, the Outline trilogy, the memoirs A Life’s Work and Aftermath, and several other works of fiction and nonfiction. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and lives in Paris ..