If you have a penchant for reading…this is the show for you!
Books that Made Us is a show hosted by the brilliant Claudia Karvan.
In the first episode we learn about people. The characters written. The writers who create them. The screenwriters who adapt them for screen. And how everyday Australians have received them.
Claudia is honest, emotional and no holds barred. She asks questions that help us find out stories behind the stories. Stories that we would never have otherwise known. She tells more than one author that she couldn’t finish their novel. She tells another that she wanted to throw his novel across the room. In an episode about people, Claudia is a totally relatable one!
The big question asked in this first episode is whether Australia’s story can come from our mostly fictionalised protagonists. Peter Carey sums it up brilliantly:
“you don’t learn through fiction, but you learn to question”.
Tim Winton says that:
“these stories are how you literally kill prejudice”.
Big names are a plenty… Sophie Laguna, Tim Minchin, Helen Garner, Christos Tsiolkas and Melissa Lucashenko, to name but a few. It is not just authors though…playwrights, actors, composers and publishers all discuss the people in the books who made us.
This show is much more than a chat about nostalgic novels. It is about contemporary novels, the multi-faceted characters that make up our society today. Not romanticised wide sweeping plains but violence, poverty and the marginalised. It is real, intimate, gritty and honest. Just like the characters in the novels that are discussed.
I began this show thinking I was a well read and avid connoisseur of Australian literature. I now have a long list of Australian novels that I must read. Including the companion book to this TV series. I hope all you book lovers feel this too!
Put down your current read and take a look…I guarantee it will have you adding to your list of “books to read” and “shows to watch”.
Good on you Mel xx