Showing results by narrator "Emma Campbell" in All Categories

First published between 1870 and 1893, Émile Zola’s 20-book cycle chronicling four generations of the Rougon-Macquarts was a shocking exposé of the decadence, degradation and moral decay of 19th-century France. It included some of his greatest novels, among them his masterpiece, Germinal. These innovative, ambitious dramas, first broadcast on Radio 4 over 24 hours in 2015-16, are a radical reimagining of Zola’s classic series, introducing us to 104-year-old matriarch, Dide, imprisoned in an asylum in southern France.

Chicago, sometime. Two people meet in the armory of the Art Institute by chance. Prior to their encounter, he is a doctoral student who manages his destructive thoughts with compulsive calculations about time travel; she is a bipolar counterfeit artist undergoing court-ordered psychotherapy. After their meeting, those things do not change. Everything else, however, is slightly different.

Vicky, a writer in Vancouver in the early 1960s, doesn't consider herself the type of woman who would end up in a bad relationship. Struggling to come to terms with herself, she navigates an emotionally abusive relationship with Mik, a violent logger and ex-con. Mik and Vicky's physical, often violent affair offers an honest and unflinching look at relationships and female suffering. Crossings caused a furor when it was first published and was banned from some feminist bookstores.