(tremolo guitar music)
- Lisa Taddeo.
Thank you so much for joining us.
There's some questions we ask all our authors.
Do you remember the book
that sort of turned you on to reading and books?
- Yes.
Two. Probably, concurrently.
The Secret Garden
and The Stand by Stephen King.
- Okay. That's quite, that's quite two.
- That's quite, yes.
(Graham and Lisa laughing)
- It's very yin and yang. - It's very binary.
- Yeah, very yin and yang.
- How old were you?
- I was,
I was about eight, eight or nine, I think.
- Okay, wow! - Yeah
I was reading whatever my parents left behind.
And The Stand, my dad was a big Stephen King fan.
So ,that's why there's a lot of Gothic horror
in the things that I write.
- I love it.
Did no one notice there was an eight-year-old girl
reading a Stephen King novel.
- No they were fully okay with it.
I don't think they really,
my parents did not think that HBO was doing
the terrible things to my brain, that it was doing
when I was watching like cable TV after 7:00 pm.
They just were not totally oblivious to it.
(Graham laughs)
- She seems happy.
- She seems happy (laughs).
She's not bothering us.
(Graham laughs)
- All right. A book you think not enough people know about.
A book that kind of slipped through the net.
- I think that everybody should read
The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginsburg.
- Why?
- I think it's just one of the most intelligent
and emotionally intelligent books written.
It's, kind of, it's non-fiction.
This woman has just, Natalia Ginsburg
and it's about her husband and her life.
And, and they, he was, I think, executed in prison
and she had children.
The way that she's, I can't do any,
I can't do it any good by talking about it.
It's very slim.
It would take a day to read it.
And I think it just,
it's something that I would give to new mothers
instead of what to expect when you're expecting.
- Wow! Sold.
- It's a little hard though. It's a little rough.
Maybe new mothers who are okay with the darkness of life.
- Yes. Robust new mothers.
- Yes, exactly (laughs).
- And is there a book that you've admired so much
that you thought, oh, if only I'd had that idea.
If only I'd written that book.
- I love Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin.
- Okay.
Expand.
- It is a book about a,
an environmental crisis.
But it is written about,
with almost zero of the usual kind of, you know,
when people write about issues.
It often feels very, this is just purely a,
it manages the magic trick of
creating a novel that is utterly compelling
while also being about something bigger than it is.
And the actual, and it's so,
it's also about a mother and a child,
and the sort of,
it talks a lot about the rescue distance.
And I think that's its name in it.
And I think it was originally published in German.
But the idea of rescue distance being the distance
between the mother and her child,
the distance at which she is comfortable
with her child being far from her.
And I always think about that when my daughter's,
you know, like, 10 feet ahead of me.
I'm like, that is not a good enough rescue distance.
And the whole book is kind of about that.
The rope that binds a mother and a child.
And it's also about environmental decimation.
So, it's quite heavy.
Also another book for new mothers.
(laughs)
- I read you in an interview.
You were talking about how you,
you'd never had a day away from your daughter.
Is that still the case?
- That's, that's true.
I have a very, my rescue distance is very, very small.
I have never spent a night away from her.
I mean, but if you ask her,
she wouldn't say that it was the most, you know,
that was the kindest thing that anyone's ever done.
I'm there. I'm present but not emotionally.
So.
- She's got a bag packed waiting for that sleepover.
- Exactly.
(Graham and Lisa laughing)
Absolutely. - When is it gonna happen?
- Well, no. People can come to our house.
- Okay. - It's fine.
See, I've got it all worked out.
(Graham and Lisa laughing)
- Lisa Taddeo.
Thank you so much - Thank you so much.
- for giving us all this time.
It's been lovely, lovely talking to you.
Thank you so much.
- Thank you, Graham.
This has been lovely for me.
Thanks for having me.
(alternative guitar music)