Radio review: Woman’s Hour
Things were all going swimmingly until Jane Garvey came up against novelist Sofi Oksanen
Yesterday’s Woman’s Hour (Radio 4) was all going so swimmingly. There was an extraordinary interview with Joanne Nodding, who sought restorative justice after she was raped. Felicity Finch – Ruth in The Archers – handled the interview well, nudging with some tricky questions but letting her articulate subject do most of the talking. “I wanted to have a successful life,” Nodding stated simply about the decision to face her attacker.
The programme then skipped in typically eclectic fashion through an item on how to do presentations (“death by PowerPoint is a terrible way to die”) and a chat with the costume designer on Mad Men. Betty’s wardrobe is all about creating a “facade of perfection”, we heard, while Joan’s is a tribute to “a woman who totally loved her shape and knew how to work it”.
But then Jane Garvey interviewed author Sofi Oksanen and things went awry. It was a painful listen, as Garvey tried to engage Oksanen and got arch comments back (“I do not define my work. I’m an author”). She did not like the label of crime fiction for her work and she really did not warm to mention of her flamboyant hair. “My hair is not my work,” she snapped. You felt for Garvey, struggling to get the interview back on track, and never really standing a chance.
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Submited at Wednesday, May 11th, 2011 at 8:01 am on Entertainment by madison
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