大象传媒

This week Neneh Cherry, Tom Allen, Olly Smith and Sophie Raworth all share their favourite books with Sara.

The cover says:

Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader's wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow.

Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of Harlem, spanning three continents and seven generations, Yaa Gyasi has written a miraculous novel - the intimate, gripping story of a brilliantly vivid cast of characters and through their lives the very story of America itself.

Neneh says:

It's a pretty hardcore book - it follows 300 years of a family. It starts in Ghana around the time that the horror of slavery is unfolding. It's about two sisters who are unknown to each other. One of them is married to the governor on the coast, and it follows her, her children, her mixed race son that then goes back in and out into their tribe, and her sister, who is held captive in the same fort, and then sent off to the United States of America. And it follows her thread from several plantations and right through until this day and age. So, it's a 300-year epic family saga that's incredible. I think she was 28 or something when she wrote this book. I think it's a really important book. It's really great. And there's something about her language, the way she writes: It's got a really interesting rhythm, and she uses words in a really interesting way. It's a book that I've already passed on to lots of people, and I am going to read it again.

The cover says:

On Thursday 1 July, 1999, Dr Nina Simone gave a rare performance as part of Nick Cave's Meltdown Festival. After the show, in a state of awe, Warren Ellis crept onto the stage, took Dr Simone's piece of chewed gum from the piano, wrapped it in her stage towel and put it in a Tower Records bag. The gum remained with him for twenty years; a sacred totem, his creative muse, growing in significance with every passing year.

In 2019, Cave - his collaborator and great friend - asked Warren if there was anything he could contribute to display in his Stranger Than Kindness exhibition. Warren realised the time had come to release the gum. Together they agreed it should be housed in a glass case like a holy relic. Worrying the gum would be damaged or lost, Warren decided to first have it cast in silver and gold, sparking a chain of events that no one could have predicted, one that would take him back to his childhood and his relationship to found objects.

Olly says:

I find this book to be utterly magical. So it's about objects that we revere, how they change our lives, how they change other people's lives, and it's the story of Warren Ellis, who is a musician with Nick Cave, at a gig by Nina Simone, one of her final gigs, she parks her gum on the piano, and at the end of the gig he goes and takes it. He venerates it, he puts it in the towel that she's left that she's wiped the sweat from her brow with, he keeps it for years and years, he carries it around. He then has it made into casts for an exhibition in Denmark by Nick Cave. And it touches so many people's lives, and actually my life as well: In the book, Nina Simone is asked, which were your two favourite gigs? And she said, The Festival Hall in London, which is this one in the book, and the Royal Albert Hall, which is the one I was at. I felt like I became the book. It's just really touching and Warren has a way of writing that makes it feel incredibly immediate, really disarmingly charming. And it covers everything from music to culture to travel, all of the most wonderful things in the world. And it makes us feel even more human. It's wonderful.

It's a memoir but it’s a collage really – there are lots of images in there, there's bits of lyric, there's reported conversation. It's incredibly easy to read. It's really funny, but it also is a window onto a world of - Why do we keep objects? Why do we venerate them? Why is it important that it's Nina Simone’s gum, he refuses to touch it after a certain point, it sort of has a, almost a holy power, like a last breath blown into a jar, and he doesn't want to let the breath go. So it's very sacred.

The gum is still out there in an exhibition, you can go and see it - it's a wonderful thing and it's got her last tooth prints on it - nobody's touched it, but her since she parted it.

The cover says:

Susie’s story is an inspirational fight against the odds. From leaving a dysfunctional marriage, managing as a single mum and tackling cancer treatment, Susie has had her fair share of adversity. Throughout it all, running has kept her going. She always finds a reason to lace up her shoes and hit the road – or the track, trail or tread. Her mantra: You never regret a run.

From the Moroccan desert, the Peruvian jungle and the sweltering Death Valley, to Susie’s local South Downs and a running track in Tooting, her adventures take her across the globe. With Susie’s down-to-earth personality, refreshing attitude and wicked sense of humour, we learn the countless reasons she finds to push herself further and the life-changing opportunities running has given her.

Sophie says:

This book is written by Susie Chan, who is my friend and I'm actually in this book: Susie is somebody who I met on an aeroplane to the Boston Marathon in 2014, 10 years ago and if I hadn't met her, I don't think I'd have done half of what I have done. But she, like me, started running late in life. She was in her late 30s. She was really unfit, she was smoking, and she just got obsessed with running. She did a half marathon, and 18 months later, did something called the Marathon des Sables, which is 150 miles across the Sahara Desert, six marathons, five days, carrying everything you need to survive on your back for that time, all your food.

I met Susie on a plane to Boston, and then I ended up in the Sahara Desert. She's dragged me all around the world. She's far more extreme than I am - she's done the Marathon des Sables four times. I did it once.

I love this book because she is just a very, as she says herself, a very normal person who couldn't run, was really unfit, but just started. And it's what you can achieve if you put one foot in front of the other. She's now almost 50. It's a brilliant story and it’s really well written and made me laugh.

The cover says:

This is the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry who met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty.

Impossible but true, because Henry suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. In the face of this force they can neither prevent nor control, Henry and Clare's struggle to lead normal lives is both intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.

Tom says:

It sounds like a sci-fi because it's about time travel, but to me, it's always felt like a romance novel. It's about Henry and Clare, and Henry has this affliction where he travels through time without realising, without being able to control it, and so when he's stressed or at certain points (often quite inconvenient), he just gets taken from the moment he's in and transplanted to another point in time. So his partner, Clare, she's having a linear life, so he's just sort of popping in to her life at various moments, and sometimes out of order and at different stages for her and at different stages for him.

I thought there's something very beautiful about the idea of two people connecting, but he's there and he's not there, and he's there sometimes, and he's there at different points, and so is she. And I thought there was something very human about that, even though it's kind of cloaked in a sci-fi thing... I found it very poetic, actually, very beautiful. There are lots of moments when she's waiting for him to appear again. There's some moving about that.