Field Ramble with Makenna Goodman and Ben Lerner

Send us Fan MailDreams and LiesThis month Sam talks to Makenna Goodman about her latest novel Helen of Nowhere. Published by Fitzcarraldo and described by Jo Hamya as ‘the perfect fairytale for our times’, it is the story of Man - an academic dogged by allusions of disgrace and a publicly failed marriage. He seeks to start again and live a ‘good life’ far from the city and is drawn into the wilds to view a house which seems to offer him escape.Set over five acts, Man is first question by Realtor, the estate agent seeking to sell him his dream home and then the eponymous Helen, the house’s former resident, whose ghost dextrously possesses the narrative as all pretence of reality falls away. Meanwhile, Lara meets with Ben Lerner to hear all about the quite superb Transcription. The writer, father of one and narrator of Ben's new novel has travelled to Providence where he went to college, and where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety year old mentor and father of his friend, Max. But after his narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink, he arrives at Thomas’s house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess. What unfolds from this dreamlike, nightmarish, circumstance is both a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich and impoverish our connections to each other, that store and obliterate the memories that make us who we are, and a moving exploration of the experience of being a son, of becoming a man and of trying to be a ‘good’ father. Our own tape disintegration on this episode was entirely unintended but beautifully serendipitous. If you enjoy the episode, share it with friends, lovers, loved ones and book clubbers.Big love xHelen of Nowhere is published by FitzcarraldoTranscription is published by GrantaMusic used on this episode: Hermanos Gutierrez - Nuevo Mondo Ian Hawgood - Upwards Eyes EP@fieldzine www.fieldzine.comwww.patreon.com/fieldzine