Aidan Cottrell-Boyce on My Phantoms

It’s here.

And you came.

Hurrah!

Imagine me, standing at an elaborate entrance to a grand hall, wearing a tuxedo, bowing deeply, and welcoming you to The Library of Lazy Thinking Podcast.

I’ll be your host, Glenn Fisher (though I’m going to change into something more casual now).

So—what’s it all about?

In short, it’s a new series of book-based wonder-chat.

In each episode, I'm joined by a guest from the world of books to talk about a specific book they'd like to put in the library.

There's no plan and no agenda, just two people lazily thinking about literature.

(You know, I thought this orange leotard and neon cravat would be more casual. I’m not so sure.)

If you enjoy the show and would like to help us (and get your hands on a coveted Library of Lazy Thinking Bookmark), you can become a supporter of the library by upgrading your subscription.

But either way, please do like and share the show—it all helps.

In this first episode, my very special guest is the author of The End of Nightwork, the wonderful Aidan Cottrell-Boyce. We roam far and wide around his excellent pick for the library, the 2021 novel My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley.

You can listen here on Substack, or you can find the podcast on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

But wherever you choose to listen…

I do hope you enjoy our book-based wonder-chat.

About Aidan

Aidan Cottrell-Boyce was born in Liverpool in 1987. He completed his PhD at the Divinity Faculty of the University of Cambridge in 2018. During his doctoral studies, he ran as a Parliamentary candidate for the Green Party. He is the author of two academic books: Jewish Christians in Puritan England (2020) and Israelism in Modern Britain (2021). His short fiction has appeared in The White Review. He currently works as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at St Mary's University in London. His first novel, The End of Nightwork, was published by Granta in January 2023 and he was chosen as one of the Observer's best debut novelists of 2023.

About Gwendoline

Gwendolyn Riley was born in London in 1979. She is the author of My Phantoms, which was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize; of First Love, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for fiction; and of Cold Water, Sick Notes, Joshua Spassky, and Opposed Positions. She has also won a Betty Trask Award and a Somerset Maugham Award and has been shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. In 2018, The Times Literary Supplement named her as one of the twenty best British and Irish novelists working today.

Links to obscure (and not so obscure) things mentioned in this episode

* Order My Phantoms and Aidan’s book The End of Night Work from my local independent bookshop in Sheffield here.

* The Chekhov quote about presenting problems correctly here.

* Watch the interview with Gwendoline Riley I mentioned here.

* Find Aidan Cottrell-Boyce on Instagram here.

* Find Glenn Fisher on Instagram here.

About the Library

The Library of Lazy Thinking is a place to hang out and learn more about books. The library is free—like all libraries should be. But if you’d like to support the library, you can make a small monthly donation by becoming a paid member (and get an exclusive The Library of Lazy Thinking bookmark). All donations go back into the library, helping to organize live events, exclusive merchandise, and more podcasts.

About Glenn

Glenn Fisher is a writer—wait, Glenn Fisher is me. I’m the one writing this. Let’s drop the third-person act. My fiction has been published in Lunate, The Paris Bitter Hearts Pit, 3am Magazine, Dogmatika and Litro Magazine. I write about books and interview other writers and creatives here in The Library of Lazy Thinking. I live in Sheffield and work as a freelance copywriter. I have had a best-selling non-fiction book published on the subject called The Art of the Click. It was published by Harriman House and shortlisted for Business Book of the Year. It has been translated into Simplified Chinese and Korean. I also have a dog called Pablo. He is harder to translate. Indeed, most of my life revolves around trying to understand his often unreasonable demands.

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