Reading conflict: Pam Ferris, Rakhee Thakrar, Stephen Mangan and Tom Allen bring the books

6 December 2022

This week on Between the Covers, it's conflicts of all kinds that inspire the stories brought in by Sara Cox's guests: a blind French girl flees Nazi invaders; two friends set out for the Trojan War; a grumpy man picks a fight with his local residents' association; and Adrian Mole battles to prove he is an intellectual after all.

Each week we reveal the favourite books brought in by guests on Between the Covers. This week, Pam Ferris, Rakhee Thakrar, Stephen Mangan and Tom Allen talk about the novels that have inspired them.

Episode four - Favourite books from our guests

The cover says: For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic layers within the invaluable diamond that her father guards in the Museum of Natural History. The walled city by the sea, where father and daughter take refuge when the Nazis invade Paris. And a future which draws her ever closer to Werner, a German orphan, destined to labour in the mines until a broken radio fills his life with possibility and brings him to the notice of the Hitler Youth. A beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Pam says: “It’s a Second World War book, but it's very personal. And it's the fine, fine thread of survival of one early-teenage, maybe 12-year-old, girl and this delicate thread, which is painted so beautifully through the time of the War, with the added vulnerability of being blind.

Touching, so touching and the people she meets, the way she survives, the way she loses touch with some people and gains others. It's just wonderful. It’s sort of random, but the whole thing adds up to a beautiful journey. I've been reading books for so long, and I would think, ‘what is going to be my all-time book?’. And this one I read maybe two years ago, and it's the one that comes back to me most.”

The cover says: At first sight, Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots – neighbours who can't reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d'etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents' Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets. But isn't it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be, and a lifelong dedication to making it just so? In the end, you will see, there is something about Ove that is quite irresistible...

Rakhee says: “Ove is very grumpy man, he's the type of person you might avoid on your street - because he told you that you haven't put the bins out right. A family move into the street and are backing this trailer down the street. They are not supposed to do that, and he just cannot help himself, he has to go out and tell them off.

What I really loved about it was that we all know people that you just can’t stand, and I think in this day and age we’re used to very shiny personalities, and actually this is a story about a man who is going to show up for you, but not with a smile. And it makes you have empathy for people who might annoy you in real life, and actually scratch beneath the surface.

I think there's so many people in this world that probably just need a kind word being said to them. Oh and it’s funny! There’s a lot of humour in it.”

The cover says: Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. Telling us candidly about his parents' marital troubles, his life as a tortured poet and 'misunderstood intellectual', his love for the divine Pandora and his horror at learning of his mother's pregnancy, Adrian's painfully honest diary is a hilarious and heartfelt chronicle of misspent adolescence.

Stephen says: “What a treat these books are! This is the first of many books that Sue Townsend wrote starring Adrian Mole. He’s 13 and ¾. He’s going through puberty. He thinks of himself as a bit of an intellectual. He’s a poet. He writes to his love Pandora Braithwaite: “Oh Pandora how I adore ya”. He’s not really an intellectual.

It’s the first time I cottoned on to the fact that the person writing the book may not have got everything that’s going on in his life. He's an unreliable narrator. He doesn't realise that his mum is having an affair. He doesn't realise that his dad is having a bit of a breakdown. It's just about the boredom, and the angst, and puberty. He's obsessed by measuring his thing. I love the fact that this edition has a ruler along one side. So, you know, anyone out there...

They’re just a treat. Sue Townsend wrote books over many decades starring Adrian, which also looked at Britain at that point. I’m so sad that she’s not around anymore.”

The cover says: Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles's mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

Tom says: “I read it on a holiday in Crete. I didn't know anything about it. But I went to a comprehensive school, which did not teach Classics, just putting that out there. So I'm always very curious about ancient storytelling and Classics.

This is about Achilles going to the Trojan War. It details his love affair with Patroclus. And there's something very sensitive about it, even though it’s detailing a violent war and there's lots of bloodshed, as you realise there often is in these classic stories, but it brings such humanity to it because it's a gay storyline.

But it's also about humanity, it's about human beings in those moments of base behaviour, of violent behaviour. There's still such sensitivity and humanity, and that’s what I really enjoyed about it.”