What does it mean to love too much, or in a way that society doesn’t see as appropriate? Is loving an inherently complicated experience? Helping us consider these questions is our guest, the author Mary Gaitskill, who joined us to talk about her masterful long essay Lost Cat, which has just been published in the UK for the first time. It’s the story of her lost cat, Gattino, and also a clear-eyed and heartbreaking meditation on who we are allowed to love, how different kinds of suffering are connected, and the hope and pain that love can bring. Inspired by Gattino and Mary, the theme of today’s show is ‘Complicated Love’, and we’ll be looking at its joys and perils in books from Romeo and Juliet to Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. Listen in for our interview with Mary Gaitskill, thoughts about the whys and wherefores of how love gets complicated in literature, and all our usual recommendations.

Recommendations on the theme, Complicated Love:Octavia: The Pisces by Melissa Broder https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-pisces-9781408890981/Carrie: Middlemarch by George Eliot https://www.gutenberg.org/files/145/145-h/145-h.htm

General Recommendations:Octavia: Hot Milk by Deborah Levy https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2016/hot-milk-by-deborah-levy/Mary: Snow by Orhan Pamuk https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/snow/author/orhan-pamuk/Carrie: Beloved by Toni Morrison https://bookshop.org/books/beloved/9781400033416

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