Click here to listen to The Metamorphosis – Part 5

Here’s a synopsis of Part 5, or if you prefer, you can read along with the text while you listen.

Gregor’s situation becomes increasingly worse – he had almost completely stopped eating, and his living conditions were cramped and dirty – everything that could not be kept elsewhere in the house was put into his room. One of the rooms in the flat had been rented out to three gentlemen. These men had particularly high standards and the family were keen to show them the utmost respect and cater to their needs, cooking and serving their meals to them in the family living room while the family remained in the kitchen.

One evening while the gentlemen dined, the sound of a violin streamed through from the kitchen. Gregor’s father became anxious that the gentlemen were displeased, but on the contrary they asked for Grete – who was the one playing – to come into the living room. Captivated by the music, Gregor moves himself into the living room a little. He thinks about how beautiful his sister’s playing is and wishes for her to come and play for him alone in his room, as the gentlemen do not seem to appreciate her. While lost in thought, Gregor is noticed by one of the gentlemen who points towards him and calls to Gregor’s father. Gregor’s father attempts to direct the men back into their room, while Grete rushes to Gregor’s room to clean it, but the men express their disgust and give immediate notice of their room.

In anger and frustration, Grete declares that the family cannot possibly continue to live as they are and that they should get rid of Gregor. Their father agrees that something should be done, but wishes that Gregor was able to understand them so they could make justify the decision. Grete argues that is impossible and anyway, Gregor has become an animal with no consideration or human qualities. In the midst of his sister’s commotion, Gregor crawls quietly back to his room, where he is locked in by Grete. He is no longer able to move and so lies there, feeling the pain fade from his body. Before the dawn of the next day, Gregor dies.

The next morning, the charwoman arrives at the flat and discovers Gregor. She rushes to tell the family of the news and they go to see his body, completely dried up. The three gentlemen enter, asking the charwoman for their breakfast. She takes them to see Gregor’s corpse, before Mr Samsa orders them to leave the house. All three members of the family use the day to write letters of excusal to their employers, their peace only disturbed by the charwoman who informs them ‘that thing in there’ has been taken care of. The family leave the flat together for the first time in months and take a tram to the country. The future seems bright for the whole family – with good jobs and the prospect of moving home – but especially Grete, who has become vibrant and confident – the perfect embodiment of a young lady.

Click here to listen to The Metamorphosis – Part 4

Below is a synopsis of Part 4 – or, if you like, read along with the text here as we listen.

A month has passed since Gregor’s transformation. He is still visited in his room daily by his sister who continues to carry out work to ensure he is looked after. His parents do not enter the room to see Gregor for themselves, instead relying on his sister Grete to keep them informed.

Gregor’s mother, having expressed a wish to see Gregor, enters his room one day to help Grete remove the furniture, as Grete believes it is hindering Gregor from his new habit of crawling on the walls and ceiling. Gregor hides under his sheet, making sure he is not seen by his mother so as not to alarm her, but is gladdened to simply know that she is there. The two women struggle to move the heavy furniture, with Gregor’s mother expressing uncertainty as to whether they should remove it at all, thinking that it seems like they are abandoning Gregor by doing so. His mother’s reasoning makes Gregor realise that he is swiftly losing his humanity. However, Grete, having acquired new-found confidence, dismisses her mother’s fears and goes on with the plan, leaving the room almost completely bare. 

Having become disorientated by the movement in the room and fearful that all of his possessions are being taken from him, Gregor moves onto a picture on the wall – the sole thing left he can claim as his own.  Covering it, he is clearly visible on the wall and upon returning to the room, his mother screams out as she sees him. A commotion is caused and Grete shuts Gregor in a room alone. On arriving home, his father asks what happened and Grete informs him that Gregor had got out and their mother had fainted. His father, looking very different to the man Gregor remembers, enters the room Gregor is in. The two begin to move to and fro, Gregor becoming exhausted. An apple rolls on the floor beside Gregor, followed by many others that are thrown purposely at him by his father. His sister and mother become hysterical, his mother begging with his father to spare Gregor’s life.

Due to the attack, Gregor becomes injured and increasingly immobile. He continues to watch and listen to his family while hidden completely from their view, although he notices all of them have become much quieter, all being exhausted from the increased work they have taken on and struggling to maintain the household. Although they wish to move, the family complain that they cannot do so because it would be difficult to transfer Gregor. Gregor finds himself unable to sleep, occupied by thoughts of his family, work and frustration at the increasing lack of attention he is shown.

With Grete taking on more work outside of the house, and his mother unable to do so adequately, the task of looking after Gregor falls to the charwoman, an elderly widow who is not repelled by Gregor – in fact she treats him with an kind of patronising disregard, which Gregor resents. Intending to let her know how much he dislikes her presence, he moves towards her but she is not deterred, hitting his back forcefully with a chair before continuing with her work.

Don’t forget – you can join us anytime within the next 40 minutes to share your thoughts on the story; just tweet with the hashtag #eveningreadin (or you can tweet us directly). We’d love to hear what you think!

 Click here to listen to The Metamorphosis – Part 3

Here’s a synopsis of what happens in Part 3, or you can read along here as we listen:

Gregor awakes from a deep sleep as the evening is darkening, being aware of there having been some movement in his room. He limps to the door, badly injured from the chaotic events of the day. As he opens it, he finds a dish filled with milk and small lumps of bread. Though ravenous with hunger, he is disappointed to find that the milk is unpleasant to taste and retreats back to his room.

Gregor looks out through the crack in the door to the family living room, which is unusually quiet. During the evening the doors on either side of his room are opened then closed twice very quickly, by a hesitant visitor. Gregor waits for the person to come back to find out their identity but they do not return. Gregor’s parents and sister stay awake until late and then tiptoe from the living room. With no company for the night, Gregor lies alone thinking of how he must rearrange and conduct his life with the least possible imposition on his family’s lives.

The next morning, Gregor’s sister enters his room tentatively – after a initial failed attempt which results in her slamming the door closed in shock. Noticing the milk had been hardly touched, she brings Gregor a selection of different foods to try and hurries away again, not wanting to embarrass him by watching him eat. Famished, Gregor feasts on rotten vegetables and stale sauce – repelled by the fresh food  – and is intrigued to discover his injuries from the previous evening have completely healed. His sister returns to remove the food and clean, and despite being lethargic and enlarged from eating, Gregor scurries to hide under the couch when she enters.

Unable to be understood by his family, Gregor has to listen in to their conversations, which are mainly about him. He notices that nobody is ever left by themselves in the house since he has transformed, with the maid also begging to be dismissed early from her work.  Gregor is relieved to overhear his father say that there is money left over from his failed business, although it is really meant as an emergency fund. Gregor worries about who will have to work to sustain the family, his father being slow and clumsy, his mother old and suffering with asthma and his sister inexperienced and accustomed to a life of pleasure rather than work. He feels a deep sense of shame at his inability to do anything productive for his family.

Gregor remains in his room, leaning against his chair and staring out of the window, his view of the outside street becoming increasingly distinct. His sister continues to do things for him, entering his room twice daily. Gregor feels uncomfortable on behalf of them both, knowing himself to be a burden and unsettling to his sister.

Remember, you can share your thoughts on the story with us as you listen for the next half-hour, by hopping over to Twitter and attaching the#eveningreadin hashtag to your tweets. Happy reading-in!

Click here to listen to The Metamorphosis – Part 2

Here’s a short synopsis of Part 2, or you can read the full text here as we listen.

While his family and the chief clerk are waiting for the doctor and the locksmith, Gregor is contemplating his voice and their lack of understanding of his words. Gregor decides to make for the door, so he can reveal himself to those on the other side. Reaching the door, exhausted from the struggle, he uses the adhesive on the tip of his legs to cling to it. He soon realises that his lack of teeth will make turning the key and opening the door very difficult. But in his new, alien jaw, he finds great strength; and gripping the key between his jaws, he eventually twists and opens the door.

On seeing Gregor’s new appearance – that of a giant insect – the chief clerk backs away in horror; his mother passes out in shock; his father begins to cry. Gregor remains calm and gives a long speech to the chief clerk, in honour of his job, since travelling salesmen are often made the subject of negative gossip. He asks for the truth to be told. ‘But the chief clerk had turned away as soon as Gregor had started to speak’ and continues to retreat from the apartment, not hearing a word through his horror. He makes a sudden movement and bolts.

Gregor, not wanting the chief clerk to escape, tries to catch him unsuccessfully. To his surprise he soon realises how easily accustomed he is with his new insect legs.

Grabbing a newspaper and the chief clerk’s cane, Gregor’s father drives him back into his bedroom. In the confusion, Gregor injures himself in the doorway. His father continues to drive Gregor into the room and then slams the door shut.

Don’t forget to get involved and share your thoughts as the story unfolds live: tweet us and attach the hashtag #eveningreadin to your tweets – we’d love to hear what you think.

Now sit back, relax, and enjoy a dramatic half hour of shared reading aloud.

‘The Medicine Chest of the Soul’, a session chaired by Tim Joss, Director of the Rayne Foundation, featured Jane alongside author Jeanette Winterson, and the LSE’s David McDaid and Margaret Perkins. They discussed the healing power of literature and the role of the arts in substantially improving health and wellbeing, something that is an important aspect of TRO’s work .   

You can listen to the lively and compelling session here.

To celebrate this momentous day and most of all, the man himself, we are showcasing the brilliance of his work and highlighting the very definite impact reading Dickens has on a wide range of people; writers and readers alike.

As a very special birthday treat, enjoy listening to two readings from the recent London Penny Readings – marvellous oral offerings from AS Byatt and Louis de Bernierès that truly capture the comedy, tragedy and true heart of Dickens’ writing.

Reading the first chapter of Great Expectations, AS Byatt reveals how she first read the book when she was the same age as its hero Pip and how, being utterly entranced by the book, became inspired to follow in the footsteps of Dickens and become an author herself.
Click to listen to AS Byatt reading Chapter 1 of Great Expectations – with a personal introduction

In complete contrast to the wit and dark humour of Magwitch and Pip’s first meeting comes one of Dickens’ most emotionally wrenching passages – the death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop. Here it is masterfully and poignantly read by Louis de Bernierès.
Click to listen to Louis de Bernierès reading from The Old Curiosity Shop

Pip meets Magwitch in Great Expectations

The reading of Dickens has also been taking place much closer to home in Get Into Reading groups in Wirral and Liverpool, where group members have been immensely enjoying the experience and embracing every dramatic twist, wonderfully descriptive sentence and deeply emotional juncture in his stories. Kate McDonnell takes us through how one Get Into Reading group in Wirral has been enjoying what is considered to be the most autobiographical of Dickens’ novels…

“My Friday morning group at The Lauries Community Centre in Birkenhead is reading David Copperfield at the moment – and we’re having a wonderful time of it! The last session was particularly good: we read Chapter 14 – My Aunt Makes Up Her Mind About Me, in which little runaway David finds out whether or not his formidable aunt will adopt him or send him back to his cruel stepfather, Mr Murdstone and his terrifying sister, Jane. The Murdstones arrive at the aunt’s house and there are some hilarious ‘King Kong meets Godzilla’ moments as the two women clash which made us laugh out loud. We cheered Aunt Betsy on with enormous relief when she finally opted to keep David and gave the odious brother and sister a piece of her mind! It was funny and entertaining, yet we also recognised that this was about deciding the fate of a small, frightened child and remembered children of today put up for adoption or waiting for foster parents, helpless to influence the result. How does Dickens do that?

Reading the book aloud together slowly over the weeks is like donning a pair of super-clear spectacles, enabling you to examine and wonder at every little detail – nothing is missed.

Here are some comments from the group on how they’re finding the experience of reading Dickens so far:

‘There’s lots of description in it, but it’s never boring.’ (A Dickens convert!)

‘I’m surprised at how much humour there is – I thought Dickens was all workhouses.’

‘It’s like Shameless – full of big characters’.

‘I didn’t think I would like it’

‘Dickens can make you laugh and make you cry in just a few pages’

‘He makes you feel like you’re in the room with them.’

‘It’s so colourful. You don’t read it in black and white, somehow.’

Emma Gibbons has also been reading some Dickens – the great Great Expectations – with a Get Into Reading group in Edge Hill Library. Reading the book has been quite a journey – the group read it with three different project workers over some months, but enthusiasm for it never waned. Indeed, it was enjoyed so much that the last three chapters were read twice over for the benefit of members who had missed previous sessions – the other members who had already read the ending were more than happy to hear it again, which shows just how much they appreciated the book.

Reading Dickens has proved to be a highly enjoyable experience for group members and project worker alike, as Emma herself testifies:

“Great Expectations is a wonderful book and reading it aloud has made me appreciate Dickens even more.”

The book has also  encouraged greater participation amongst some members of the group:

“One group member, B, did not read aloud when starting the group, but does now, and seems to really enjoy it. B has also been very keen on reading the footnotes to the text when an arcane term or an unfamiliar reference crops up. In particular, the reading of Magwitch’s death had a powerful impact on B, who had tears in his eyes.”

The impact of Dickens has even stretched beyond the group; one group member’s carer has said that she will read more of his work as a result of the group member’s enjoyment of Great Expectations. The wonder of Dickens’ words knows no bounds!

Dickens in 1850

This certainly shows how much influence Dickens has – and will continue to have for many more of his anniversaries to come – upon our reading experiences. We’ll leave with some wise words from the man himself…and wish him a very happy bicentenary indeed!

Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.

I’ve gone for this poem published in Issue 40 of The Reader.

I would’ve said it’s a poem about being a tomboy. But then it seems to want to shake off any labels which support the idea that boys should behave in one way and girls in another.

I’ve read the poem with several groups now and the main talking point was the sense of feeling somehow other. One group member summed it up when she said, ‘When you’re growing up I think everyone feels abnormal in some way.’ We wondered whether you ever lose the feeling of strangeness in yourself.

The father-daughter relationship is a crucial part of the poem’s thinking about where identity comes from. One group member picked out lines referring to the father:

For years I abandoned him
Too busy being my own version of him.

She said she couldn’t tell whether the daughter was idolising or rejecting the father. Several people talked about cutting their parents out of their lives and others talked about things the other way round- their father abandoning them.

There was a lot of debate about gender stereotypes – the parents in the groups talked about dressing their sons and daughters differently, even when they were babies. Some people had very traditional views, saying, for example, that girls shouldn’t play rugby or football. But, just as the poem does, one person challenged this by saying ‘As long as my children were happy and healthy, I didn’t mind what they did, it didn’t matter if it was my lad or my girl.’

A Father Like Me

I didn’t want to be daddy’s little girl,
I wanted to be daddy’s son, I wanted a football,
a racing track, a power-car, a gun.

I didn’t want Sindy, Polly Pocket, Barbie, I staged
a late night heist, a hit and run involving Ken
and that white Ferrari, Barbie’s dead and Ken’s
to blame, the Ferrari’s in the car wash,
that was my kind of game.

I’d hold Sindy upside-down swirling her hair
in a puddle. What you doin? I’d hear him shout,
but I’d fight off my father’s offer of a cuddle.

One Easter all trussed up – pink frill dress,
shiny new shoes, straw bonnet hat – I went exploring,
ribbons unravelling in the wind, I went
looking for my reflection in a bucket of oil,
its silky surface I swirled with a stick
never finding the bucket’s bottom
only that pink and black don’t mix,
each fingerprint spread as I tried to wipe the last.

Oil became a thing between him and me,
I grew up, bought old bangers of cars
learning measures made by a dipstick,
that everything with a yellow cap in a Ford
could be filled up; oil, water, washers,
ignoring my mother’s new shade of pale pink lipstick.

I held my body rigid as he taught me to check tyres
and water, levels and tread, my back’s axle aching.
When I pulled out the fuse for the wipers
instead of the flip catch for the bonnet
he made a comment about women and cars
and my heart was punctured.

He took my sister’s boyfriend to the scrap yard
searching for spares, as the car turned the corner
of our road, I was left a part
only a front door key on my fob,
to him I was still his little girl,
he wanted me to meet a nice lad, settle down,
have babies I suppose.

He doesn’t know of the army pants in class 3’s
dressing up box, shoving them over my skirt,
he, my father doesn’t know that I was always the dad
while other girls fought over clip-on earrings and
dragged five-sizes-too-big-heels across the orange
carpet, their toes in the points of 1986 stilettos,
I was busy being like him, rolling paper
pretending it was a cigarette, sitting in the chair
watching the news on a cardboard telly,
he didn’t know I’d spent years basing myself on him.

Suddenly I find I’ve grown up all wrong,
Oedipal instead of Electra, got my wires crossed,
circuit board fused, systems shorted.
I was a physics paper problem where you decide
to close AB or DD to get EE, the lighthouse
to light so the boat can see sea.

My walk his, my talk his,
my voice an echo arguing with his,
for years I abandoned him,
too busy being my own version of him,
until I meet this woman who tells me
I’m not him, I’m me and that’s fine.
For the first time I notice as I change gear
my hand actually does look like a woman’s.

And this woman says having crossed wires
is a good thing – she finds them interesting
and this woman comes to know in me
something I never knew existed
this woman teaches me
to know my father as myself.
So, now each year, as we all grow older,
I find I do want to be my father’s daughter.

Emma McGordon

Click to listen to Emma McGordon reading A Father Like Me

Editor Frances Macmillan discusses how the book came into being – as well as giving Jane a mention.  Michael Rosen, whose essay about his childhood experience of reading Great Expectations with his father is included in the book, and Mark Haddon also feature.

You can take a listen to the podcast on the Vintage website.

In addition to performing both in theatre and on TV as Hamlet, Tennant has performed in literature-based roles as Barty Crouch Junior in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the title character in Casanova and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Romantics.

In an interview with Lucy Fleming, the niece of Ian Fleming who wrote the original Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car, Tennant expressed his surprise at the fact the Child Catcher was created by Roald Dahl for the film and did not feature in the book, but could still appreciate both works.

Inspired by both the book and the film, Frank Cottrell Boyce’s 2011 follow-up to Fleming’s 1964 original sees the Tooting family restore an old camper van and fit it with a magical engine following Dad being given his marching orders at work. You can read the first chapter of the book here.

Of the new book Tennant said:

It’s clever because of the way it absolutely is loyal and very respectful of its source material..Slightly surreal…there’s a kind of macabre element to some of the things that go on in there, there’s some quite dark areas it goes into, and some very, very unexpected twists and turns. [It's] hugely readable. When I was asked to read the audiobook I sat down to read the book and flew through it, it’s just so easy and fascinating and all the things a good book should be.

In November Frank paid a vist to Liverpool Hope University as part of The Reader Organisation’s partnership with the Faculty of Education. Frank spoke to first year Education students about ‘Why Books Matter’ in a brilliant keynote lecture. You can read about his lecture here, and be sure to revisit the website for updates about the progress of the innovative Hope Reader project and other author visits to Liverpool Hope University.

You can listen to the show here.