Nearly Departed: Love, Loss and Literary Romance, with Lucas Oakeley

About this episode

Kate and Lucas Oakeley discuss literary romance, exploring themes of love, loss, and book recommendations for Valentine's Day.

Valentine’s-ish Literary Romance: Lucas Oakley on Nearly Departed, Boys Book Club & love stories that stay with you long after reading Join Kate and Lucas Oakeley for this Valentine's-ish episode of The Book Club Review, recorded at Housmans Bookshop in King's Cross. We're exploring literary fiction where love takes centre stage, but the reward is complexity rather than a guaranteed happy ending. Nearly Departed manages to combine the enjoyable tropes of Rom Com with the thoughtful exploration through writing that we associate with literary fiction. We explore how Lucas’s real-life experiences—witnessing a fatal cycling accident and his father's first wife dying young—shaped the book's exploration of love, loss, and second chances, and the art of balancing humour with heartbreak while playing with rom-com tropes. Of course, we’ve got plenty of recommendations for love stories with emotional depth, including Lily King's Writers & Lovers , Andrew Kaufman's All My Friends Are Superheroes , Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day , David Nicholls' Sweet Sorrow , Douglas Stuart's John of John , and hot-book-of-the-moment Wuthering Heights .  We’re also discussing Boys…

People in this episode

Host: Kate

Guest: Lucas Oakeley

Topics covered

• literary romance
• love and loss
• book recommendations
• men's book clubs
• humor and heartbreak
• Valentine's Day themes

Keywords

• literary fiction
• romantic comedy
• book club
• emotional depth
• Valentine's recipes

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Boys Book Club

Books & works: Nearly Departed, Writers & Lovers, All My Friends Are Superheroes, The Remains of the Day, Sweet Sorrow, John of John, Wuthering Heights

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