The Book Club fails to read the room

Unfortunately, the listener hears something quite different. Syrett knows more about literature than Sandbrook, despite a thin CV. (And that inexperience should not necessarily disqualify her: his sober register needs a playful foil, and this is not a university seminar.) But her junior status makes for awkward, forced banter that echoes his views (“Mmmm! Yeah, absolutely!”) and then lurches into cringey teasing, some of it bizarrely hostile. Beatrice and Benedick it is not. 

And how could it be? The age difference and the professional relationship forbid flirtation. What we hear is a conscientious English teacher and his lippy sixth-form student.

Book clubs do not sound like this. Nor do young women of Syrett’s age generally socialise with 51-year-olds except at work or family gatherings, and it shows. But enough of the lack of chemistry. What about the content?

Like every Goalhanger show, it is competent and well-researched. Sandbrook will do better when he is not talking about Wuthering Heights, a book with little to no historical context to discuss. (No, they haven’t seen the film yet. A pity, as it would have been fun to compare and contrast it with the novel.) The hosts spend a lot of time on plot exposition, which is strange: people who haven’t read the book yet won’t want it, and those who have will know it.

They like a bit of bathos. We hear a lot about the ill-treatment of dogs in the novel, and Emily Brontë’s dowdy dress sense. The analysis is a bit glib – there are plenty of difficult and unpleasant women in both Trollope and Dickens, contrary to what Syrett suggests – but that’s what makes this different from Radio 4, and plenty of people will appreciate it. 

“It’s almost like this weird Platonic unity” is exactly the sort of thing people say in book clubs. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But the hosts can’t relax enough with each other to carry it off.

Podcasts thrive on the moment when a host goes off-script and tells us exactly what they think. (The book club equivalent is when someone gets a bit tipsy and confesses that they really, really hated this book.) Sandbrook and Syrett both agree Wuthering Heights is ‘unsexy’; both respect the book, but it seems to have left them cold. 

Neither has the literary hinterland to bring something unexpected to the discussion. They only touch on the question of why a woman like Brontë, who lived a largely isolated life, wrote such a passionately deranged novel. He suggests he might be a bit like Heathcliff. She thinks otherwise. Jacob Elordi need not worry just yet. 

Suggested Reading

Have we reached peak podcast?

Ros Taylor

It is a pity The Book Club lacks the Goalhanger touch, because The Rest is History showed how brilliantly Sandbrook can bring a subject alive when he has the right co-host and a deep knowledge of the material. It is always tempting to reuse a successful host, but TBC would have done better to decide whether it wanted to appeal to fiction-mad young women or an older, staider demographic. With two hosts who complemented each other, the conversation would have flowed more freely.

The plan is to alternate classic books (1984, The Great Gatsby) with readable, contemporary fiction like Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights. That feels right. And in an era when infinite scrolling has made opening a book more effortful, no one can complain about The Book Club’s mission to get people reading. 

But it is a pity that Goalhanger – which, after years of putting out male-dominated podcasts, is belatedly hiring more female hosts – has produced a show with such an uncomfortable dynamic between its presenters. If you want some stimulating chat about fiction, Radio 4’s A Good Read offers more unexpected pleasures, and it’s only half an hour long.

The Book Club (Goalhanger) is out now on all major podcast platforms.