Get the backstory…
Backstory is all about going beyond the book, getting the story behind the story. We’d love to give you a warm Backstory welcome at one of our in-person events soon (I promise you: our wine is worth the northern line).
Or why not sign up to one of our two book clubs and join our engaged reading community, wherever you are in the world?
Fiction book club (£15 a month or £22.50 for one-off; includes the book)
A book club with a twist - the author joins in, too. Members get the book four weeks in advance, then come together on Zoom. Like any other book club, we discuss what you made of the book with other members. Unlike other book clubs, the author then joins us for the final 40 mins: an interview by Backstory then your chance to ask them your questions directly.
Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water 18th July, 8pm, Zoom
Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch 15th August, 8pm, Zoom
Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea 12th September, 8pm, Zoom
Non-fiction book club (£15 a month or £22.50 for one-off; includes the book)
Same set-up as the fiction one above. Chaired by me, since non-fiction is my first love! We’ve had some amazingly high-calibre authors so far like Patrick Radden Keefe and Sathnam Sanghera. These sessions are so intimate; they feel like invitations to the author’s study. Do join us and give it a go.
Michael Pedersen, Boy Friends: A Memoir of Joy, Grief and Male Friendship 30th May, 8pm, Zoom
Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne 27th June, 8pm, Zoom
Edward Chisholm, A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City 25th July, 8pm, Zoom
Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World 31st August, 8pm, Zoom
Wiz Wharton and Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
Tuesday 23rd May, 7.30pm, Backstory
Wiz Wharton is the author of a debut novel exploring British-Chinese identity, opening in Brixton in the run-up to the handover of Hong Kong. In conversation with Costa Prize-shortlisted author Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, whose new novel The Sleep Watcher is about how our understanding of who our families are can shift suddenly and irrevocably.
Helen O’Hara - Women vs Hollywood
Wednesday 24th May, 7.30pm, Backstory
Empire magazine’s ‘Geek Queen’ Helen O’Hara joins us to discuss the histories, victories, and injustices of women in Hollywood. We're so excited to sit down with Helen - a class broadcaster (regular co-host on the Empire podcast), and fiercely eloquent writer. There's even a companion podcast to the book, which Rory recommends!
Philip Hensher - To Battersea Park
Wednesday 31st May, 7.30pm, Backstory
The Booker-shortlisted author joins us to discuss his latest novel, much of which takes place in the familiar surroundings of Clapham and Battersea, in the very unfamiliar days of the lockdown, and which then takes a turn for the surreal.
Jill Nalder - Love From the Pink Palace
Wednesday 7th June, 7.30pm, Backstory
Local resident and AIDS awareness campaigner, Jill Nalder, joins us to talk about her life during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, which partly inspired Russell T Davies’s TV drama It’s A Sin.
SOLD OUT Jennifer Saint
Wednesday 17th May, 7.30pm, Backstory
This week’s bestseller
We’ve already sold dozens of copies of Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson, our book of the month, even though it was only published on Thursday. And we’ve sent signed copies as far afield as Brooklyn and Canada.
It takes a lot for Rory, Denise, Amy and I to agree on a book, and we all loved it. Here’s a recap of why:
Its south London setting will resonate with Backstory regulars, but this beautiful story about the “small worlds” we all inherit and those that we forge for ourselves has an appeal far beyond Peckham.
For a relatively slender volume, it has a lot to say about love and about family, about music and about the healing power of a good dance (Azumah Nelson’s style is itself lyrical). The central character’s exploration of his Ghanaian heritage and the repercussions of his parents’ historic decision to upend their lives for an often grey, often unwelcoming Britain is particularly moving.
Set over a couple of intense, youthful summers in London, it feels like the novel we need right now. “Everyone’s younger in the summertime,” Azumah Nelson insists.
Team pick of the week
Rory recommends: Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan
Kick the Latch, the story of one woman’s life in America’s crazy world of horse racing, is a race in itself: lightning quick and utterly addictive. The book is composed of tiny chapters, some half a page, others just spilling over one page, and I tore through it. It is fiction, but based on interviews with a real character, so it feels like you’re holding someone’s life in your hands. Whether you're close to the horse world or know absolutely nothing about it, I urge you to try this fascinating work of writing. - Rory
DESPITE THE SUBJECT LINE, I promise this email isn’t about that subject. I’m still young enough to blush, as I discovered the other week when a regular customer came in to request a book she had heard about on the radio: “something about why we don’t have good sex”. As a bookseller, you get used to this sort of vague request - “it has a blue cover”, “I’m sure the author’s name begins with a G” (invariably, it doesn’t), “don’t suppose you’ll have this, something about chemistry lessons?”.
But this particular request had me frantically googling all kinds of things. “It’s not an instruction manual,” the customer helpfully clarified, “not self-help”. The next day, she returned to the shop, triumphantly declaring: “Tomorrow, Sex Will Be Good Again.” What a thought.
No, this newsletter is about the joy of the physical in a sense much less likely to raise a librarian’s eyebrows.
There’s a remarkable thing going on right in front of my nose every day. And I realised the other day that I never think to mention it here or even reflect on it much myself, because it’s so obvious to me. But that it is ubiquitous does not make it any less special. Quite the opposite.
And it’s this: young people like books. Not just like - love. And not just words, not just stories on Kindles or tablets or iPhones…books. Printed books with their ink and glue and jackets and that smell and their soon-to-be-cracked spines, their perfect imperfections.
If I asked my parents to picture our typical customer, they’d probably imagine someone a bit like themselves, give or take a decade. Someone with the maturity - and the income - to appreciate that the secret of a good life doesn’t always lie in finding something cheapest or quickest. And we do have lots of customers of this vintage, very welcome they are too. (Jolly useful for romantic and general life advice, as well, as some members of the Backstory team have discovered over an evening shift at our bar.)
But they would be taken aback if I told them that when I picture a typical customer, she is 28. I’ve not done a survey so the true average might be a fair bit older than that (full disclosure: I’m 33, and the postman really does look younger these days). But it’s certainly true that of a weekend or a weekday evening, Backstory is awash with twentysomethings.
What to make of this? Well, first: predictions of the death of the book were bunkum. After initial flirtations with the Kindle, many readers returned to physical books, or kept their devices for a holiday romance (in both senses).
More interesting to my mind is the ease with which Gen Z combines the physical and the virtual. They sign up to our Backstory book clubs (on Zoom), but devour the book each month in print. They scour our shelves for piles of new paperbacks, then post artistically arranged stacks of them on Instagram. They DM us about a new release, then spend hours offline perched at our bar, discussing said book over a glass or two of Chin Chin.
I grump about the big publishers here a fair bit (particularly when it comes to my pet gripe, distribution), but let’s give them their due. They have helped this trend enormously by knocking it out the park on cover design. Jackets look so much more appealing than when I was growing up. They might not make me personally want to take lots of pictures of the books I buy, but they definitely make me want to cherish them more than ever.
So, whisper it, might some of those concerns about the smartphone era ushering in a generation of brain-addled, phone-addicted friendless illiterates have been, well, a tad over-egged?
Come and join us for a glass of wine one Saturday soon and find out for yourself.
Tom