Books That Matter: Nora Lange on A LIFE'S WORK by Rachel Cusk

Welcome to the FictionMatters Podcast; this is Books That Matter. In this series, I’ll speak with writers I admire to learn about their lives as readers and deep dive into a book that matters to them.Today, I’m joined by Nora Lange. Nora’s debut novel Us Fools was awarded the The Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, named a best book of 2024 by The Boston Globe and NPR, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice pick. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Believer, BOMB, Hazlitt, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Brown University and is a fellow at USC’s Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities. She recently moved to Salt Lake City with her family.In this episode, Nora and I discuss Rachel Cusk’s classic motherhood memoir, A Life’s Work as well as Nora’s new short story collection, Day Care, which published on April 7th Additionally, we both get a little personal about how motherhood has impacted our creative lives and Nora shares how her recent reads are all connecting back to her current work in progress.Books and Links* Day Care by Nora Lange* When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut* Philip Roth: The Biography by Blake Bailey* The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg* A Life’s Work by Rachel Cusk* All Fours by Miranda July* Live Flesh movie directed by Pedro Almodóvar* How Pregnancy and Childrearing Alter Our Perception of Time and Aging (Lit Hub)* The King’s English Bookshop* Us Fools by Nora Lange* Joan DidionConnect with Nora* Website* Instagram* Order Day Care*This post contains affiliate links This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fictionmatters.substack.com/subscribe