Latest / Bookies' Favourite / Play | Eden's Shore by Oisín Fagan | Review

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Play | Eden's Shore by Oisín Fagan | Review · Bookies' Favourite

• 0:20
  Welcome to the Club, bookie's favorite book club.
• 0:24
  We're back to continue our chapter by chapter read Long of
• 0:28
  Eden Shore by Ashen Fagan. This episode we are discussing
• 0:32
  Part 2 Chapter 4 play. Previously we discussed the
• 0:37
  first 3 chapters in this adventure epic.
• 0:40
  If you haven't listened to those episodes, you should go back and
• 0:43
  listen. If you haven't read the book,
• 0:45
  then catch up with us before we finish.
• 0:48
  Next episode, we'll complete the final chapter and we'll be
• 0:51
  following that up with an episode in which we will speak
• 0:54
  with the author, Austin Fagan. So send us your questions for
• 0:58
  him. You can e-mail
• 1:00
  bookiesfavoritebookclub@gmail.com. That's in the description below.
• 1:05
  As always, my name is Lucy and I'm what am I doing?
• 1:09
  I forgot that we do these things every episode, Aaron, that we
• 1:13
  pretend to be in some place in the book, I'm in the abandoned
• 1:17
  slaughterhouse. This time we've kind of had a
• 1:20
  bit of a big break between. So I actually have lost count of
• 1:25
  to have I read this 3 in times of skin read it once I've read
• 1:30
  it fully I think twice. This one for me when I first
• 1:34
  read it. I find the play really annoying.
• 1:38
  Like it it wind me up so much I was like I absolutely hated it.
• 1:42
  I was so glad when it went between the play and the actual
• 1:48
  book because the play was just I found it so annoying.
• 1:51
  But now I think in my reread and like my other kind of skim reads
• 1:56
  and and various times that I've like listened, I do kind of
• 2:00
  enjoy it. And I think that there's there's
• 2:01
  obviously like a point to the play.
• 2:03
  I remember when I first read it just being like, what has
• 2:06
  happened, what's going on? I don't like it.
• 2:09
  I don't get it and I'm confused and scared.
• 2:11
  But I think I've I've grown to appreciate it more, even though
• 2:14
  still reading the play parts of it again still made me be like,
• 2:19
  I can't really. I find it hard to read, really
• 2:22
  hard to read. What about you, Aaron?
• 2:24
  I'm Aaron and I am sitting in my own little box watching this
• 2:31
  play. I've probably listened to this
• 2:34
  more than I've read it, but the amount of times that I've
• 2:38
  consumed this chapter has to be at least three times, if not 5
• 2:43
  or 6 times. With what you're saying about
• 2:45
  the play, listening to it in audiobook form, I think it's
• 2:51
  very confusing for the reader or the listener to understand
• 2:57
  what's happening because it's constantly flipping it back and
• 2:59
  forth between the action that's actually taking place and the
• 3:03
  performance that's happening on stage.
• 3:06
  But it doesn't tell you it's a performance.
• 3:07
  You just kind of have to understand that it's a
• 3:11
  performance that that is playing out because it's a weird
• 3:14
  retelling of, of what we've already experienced through the
• 3:19
  book. And so I think it, there's a lot
• 3:23
  of people online who seem confused by this book.
• 3:27
  And I think that this is a chunk that probably does confuse a lot
• 3:31
  of people. Even if you're reading it, I
• 3:33
  think you kind of have to decipher what's happening.
• 3:36
  But if you're listening to it, you you really have to be paying
• 3:39
  attention and figure out when the perspective changes.
• 3:44
  I think as well, it's like when you start first start reading
• 3:47
  it, you're like, oh, is this like a are we going back in
• 3:49
  time? Because the the second part, we
• 3:52
  go forward in time of years and then it starts again with like
• 3:54
  Angel and he's with Patrick Edgeworth, his wee friend from
• 3:58
  Dublin. And you're kind of like, wait a
• 4:00
  second, this is retelling the same.
• 4:02
  But there's things that we knew were kind of incorrect.
• 4:05
  Marianne, let's arrives. Well, even before then, it's
• 4:08
  like Angel is like really obsessed with like this chapter
• 4:13
  in Revelation. And it's like when we read about
• 4:16
  Angel and his motivations, it's very like liberal utopia,
• 4:21
  freedom of religion. Maybe.
• 4:22
  I don't know if I've made that up in hindsight, but this is a
• 4:26
  very like he's made-up his mind because of his reading of the
• 4:30
  Bible and he's reading through Revelation and he's like, I must
• 4:34
  go and the Americas or this beast and this kind of thing.
• 4:38
  And you're like, this is not Angel.
• 4:40
  We this is not the man we knew. This isn't the the drunk, like
• 4:46
  imbecile from sea that we know and love.
• 4:50
  So I think that's quite a you're kind of like, are we going back
• 4:53
  into the past? And then Marianne Lynch comes in
• 4:56
  and he's like all singing, all dancing and.
• 4:58
  It's so weird because also Angel and and Marianne Lynch play
• 5:02
  themselves, which adds an extra layer of like, confusion to the
• 5:06
  entire thing because we've taken such a big break.
• 5:10
  Like, when did we do the last chapter?
• 5:12
  It must have been September, August, maybe it.
• 5:16
  Feels like it feels like a year ago.
• 5:19
  It does feel. Like a year ago.
• 5:21
  I mean the book wasn't even published a year ago but but it
• 5:24
  feels like a year ago was like. 10 years ago.
• 5:28
  We've been. Doing this for so long it feels.
• 5:32
  So do you think that taking that break has been beneficial?
• 5:39
  Do you think it's hindered your reading or do you not have a
• 5:42
  different perspective on the book or or this chapter in
• 5:45
  particular? I don't know, part of me is
• 5:48
  like, maybe this gives me more of an excuse to not understand
• 5:53
  or not to have made the connections that I know I
• 5:56
  probably should have made. Because see, reading through it,
• 5:58
  I think, and I was saying this to you before we were recording,
• 6:01
  it's like you read things and you're like, this rings a bell
• 6:05
  and you're not 100% sure where you've read it before or how it
• 6:09
  ties into the story. And I think because so much of
• 6:11
  it is intrigued and because there's a revelation happening
• 6:15
  and there's so many different kind of strings that need tide,
• 6:19
  I feel like maybe the break has maybe hindered slightly, just
• 6:24
  kind of the idea of like and maybe would have been able to
• 6:28
  make more connections. But then I don't know, because
• 6:31
  we like, I mean, we read it quite intensely.
• 6:34
  I feel like I do know what the characters and I feel like I do
• 6:36
  know it is easy enough to go back in and be like, Oh yes, and
• 6:40
  this is kind of where we left this person or this is kind of
• 6:44
  where we left the other people. And I do think it made sense.
• 6:47
  But then I think this is a it's a difficult book to to know
• 6:50
  what's happening. So I don't know.
• 6:53
  What about you yarn? What do you How do you feel?
• 6:55
  Yeah. Well, actually since we've
• 6:57
  finished the previous chapter and now I have actually met
• 7:03
  Arshin Fagan in Persian. We've previously discussed this,
• 7:06
  but not in this series. I attended a talk in Dublin
• 7:14
  which specifically had Arshin Fagan talking about Eden Shore.
• 7:19
  Can I just say has Austin Fagan probably in the near future will
• 7:25
  have some kind of restraining order against you?
• 7:27
  I'm just wondering when for both of us, I'm imagining in the near
• 7:30
  future because I just think he probably is Like what's what's
• 7:34
  wrong with these two people? Yeah, well, he, he has said that
• 7:40
  he he is willing to come onto the podcast.
• 7:42
  So hopefully there's the restraining order comes after
• 7:45
  he's he's made an appearance on the pod.
• 7:48
  The thing that you went to in Dublin, I imagine it was like
• 7:50
  really generic questions about things.
• 7:53
  And then we're going to be like page 112, this character says
• 7:57
  this. But then if you go to page 164,
• 8:01
  this character says this and he's going to be like, no, this
• 8:05
  isn't happening. The woman I was sitting besides
• 8:09
  was like, I would almost think you're a journalist with all the
• 8:12
  notes that you're taking. And I was like, Oh yeah, I am a
• 8:14
  journalist. You didn't know that there was
• 8:17
  like an intense super fan in the in the audience who's standing
• 8:22
  at least 50 feet from Washington at all times.
• 8:26
  He did a reading from this book, coincidentally from this
• 8:30
  chapter. Oh, really?
• 8:32
  Yeah. What?
• 8:33
  What did he read? I don't think I would have
• 8:35
  picked it as the part that he would have read.
• 8:40
  So I am intrigued to see if you can actually do you want to
• 8:45
  guess I. Have no clue now that you said
• 8:47
  this, I'm going to guess that he's going to go for like a
• 8:50
  Benjamin quote. Maybe something Chuck Benjamin
• 8:53
  says. No, it was pretty lengthy.
• 8:55
  It was like a couple of pages. Oh OK, well I can't believe that
• 8:58
  he chose something from this chapter considering the fact
• 9:01
  that it's like quite far through the book.
• 9:04
  Yeah, yeah. Well, yes, but it's from
• 9:07
  someones perspective that we only get their perspective in
• 9:10
  this chapter. So that's all I'm going to say.
• 9:12
  That might spoil it, House. It's from Klaus's perspective,
• 9:16
  is it? The part where the the British
• 9:18
  are involved. Yes, where he is translating to
• 9:22
  the native of who's about to be hung, explaining like why he
• 9:27
  better be hung now rather than in the future.
• 9:30
  This is an aside but when I was listening to it the voice of the
• 9:34
  guy does for like the British soldiers is so good a lot.
• 9:39
  He's so good. Tom Alexander is phenomenal at
• 9:44
  reading this book and really brings the characters to life.
• 9:48
  Let's move on from our discussion.
• 9:50
  So to start us off, here is a quote from Play.
• 9:56
  Well, what is a beast but a Kingdom?
• 9:59
  And what is a Kingdom but a nation in utero?
• 10:06
  Spoil the warning from this point onwards.
• 10:08
  If you haven't read the book yet and you're planning to do so,
• 10:11
  come back to to this discussion after you've done so.
• 10:15
  In play, we see Eden Shore reach its climax with the return of
• 10:18
  our former protagonist Angel Kelly.
• 10:21
  In a play fictionalizing the events of Part 1 of the novel,
• 10:25
  Plans for the Christmas Day revolt of Santa Maria
• 10:29
  unexpectedly comes a few days early, with our ensemble cast of
• 10:34
  native slaves and workers taking on the Spanish.
• 10:37
  As the Benjamins flee amidst the chaos, Marianne Lynch sends Issa
• 10:42
  and Zhongzhou on a mission to find Flores, where we learn that
• 10:45
  who has been sending the letters placed between each chapter.
• 10:49
  Brado, Domingo and Lee are made martyrs, while Luan has a run in
• 10:55
  with Lois Suarez. We see the return of San
• 10:58
  Angeles, the town where we first met Isa.
• 11:01
  In land, the British assist in the Revolution and the Benjamins
• 11:05
  recruit Lewin to find a newspaper aiming to control the
• 11:09
  future of the colony. We, we kind of talked about the
• 11:11
  plan, but if you want to give me your, your thoughts on it.
• 11:14
  Well, I think, as I said earlier, I think that the play
• 11:18
  for me I found really, really jarring.
• 11:19
  The first time I read it, I was like, what's happening, don't
• 11:21
  like this. And the second couple of times I
• 11:24
  kind of, I guess I was kind of like what, what is the purposes
• 11:28
  of this play? Why is it here?
• 11:29
  I don't think that potting would have put something really random
• 11:34
  in for no purpose. So I kind of tried to to think
• 11:37
  about the reasons for it. And I suppose it is quite clear,
• 11:41
  I guess that it is propaganda for the the Benjamins.
• 11:44
  And it's quite clearly, and I don't know if this is a theme
• 11:49
  necessarily throughout it, but I imagine that Chuck is always
• 11:54
  kind of thinking one step ahead. So he's using the British
• 11:57
  against the Spanish, using the the natives and the the slaves
• 12:02
  to start the revolution. And then the British are going
• 12:07
  to come in and see if everyone from it.
• 12:08
  But I imagine that their goal in the long term is capitalism and
• 12:14
  having control themselves. So they're they don't want it to
• 12:17
  be this kind of play that's like the British are amazing.
• 12:21
  It's quite anti Spanish. And there's definitely some
• 12:23
  parts where they say things that are, are very clearly anti
• 12:26
  Spanish. They don't really mention
• 12:27
  anything anti British, but they do kind of sow the seeds in the
• 12:31
  play of of Europe being not a bad guy but not a good guy kind
• 12:37
  of thing. So I missed that, especially
• 12:41
  with the newspaper that comes in later.
• 12:43
  I'm assuming that Benjamin wants control and he's using all these
• 12:47
  different players to have control and the play is
• 12:50
  definitely malleable enough for him to change about.
• 12:55
  And I and I assume it's all to do with the Benjamins this whole
• 12:58
  play, because I don't think a lot of the stuff that Angel
• 13:00
  says, it's not very Angel like. And it's I'm assuming he's doing
• 13:05
  what the Benjamins want him to do.
• 13:06
  And this is the same. It's kind of mirrored with Leon
• 13:10
  later on when Leon is starting the newspaper where Benjamin
• 13:14
  wants to make him think it's his own idea.
• 13:16
  And I'm assuming that the same thing has happened with Angel.
• 13:19
  And yeah, it's quite, it's quite an interesting play and it is so
• 13:25
  weird. What do you think?
• 13:27
  Well, just adding on to what you said, we do know from the
• 13:30
  previous chapter that the Benjamins are involved in some
• 13:34
  way with at least the players, the the actors because they have
• 13:41
  been building add-ons to the theatre, I think connecting it
• 13:48
  to their hotel. Yeah, it's in the back of the
• 13:50
  hotel, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
• 13:53
  What? In this chapter, I found it
• 13:56
  really weird that is it Zhongzhou goes outside, hops in
• 14:00
  the carriage and then they take the carriage to the hotel.
• 14:04
  Or is it? It's Lee and Bert.
• 14:07
  Sorry. Lee and Bert and they.
• 14:10
  See Zhongzhou being taken by soldiers at the.
• 14:14
  Times. That's it, yes.
• 14:17
  So it's kind of funny how they hop in the carriage from the the
• 14:23
  theatre and then they stop at the hotel and it's like what?
• 14:27
  This is all connected. Why did you have to do this?
• 14:30
  Like 2 seconds away. Yeah, but the player is really
• 14:37
  odds like it's retelling because Angel is the main character and
• 14:41
  Marianne Lynch is I guess the the supporting actor.
• 14:47
  There's a couple of other actors in it, Molly Sheridan, the I
• 14:55
  guess his love interest, Angels love interest from the first
• 14:58
  chapter, the sex worker that he knew for like a week and that he
• 15:04
  fell in love with is now his like full on love interest in
• 15:08
  this play and an integral part. And I'm imagining as well,
• 15:13
  because she has like a maid, that she's no longer a
• 15:17
  Liverpudlian sex worker. She is now some kind of Dublin
• 15:22
  and well to do woman who is for some reason not involved with
• 15:27
  him and loves him and is more respectable than, I suppose the
• 15:31
  real Molly Sheridan. I thought that was interesting
• 15:35
  Georgie Finch because every other person that is named every
• 15:40
  other character in this play we already have heard about.
• 15:44
  Well, apart from the like random natives, but they're not really
• 15:48
  given names until they are given names.
• 15:51
  And but Georgie Finch, I was just like, what?
• 15:55
  Like we've not heard of a Georgie Finch before, have we?
• 15:58
  And. We've got a full name as well.
• 16:00
  Yeah, yeah. And she literally only says like
• 16:02
  one line, which is right, I'll go get my bonnet or whatever.
• 16:07
  It was just, it was like such a comical line of like, oh, we're
• 16:10
  moving to Brazil and she's like, OK, I'll fetch my bonnet.
• 16:13
  I think that's the great thing about the play is it's just so I
• 16:19
  don't know much about plays from this era, but it's so like I
• 16:24
  would never have been able to go and see that play, never mind
• 16:27
  the people who are going to see multiple showings of it, but
• 16:29
  like. The donkey.
• 16:31
  The idea of going and sitting there while this rubbish is
• 16:35
  happening in front of you is just like like all the the
• 16:41
  natives as well throughout the play are just that's painful.
• 16:45
  Oh, it's incredibly racist. Yeah, they are just, you just
• 16:51
  have these depictions of the natives that are only saying
• 16:56
  like one phrase over and over again until they try to teach
• 17:01
  like the word of God. And then all of a sudden they
• 17:05
  can speak exact like perfect English.
• 17:09
  And it seems like Angel has become this like, religious
• 17:14
  figure because now he is converting people to become, or
• 17:21
  converting the natives to become Catholic.
• 17:25
  Yeah. Which is interesting because
• 17:27
  last time we seen Angel, he was being baptized by Marianne.
• 17:32
  Lynch. Oh yeah.
• 17:35
  He was in the waters and Marianne Lynch was like, I will
• 17:40
  take you away or I will get you out of here, but first let me
• 17:44
  baptize you. And so.
• 17:46
  It's too strange you're. But has he no actually like
• 17:52
  become full on like Catholic? Because before this he he kept
• 17:56
  saying he didn't believe in God. Now he did start praying at
• 17:58
  points because he was so desperate.
• 18:00
  But I think. Everybody from a religious
• 18:03
  background does that. But yeah, I think it makes sense
• 18:05
  what you're saying. The idea that he is, ah, like
• 18:09
  Marianne Lynch. Who is he?
• 18:12
  What's he doing? Yeah, we have Angel die.
• 18:17
  His character dies in the play but then is like resurrected and
• 18:23
  has now become this like Jesus like figure and he we know that
• 18:28
  he gets what he had wanted in the 1st place.
• 18:31
  The whole reason he came to Brazil was to start a utopia.
• 18:36
  The town where he had landed, where he had met Isa, is now
• 18:42
  called San Angeles, which I presume is named is Saint Angel
• 18:48
  or Saint Angels. So like it's now been named
• 18:53
  after him. I I presume that's his utopia
• 18:56
  because in the play he declares it's his own time.
• 19:00
  And we know later in the chapter that that actually is the name
• 19:03
  of the town. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 19:05
  And it's also used lower Soras uses it as like a secret code
• 19:09
  Angela's. Yes and yes.
• 19:11
  Yes, like angels. I couldn't get the relevance of
• 19:14
  that. Jacques, who was the French kind
• 19:18
  of really sweet little boy boy. He he is not a native in the
• 19:25
  story and like kind of almost becomes him because Molly
• 19:29
  Sheridan is kill hung. She's cannibalized, but is she
• 19:34
  not hung? So who's hung?
• 19:35
  She she she is hung and but then the natives are seen eating
• 19:40
  meat. Oh yeah.
• 19:41
  And. Wearing her, wearing her
• 19:44
  clothes. Yeah.
• 19:45
  So it's very, I think it's very much like another racial
• 19:49
  depiction of like these cannibals.
• 19:50
  Cannibals. Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:52
  Angel and Marianne Lynch are like, let's see of all these
• 19:55
  souls. And they're really talking about
• 19:57
  that. And they're like, we've got, I
• 19:58
  can't remember how many it is. It's got like 3000 souls to
• 20:01
  save, but we're missing three that we haven't baptized.
• 20:04
  And they're the ones that have gone off, cannibalized.
• 20:07
  Molly Sheridan, what do you think the significance of having
• 20:10
  Jack be a different person is there?
• 20:15
  I don't know because it seems it seems like this need of them
• 20:21
  becomes Jack of like, oh, you are my little friend who will
• 20:26
  follow me around and like do my bidding for me or like help me
• 20:30
  like be my friend. Yeah, I don't know, because this
• 20:36
  chapter I think is just because it is the climax in the next
• 20:40
  chapter is very short. I feel like we're almost getting
• 20:44
  like the best of our, like looking back at everything
• 20:47
  because we have Molly Sheridan back, we have Patrick Edgeworth,
• 20:50
  and we have this character who's named after Jack.
• 20:54
  So I think we're just kind of like taking off A lot of the
• 20:57
  characters that we have heard of before.
• 20:59
  No, surprisingly, they kind of skip over the entire like, C
• 21:05
  part. Yeah.
• 21:06
  Like there's no mention of the ship.
• 21:09
  There's no mention of any of the crew or the fact that it was a
• 21:13
  slaver. Yeah, and he meets Marianne
• 21:15
  Lynch in Dublin before he leaves.
• 21:18
  Or work Liverpool wherever he's supposed to be.
• 21:20
  Yeah, which, so just the quote that you had everything that you
• 21:26
  had mentioned at the start about how he got really into like
• 21:31
  Revelations and he specifically is like talking about like he's
• 21:36
  reading parts about like Lucifer and the like the beast, beast,
• 21:43
  the beast. Yeah.
• 21:45
  So I think it's Marion Lynch is because the way he describes it
• 21:53
  as like having horns and like the earth is shaking.
• 21:57
  And whenever the beast like crawls up out of the earth and
• 22:01
  then literally just after he finishes this, the entire stage
• 22:05
  starts shaking. And then you have Marianne Lynch
• 22:08
  up here and he like messes up the entire stage, like knocks
• 22:12
  over the wardrobe and like jumps in on the bed.
• 22:15
  So I was like this too obvious for this not to be Marianne
• 22:19
  Lynch, No. I don't know, like, I didn't
• 22:22
  think of it, but I think it makes sense what you're saying.
• 22:24
  Yeah. Because he's going through these
• 22:26
  depictions and revelations that are of very vague descriptions
• 22:32
  Of what the Antichrist and that kind of thing.
• 22:36
  So maybe Marianne Lynch. I was kind of anti Christy kind
• 22:39
  of figure my thoughts on the revelation stuff because I
• 22:43
  remember when I first read it, I got my King James Bible out.
• 22:49
  I know and I tried to read through that chapter and it is I
• 22:55
  don't understand revelation. I remember reading loads of
• 22:58
  stuff about it, trying to understand it and not really
• 23:00
  understanding it at all. But it's I kind of got the sense
• 23:03
  that the point of it was because he obviously needs a religious
• 23:07
  reason as to why it's OK to go and colonize these places.
• 23:12
  And he's kind of vaguely slapped all those things together and
• 23:16
  he's gone. This is why I'm doing it.
• 23:17
  And it says it in the Bible. And I was imagining like if you
• 23:20
  were watching the play, you'd be like, yeah, because I imagine
• 23:22
  people back in those days would have known the Bible a lot
• 23:25
  better than we know the Bible. Like they're probably like, oh,
• 23:29
  I love that part of Revelation or whatever.
• 23:31
  And I suppose a part of Revelation is the idea that it's
• 23:34
  all going to happen in the future.
• 23:36
  So he's kind of going, this is what Revelation is foretold, you
• 23:41
  know, and this is this going to America is what's.
• 23:44
  And I'm this almost Christ like figure, like prophet kind of
• 23:51
  thing who's St. or whatever kind of thing that he he kind of is
• 23:55
  making out that he is in this play.
• 23:57
  I kind of thought maybe this is just their way of kind of for
• 24:01
  the people watching the play going.
• 24:03
  This has like a biblical, you know, basis, and therefore we
• 24:08
  can kind of propagandize and they'll start coming around our
• 24:11
  way of thinking against the Spanish and that kind of thing.
• 24:14
  And the play's been shown for I can't remember how many months
• 24:16
  beforehand. So we're assuming that he's got
• 24:19
  and they're doing different language versions of it, aren't
• 24:21
  they as well? Yes, yeah, yeah, they're
• 24:23
  spanking. Yeah, we can assume he's getting
• 24:25
  he might be saying some anti British stuff in the in the the
• 24:29
  Spanish language version. He might be doing something a
• 24:31
  bit different. Playing to the audience.
• 24:34
  Yeah. And I think it's all to do with
• 24:36
  the Benjamin stuff. But I think that the point that
• 24:38
  you're making about Marianne Lynch is very valid and the idea
• 24:42
  that that he kind of represents all the things using our
• 24:47
  knowledge of Marianne Lynch from previous to we can we can link
• 24:51
  those two in our own kind of way well.
• 24:55
  Also, Revelations is about preparing for the end of the
• 24:59
  world. Could it be preparing this
• 25:02
  colony for the end of the colony like with the because they had
• 25:10
  the information that the revolution was about to take
• 25:13
  place at Christmas? Yes, that there's like a there's
• 25:17
  going to be a big change, yeah. Does it really stop being a
• 25:20
  colony? I think it's still because the
• 25:22
  British just take over. Yes, yes.
• 25:24
  But I guess who's in control right now changes and like,
• 25:32
  there is a lot of violence and death, so you could say it's
• 25:39
  almost apocalyptic. Yeah, John, John Joe, and he's
• 25:43
  riding one of the four horse. He's one of the four horsemen of
• 25:47
  the. Oh I like this.
• 25:49
  It would work better if it was 4.
• 25:51
  So it's established in this play that they're not in Brazil
• 25:56
  because Marianne Lynch is like that tree is not native to
• 26:00
  Brazil, so we cannot be in Brazil.
• 26:03
  We had kind of established this between each other.
• 26:06
  As Marianne Lynch says, and he's an expert in flora and fauna of
• 26:11
  the South American region, and he says that it's an olive tree,
• 26:16
  which apparently don't grow in Brazil.
• 26:18
  But I I mean, I haven't looked at any of that up.
• 26:21
  Oh trust me, I have and we will be getting into the olive tree.
• 26:27
  Stay tuned For more information about Tree.
• 26:30
  Let's move on to the the next major plot.
• 26:34
  They've uncovered that there's a rebellion that's taking place.
• 26:41
  So this is something I found interesting.
• 26:42
  So Chuck has explained to Bert why he trusts Lee so much and I
• 26:50
  and then almost instantly when Lee sees Verato has been tied up
• 26:54
  and Lee is obviously extremely involved in the the revolt plot,
• 26:58
  Lee immediately shoots the soldier to the side of Verato
• 27:03
  and therefore said showing how untrustworthy he is to Chuck.
• 27:10
  But I was thinking, why did Chuck make the point?
• 27:13
  Because he seems to be a bit ahead of everything and he
• 27:16
  obviously knew there was a revolt because he's highly
• 27:18
  involved in it. But I was kind of like, what?
• 27:22
  What made him say that about trusting Lee Before Lee, I feel
• 27:28
  like he knew. I was torn between does.
• 27:31
  Did Chuck know that Lee was involved in the revolt or did he
• 27:34
  not that and I wanted to know, what did you think?
• 27:38
  Well, so you think Chuck actually was in on this the
• 27:44
  entire time? Now, I know the what we said
• 27:46
  about the player is that he had influence over the player, but
• 27:52
  we know that Osgood was definitely involved and he was
• 27:59
  actively involved when he was alive.
• 28:02
  Then when Lee is being or was a Jung Joe, that's being
• 28:08
  questioned by Chuck in this chapter and is being asked who's
• 28:14
  the third person there's. Lee's being asked.
• 28:16
  That's Lee's being asked. So yes, sorry.
• 28:18
  There's Verato and Zhang Zhou that have been captured, and
• 28:25
  they're like, Lee, you were defending.
• 28:27
  You're covering for a third person.
• 28:30
  It must be ESA. Yeah, so he doesn't say ESA.
• 28:35
  He says it was Osgood, so why? Why would Chuck not know that?
• 28:43
  He says later. On that, him and Osgood were
• 28:45
  both involved. That's yes, but see, that's the
• 28:49
  thing with this book. But.
• 28:51
  We have to assume that he knows the British are coming, yes, And
• 28:55
  the British are the ones who've given the guns because Jolly
• 28:57
  Jenkins is the one with the arms.
• 28:59
  So and Verato is the one who contacts them, right.
• 29:04
  So if we know those things, and I don't know if we know them for
• 29:07
  certain, but we can probably say with some degree of certainty
• 29:10
  that I don't know if any degree of certainty, but Chuck must
• 29:15
  know about the British and he must.
• 29:19
  I mean, as he says later, he's kind of like I've gone with the
• 29:22
  British because they're in big with the European banks at the
• 29:26
  moment. They're doing better, like
• 29:28
  monetarily. And as we know, Benjamins are
• 29:31
  massive capitalists and they're doing it for that side of
• 29:34
  things. So I'm assuming that he has to
• 29:37
  know that the revolt's happening because he wants rid of the
• 29:41
  Spanish. He wants the natives and the
• 29:44
  slaves to uprise against the Spanish and that is integral for
• 29:49
  him because then the British come in and usurp the Spanish
• 29:54
  and then he can have control over that whole thing.
• 29:58
  But he knows he wants the British to come in and the
• 30:00
  British are doing better bank wise.
• 30:02
  So then there'll be more money into the area.
• 30:04
  So I I can't see that the Chuck doesn't know.
• 30:08
  And as we know, the full amount doesn't get through to so the
• 30:15
  film, sorry, the full guns and weapons, they don't get through.
• 30:19
  And I think that's definitely intentional because they don't
• 30:23
  want them to actually have enough to to properly have a
• 30:28
  revolt. Oh, I'm a yes.
• 30:30
  So it's orchestrated, Yeah. I'm assuming Chuck is involved
• 30:34
  in all of that, but I think he might have double crossed.
• 30:39
  All's good because the amanuensis, Fritz Odenkirk, he
• 30:44
  does not seem like a standard secretary, saying is he knows
• 30:47
  sort of a ship. And something that Lee notes in
• 30:50
  one of the earlier chapters is the fact that he is all of a
• 30:53
  sudden working for Osgood as an emanuensis, which is just a
• 30:59
  secretary or like a writer, which is not what his job is
• 31:03
  with Chuck. So I'm assuming that Chuck has
• 31:06
  double crossed Osgood to take over the whole of everything.
• 31:11
  But so, OK, so this all makes sense.
• 31:18
  And the reason why Chuck is kind of doing this performance then
• 31:25
  is because he's kept his hands clean this entire time by not
• 31:30
  actively being involved with the characters that we have seen
• 31:36
  involved in this. And I think he's also given a
• 31:38
  performance for Bert that he can kind of be like, look what
• 31:43
  they've been doing behind my back.
• 31:45
  Because Bert still needs convincing.
• 31:46
  Bert isn't just a he's not a loyal Benjamin.
• 31:52
  He's kind of there because he has to be.
• 31:54
  But he is very empathetical to what is happening with with all
• 32:00
  of the the slaves and the the natives.
• 32:03
  This might be jumping the gun a wee bit but I think I didn't get
• 32:05
  this in my first read through, but I didn't realize that Bert's
• 32:10
  the one that kills Lee. I, I literally only figured this
• 32:15
  out like half an hour before we started reading, before we
• 32:19
  started talking. And yeah, I, I was like, why is
• 32:23
  he so upset? Like what's he talking about
• 32:26
  that he's so upset about? It's so funny because I have in
• 32:29
  my original notes, he keeps saying like later on he's like,
• 32:33
  I can't believe I did that to him.
• 32:35
  Yes, right. And I have written beside it
• 32:37
  from my first time I read it did what to who?
• 32:40
  And it was only later. And I was like, oh, because,
• 32:45
  because Chuck says when? So Lee eventually is kind of
• 32:52
  stuck and it looks things look bad for him.
• 32:56
  And Chuck says you have to you have to kill him.
• 33:00
  You have to burn Lee and you don't think Bert would do it
• 33:04
  because you just. That's just not Bert.
• 33:06
  And this is like my first read through.
• 33:08
  I was like, I loved Bert. He was like my favorite
• 33:10
  character. I thought he was great.
• 33:11
  I was like, he's such a sweetheart.
• 33:13
  And then I was like, oh, no, he killed Lee.
• 33:17
  Like he obviously feels really, really bad about it.
• 33:19
  But you do get the sense of like how torn he is about about
• 33:23
  everything. He doesn't seem like he's he's
• 33:25
  so young as well. Yeah, I feel for Bert, but.
• 33:29
  Well, see, that's the thing with this book is things happen, but
• 33:33
  it doesn't spell it out for you. Like, we never seen Lee die.
• 33:38
  We see his body hanging from a tree, but like, there's no
• 33:44
  explanation as to how he ended up there.
• 33:48
  So you really do have to remember and you have to piece
• 33:50
  it all together of like, OK, well, when how did he die?
• 33:54
  Who killed him? It seems so obvious on your like
• 33:59
  second or third reading because you're like, yes, you, but when
• 34:03
  you're first reading it, you're piercing together all these
• 34:05
  other things in your heads in totally different places.
• 34:08
  So I'm this is something I think I'd be interested to like ask
• 34:13
  washing be like, am I an idiot? Should I be able to get this the
• 34:17
  first time round? Or have you like, designed this
• 34:19
  to to be like this? Like as a writer, you can't
• 34:23
  really experience what it's like for a reader to read something
• 34:26
  for the first time and like to be so confused.
• 34:29
  I wonder how he feels about the fact that it's like we're
• 34:31
  probably saying all these things and actually if we sat down and
• 34:34
  read it, we would know exactly how everything plays out.
• 34:38
  Well, but I don't think so because we've had this, like
• 34:41
  we've discussed this book, like we have gone through chapters
• 34:45
  like over and over again. Believe if I read it again I
• 34:48
  would have different views 100%. Yeah, there will be completely
• 34:52
  brand new stuff that you will realize and you'll be like, how
• 34:55
  did I miss this before? Because I didn't.
• 34:57
  I don't know how I missed in my first reading the fact that,
• 34:59
  because it does seem obvious in hindsight that that your man
• 35:05
  killed Lee. The birds killed.
• 35:08
  But totally didn't occur to me the first time I read it at all.
• 35:12
  Yeah, and it's like he's such a mean character that for him to
• 35:17
  have been killed off screen, like we should have pieced
• 35:20
  together, like how this had happened.
• 35:23
  But yeah, it's so easy to miss. He's such a oh, I miss Lee.
• 35:30
  I do feel bad that he wasn't really there for then the rest
• 35:34
  of the stuff. Yeah, I'm kind of always
• 35:37
  interested in like I think as well because there's no
• 35:41
  character that it's really point of view from.
• 35:43
  We don't get inside the head event.
• 35:45
  Like we don't actually get get their actions, we don't get
• 35:49
  their thoughts. So we're having to piece like,
• 35:53
  and I think that makes it so hard with the kind of the the
• 35:56
  revolt and like who's doing what.
• 35:59
  Who's seen what? And that's what, yeah.
• 36:01
  So you you can't know if someone's double crossing
• 36:04
  someone. Yeah, you don't get their
• 36:06
  thoughts. We don't know they intentionally
• 36:08
  double cross someone or have they through just no fault of
• 36:12
  their own. So yeah, you kind of go.
• 36:15
  Are you actually on the Benjamin side or are you not like,
• 36:18
  because obviously Osgood was totally for the the revolt.
• 36:23
  So that's just yeah, my head. Well, I think find it
• 36:29
  interesting that Lois Suarez, we never get her perspective.
• 36:37
  She seems to be one of these leaders of the rebellion that
• 36:42
  just kind of shows up and does interacts with the other
• 36:45
  characters, but we never actually get her as a
• 36:49
  protagonist, which is interesting because we get
• 36:52
  nearly every other character as a protagonist and but we we
• 36:56
  never get her as as one. And so she kind of she's almost
• 37:01
  like the Deus Ex machina of like just showing up.
• 37:04
  So she showed up in this chapter to free.
• 37:09
  Zhang Zhu. Zhang Zhu and she also then well
• 37:17
  with the rebellion, Zhongzhou finds this tree that has Verato
• 37:24
  Domingo and Lee Hung from it with a third noose, which is
• 37:30
  obviously like there's a third person out there who is it?
• 37:35
  Isa has after the play, she's gone backstage to speak with
• 37:41
  Marianne Lynch and with Angel, and Angel seems changed, like he
• 37:47
  seems almost speechless, like interacting with her.
• 37:51
  Like what? What did you think of their
• 37:52
  what? Yeah, that is such an it's one
• 37:57
  of probably one of my favorite parts of the book because Isa,
• 38:01
  obviously her relationship with Angel is incredibly linked to
• 38:06
  Flora's and her life in Jet like like that coming of age thing
• 38:12
  where she had to look after to to weak animals, which were for
• 38:19
  as an Angel. And when she and she's obviously
• 38:22
  meets my own Lynch then as well when he comes to the time.
• 38:26
  But she's obviously really surprised at the fact that
• 38:30
  neither of them remember her. Neither of them have any
• 38:34
  recollection of her. And it's such like, like she's
• 38:38
  so she's such an important character.
• 38:40
  And also something else that I found really interesting was
• 38:43
  that she didn't realize that Flora as an Angel were linked to
• 38:47
  the crew of the Atlas. So that's something that she so
• 38:50
  she's able to finally kind of realize that she is possibly
• 38:55
  more to blame through her own in not intentional, but like like
• 38:59
  that man said to Isa, you're the reason our town was destroyed.
• 39:04
  And you kind of get the feeling that it's kind of confirmed to
• 39:06
  her that she is the reason because she then can make that
• 39:10
  link, seeing Angel and Lynch together, she can go, oh,
• 39:15
  actually they knew each other and they were all involved in
• 39:20
  this. And I suppose that also feeds
• 39:21
  into the end when she sees Flores again, because she's
• 39:24
  like, how involved were you with these people that pretty much
• 39:28
  killed most of the people, her family, everybody involved in
• 39:32
  her life. Isn't my other thing with the
• 39:33
  play being a Benjamin thing? So there's a whole massive thing
• 39:38
  where the Benjamins have a ring with a seal on it with a bird
• 39:43
  very involved with this whole plot and everything.
• 39:48
  And Chuck gets very angry at Burke going You have you've
• 39:52
  you've given the seal to someone.
• 39:54
  You've given the seal. But something we find out in
• 39:56
  this section with Issa and Angel is Angel has the seal.
• 40:03
  Angel has a copy of that seal. So it doesn't make sense to me.
• 40:08
  And also we find out that Angel has been intercepting letters
• 40:13
  from Flores's daughter to Marianne.
• 40:15
  Lynch has has been intercepted. Oh sorry Marianne Lynch.
• 40:18
  And he has this and as we know, when he hands them to ESA, they
• 40:22
  have been sealed again with the seal of the Benjamins.
• 40:26
  So. Interesting.
• 40:27
  That they have that seal, which again adds to the fact that the
• 40:32
  Benjamins Chuck is trying to make Bert feel bad about having
• 40:37
  given the seal or having had Lee or Zhangzhou take the seal.
• 40:41
  So so one thing I couldn't understand was why they were
• 40:45
  intercepting the letters, why they're so obsessed with the
• 40:49
  letters. Why does he give them to ESA to
• 40:51
  give back and why obviously she she then needs the seal on the
• 40:56
  letters. Sorry, the seal on the letters
• 40:58
  later on. So just like how all these
• 41:01
  things work together, I don't I don't understand.
• 41:05
  We then have ESA and Zhangzhou who are leaving together.
• 41:10
  They're they're going to find Flores because Marianne Lynch
• 41:14
  has given these letters to ESA and said bring these back to to
• 41:18
  Flores. He lives S you will make it
• 41:21
  before Christmas if you leave right now.
• 41:23
  Bearing in mind the rebellion is to take place on Christmas Day,
• 41:27
  probably because it's a big Catholic holiday and it's a
• 41:31
  Spanish colony, so they know that the Spanish won't be
• 41:35
  expecting it and will probably be a bit relaxed on Christmas
• 41:39
  Day. So that means that Isa is going
• 41:42
  to miss the entire rebellion. Her and Zhang Zhou, who have
• 41:45
  been two of the people who are manning the entire thing, and
• 41:50
  she has now seen that Verato and Lee have been murdered.
• 41:54
  So it's everything is kind of happening at once and not going
• 41:59
  to plan. So on their way out of town, Isa
• 42:05
  breaks into a church to ring the church bells to signal that the
• 42:11
  rebellion is starting right now. And they hear other church bells
• 42:16
  from Santa Maria and their, the other church bells are ringing
• 42:22
  out signaling that's that it's that they've, they've heard the,
• 42:27
  the signal and the rebellion is starting.
• 42:30
  So that kind of, we can come back to, to Issa and Zhongzhou
• 42:34
  and later. But this kind of then kicks off
• 42:38
  the entire thing. And most of we, even the
• 42:44
  Benjamins leave. They they flee the the city
• 42:47
  because it's now all of a sudden under attack.
• 42:51
  So we see this from two people's perspective, from Lewin and from
• 42:57
  Klaus. So Lewin, they both wake up in
• 43:01
  the same, I guess, brothel. And Lewin is sees Ernest Ernesto
• 43:11
  killed, shot in front of him. Shot and killed.
• 43:16
  We'll come back to that. Yeah.
• 43:18
  Shot in the head, yes. And killed him and now he's,
• 43:23
  he's out in the streets while there's like this attack
• 43:27
  happening. He runs into a slaughterhouse
• 43:31
  and hides underneath the cattle to like blend in, like to
• 43:37
  basically hide like he, he didn't, didn't want to be here
• 43:40
  in the 1st place. He's basically Angel from the
• 43:43
  the first like from Part 1, Angel had just had a plan of
• 43:49
  what he wanted to do, ended up getting swept up into everything
• 43:52
  and was like, I didn't want any part in this.
• 43:55
  I this is all gone completely wrong.
• 43:59
  That's what Lewin is facing right now.
• 44:01
  He didn't want any part in this. And now he is caught in the
• 44:04
  middle of a rebellion. And but yeah, he's in the
• 44:09
  slaughterhouse and lower Suarez shows up and she is like, you're
• 44:18
  not Maxine because he had taken Maxine's identity.
• 44:23
  And again, another tech of a reference to a previous
• 44:28
  character. And and through being underneath
• 44:34
  these cattle he ends up having his hand crushed and his like 3
• 44:38
  fingers are like snapped. There's a bit in colony where
• 44:42
  Leon just like is crossing the road and there happens to be a
• 44:45
  bunch of red steer like walking past and he one of them just
• 44:49
  stares at him. And it's like, I obviously
• 44:52
  didn't when I read it the first time I'd ever made a big impact
• 44:56
  on me. But then obviously, having read
• 44:57
  that last bit, I was like, it's so weird that in the previous
• 45:02
  chapter of this bull just like or like just like stares at him
• 45:06
  fridges. I think it tried to charge at
• 45:08
  him and call if I remember. Is that right?
• 45:10
  Yeah, yeah. And I was like this.
• 45:13
  They really don't like him. But then they could have done
• 45:15
  worse. Well, I mean, do they?
• 45:17
  They poo on him, don't they? They do.
• 45:19
  But I mean, he could have died. He was, he was amongst them all
• 45:22
  and they were all leaving. You know, the chances of dying
• 45:26
  were probably quite high. Then Klaus wakes up in the
• 45:31
  brothel as well and he basically goes wandering around.
• 45:36
  He has slept through, I think, all of this entire thing.
• 45:41
  So we get his perspective of like the aftermath.
• 45:45
  It's really weird that we get his perspective because we have
• 45:48
  not had his perspective before. And I don't really remember
• 45:52
  anything about Klaus apart from the fact that he was drinking
• 45:55
  with Lewin in the bar. Yeah, this is the thing about
• 45:58
  the book is like, you just don't know what to give weight to.
• 46:00
  You don't know what to like. Yeah, You just have to kind of
• 46:05
  hope that something like comes along that will solidify
• 46:09
  something in your mind, this person.
• 46:10
  But Klaus is definitely a forgettable character up until
• 46:13
  this point. And Ernesto, because I'm like,
• 46:16
  well, who is Ernesto? I think he was just drinking
• 46:18
  with them. Yeah, the two men.
• 46:20
  Show up and were they not involved in the I'm going to say
• 46:22
  orgy? They were yes, no, that's
• 46:25
  confirmed. And that there was an orgy that
• 46:28
  took place at the brothel. And but then Klaus finds Lewin
• 46:35
  has been pulled out from this building that's collapsed on top
• 46:38
  of him. And they head to there's like a
• 46:43
  little British boy who's about 10 years old and is like, if
• 46:47
  you're aged between 12 and 29, you better show up, otherwise
• 46:52
  you will be murdered for not showing up.
• 46:56
  And then Klaus is like, you're a boy, like why are you doing
• 47:00
  this? And he was like, I'm 21.
• 47:03
  Like what? Like I, I don't under like that.
• 47:05
  That was one of the odd things. I was like, what?
• 47:08
  Why is this 10 year old boy pretending to be 21?
• 47:10
  I was Klaus, just so out of it. Do you know?
• 47:14
  And now this is a link here that is extremely spurious.
• 47:19
  But he reminded me of the kind of Oliver Twist character, like
• 47:24
  a little Cockney boy. That is who I was picturing very
• 47:26
  much. Right.
• 47:28
  And who in Oliver Twist are they under?
• 47:31
  Like who's their WE leader? Oh, I don't know.
• 47:36
  What is often surname? Most tenuous link that you could
• 47:42
  get. Whoa.
• 47:45
  I'm convinced. He was like, I've got to get my
• 47:50
  name sick in here somewhere. Whenever Klaus reunites with
• 47:54
  Lewin, say then reunite with Ernesto.
• 47:57
  He was so, but he's like, no, I wasn't, what are you talking
• 48:02
  about? Like I'm fine.
• 48:03
  He's like, I think my hair got like burnt or something, but
• 48:09
  he's like, what are you talking about?
• 48:10
  Like I was not shot in the head. What?
• 48:13
  What was that about? We literally seen from from
• 48:16
  Lewin's point of view that Ernesto got shot in the head and
• 48:19
  was lying on the street dead. I think though, could it, I
• 48:25
  think is it, is it in an earlier bit where he takes some kind of
• 48:28
  some like a drink or something? Anyway, I kind of get the
• 48:33
  feeling with Lewin that we aren't he's not quite there.
• 48:39
  Something's something about him. We can't really necessarily
• 48:42
  trust what's happening. I reread that part where Ernesto
• 48:47
  shot and there's some seems to be a big kerfuffle and he's
• 48:49
  getting his head kicked in. So maybe then was just seeing so
• 48:53
  much that he just kind of misinterpret it.
• 48:56
  But he thinks he sees Maxine at one point in a doorway.
• 49:00
  Yes. Yeah.
• 49:01
  I get the feeling that is an unreliable narrator that we
• 49:04
  don't quite, we can't quite trust what he his point of view
• 49:08
  kind of thing. But I don't know.
• 49:10
  At the same time, yeah, I think it's just weird.
• 49:12
  It's weird. So during Lewin and Claus's
• 49:16
  perspectives we we do then, as you said, the British are
• 49:20
  involved. The Jolly Jenkins is shooting
• 49:23
  cannonballs at the town to like help out and so and we also
• 49:28
  bring back Admiral someone Nyrac.
• 49:33
  Lovering. Lovering sorry, am I thinking of
• 49:36
  the original Captain? We.
• 49:39
  Are here, yeah. So yeah, but we have a lovering
• 49:44
  from the Johnny Jenkins. Yeah.
• 49:47
  Which is another little take off of reference to a previous
• 49:51
  character that that we've heard from before.
• 49:55
  And we kind of get the the reason why Chuck Benjamin wants
• 50:01
  the British involved. They discussed that they're
• 50:06
  they're telling they need to tell stories to the people to
• 50:09
  control them, which is where we kind of get the idea that play
• 50:14
  is actually maybe something that Chuck Benjamin kind of started.
• 50:19
  And he, he get asked, offers a job to Leon as a newspaper man.
• 50:25
  And he says that it can be Republican in nature, which is
• 50:29
  what Leon is, which is interesting because obviously we
• 50:35
  can see through the British soldiers and their chats with
• 50:37
  the Benjamins and they're kind of involved.
• 50:39
  And Fritz Odenkirk kind of comes up again.
• 50:42
  We get that these people are all really intertwined.
• 50:45
  But the fact that that Chuck is planning this Republican
• 50:50
  newsletter and newspaper is, is an interesting theory as to
• 50:55
  where his head's at and the future of Santa Maria and the,
• 51:01
  the area. So it's interesting.
• 51:03
  I, I, this book is, I really love it.
• 51:08
  Like I love all that kind of, I think I said this in the, the
• 51:11
  first podcast, it's kind of like the wire.
• 51:12
  It's like everything's kind of comes together, but you don't
• 51:15
  really necessarily know exactly how it's come together.
• 51:19
  Just another thing to note that the Benjamins, when they fled as
• 51:24
  Santa Maria, they fled to San Angeles, which is the town that
• 51:30
  that's where they kind of hunker down, is the town where ISA is
• 51:34
  from originally and with all the guano.
• 51:38
  And so we get a little glimpse into that town again and we know
• 51:42
  that the road is currently being constructed and that the dockies
• 51:46
  have been funding. Were the dockies funding it or
• 51:49
  were the Benjamins funding it? And the dockies had planned it?
• 51:52
  The Dockies were involved, but also.
• 51:54
  Discussed that they they did at the start of that challenge
• 51:59
  colony that they're introduced, I think that they were involved
• 52:03
  in the. One of the points for me that I
• 52:08
  wish had been tied up was the Dockies.
• 52:11
  We know that the Dockies were at the show and because Issa was
• 52:16
  there and Lee was there, so I think they were there with
• 52:21
  Elizabeth Ducky. Is her name Elizabeth or did I
• 52:24
  make that up? Hyacinth.
• 52:25
  That's it. And I believe Hyacinth Ducky was
• 52:30
  there at the play because it was discussed previously that she
• 52:34
  loved it and she was like, let's go see it.
• 52:38
  But like we never get any more mentions of the Dockies.
• 52:41
  And I don't, I mean, we have one more chapter, but it's a very
• 52:44
  short chapter. No, I don't imagine that we will
• 52:46
  hear anything else about the Dockies.
• 52:48
  And I just wish that there was some involvement of the Dockies
• 52:52
  because we had so many like references and like cameos from
• 52:57
  other characters that I just wish that we kind of knew what
• 53:02
  their involvement was or where they ended up or something.
• 53:06
  I imagine them as to be another version of the Benjamins, like
• 53:12
  they're doing the same thing in a different area.
• 53:14
  They're they're all I suppose it's that this is like the
• 53:20
  colonial element is turning into like a neoliberal capitalist
• 53:27
  element that it's not, it's not about the old world anymore.
• 53:31
  It's not about, I mean, the, the people, the big families that
• 53:35
  are in these areas are using the monarch that the, the pars in
• 53:40
  Europe to have these battles on their behalf.
• 53:43
  But because those those countries aren't actually there
• 53:48
  to to be involved, they're all being governed from other
• 53:51
  places, then they probably don't have the ability to control
• 53:53
  those areas as well as your Benjamins or your donkeys.
• 53:57
  And I just kind of saw the, the alliance between those two
• 54:00
  families as being almost like the new form of monarchy, which
• 54:05
  is these, these big companies and, and families that are,
• 54:09
  they're setting up these companies that that will be the
• 54:12
  future of South America to an extent, you know, because
• 54:16
  there's always someone winning from all these things.
• 54:19
  I definitely feel like Flores lives in Brazil just because
• 54:25
  it's South. So in my mind, he has ended up
• 54:29
  in Brazil. Interestingly, there's a
• 54:31
  nativity play that's happening because I guess it's Christmas,
• 54:34
  so the kids are doing an and nativity play.
• 54:37
  And yeah, it's, it seems like it's a completely different vibe
• 54:42
  in this town in the settlement where everything seems so homely
• 54:48
  and everyone, there's like a drunk caretaker that everyone's,
• 54:53
  like, laughing at. And it just, it feels so
• 54:56
  wholesome that we've come from this horror chaotic.
• 55:01
  Yeah. And it's nice to know that
• 55:05
  Forrest has ended up taking, like, has started a family,
• 55:09
  basically. He's got a child and he's now
• 55:12
  been reunited with Isa. And he hands her the conch shell
• 55:17
  that he had picked up when he when she had gone missing at
• 55:21
  first. And he was like, oh, I knew you
• 55:23
  would come back. Like, I never stopped searching
• 55:25
  for you. And it's, it's just, yeah, it's
• 55:29
  really heartfelt. Yeah, because Flores has kind of
• 55:32
  been missing from Colony onwards.
• 55:35
  This is the the last time from the the horror of the the
• 55:41
  village being destroyed that we we see Flores and Flores I think
• 55:44
  is, is such a good character. So I, I feel like he's been
• 55:47
  missed. So you're really happy when you
• 55:49
  meet up with him again and you're like, it is really nice
• 55:53
  to think that he looked after this child and that like, she's
• 55:56
  obviously sending him these letters and.
• 55:58
  And I could say it is really lovely.
• 56:03
  But it's so, yeah, it's quite sad that he's the only kind of,
• 56:06
  I suppose having that like a little bit of hope at the end of
• 56:09
  the book is kind of quite bittersweet because of how all
• 56:13
  these other characters have kind of either become or are bad to
• 56:20
  some degree or have just had these horrible experiences.
• 56:23
  And, yeah, the idea that there actually is paradise in some way
• 56:28
  here, which is such a juxtaposition to everything that
• 56:32
  has happened since Angel has left Liverpool, is like, you
• 56:35
  know, it's, it shows the horrors of like the new world, I
• 56:39
  suppose. And then Flores is this person
• 56:42
  that's found, like, peace and acceptance of his mother's, his
• 56:46
  mother's death. And like, he just seems like a
• 56:49
  new man almost. And it's.
• 56:51
  Yeah. It's a yeah.
• 56:53
  I think it's it's a sad chapter. I find it much more emotional
• 56:56
  reading it the next time than I did the original time.
• 57:00
  But yeah. It felt very cinematic this
• 57:03
  chapter because you kept swapping between the
• 57:06
  perspectives of what was happening and like somebody was
• 57:09
  a bit more involved and somebody was on the run and someone was
• 57:13
  in the middle of it and didn't know what was happening.
• 57:16
  And so it just, I liked that like constant like switch up and
• 57:21
  especially the 1st 2 chapters, we had one protagonist really
• 57:27
  started with the Angel. Then we had Flores, then in
• 57:29
  colony we had a mix, but it was a tighter mix and and then in
• 57:36
  played. Now we have so many different
• 57:39
  like it is full on like ensemble and but kind of pays off
• 57:43
  everything that has been set up before.
• 57:46
  So olive trees, what to you what?
• 57:51
  What's the significance of olive?
• 57:52
  Trees. Well, when I googled the tree
• 57:56
  that Marianne Lynch notices in the When they land in the play,
• 58:02
  it's an olive tree and olive tree.
• 58:04
  The significance in general of an olive tree, I suppose.
• 58:08
  An olive branch. Peace.
• 58:11
  Do you remember any mention of olive trees throughout the book?
• 58:15
  Is the hollow tree in the in the boat the when they passed the
• 58:19
  wee girl? I'm only it's not that I
• 58:23
  remembered that that was an olive tree.
• 58:24
  I'm just as it's a tree I remember.
• 58:26
  It's, it's an olive tree. It's described as an olive tree.
• 58:30
  There's so olive trees come up a lot now from my research.
• 58:37
  Arshin Fagan has said at the talk that I went to that he does
• 58:41
  a lot of research and books not on the Internet.
• 58:46
  So we don't know what books he's read.
• 58:48
  We don't know what research he's done.
• 58:50
  So he might know a specific part of Brazil where the Spanish were
• 58:55
  because he read it in some books that he read.
• 58:58
  But it's not like a big thing that has been like documented
• 59:02
  online. So that's why there's things
• 59:05
  that I think we will just never know unless he tells us
• 59:08
  directly. But with olive trees, from my
• 59:13
  research, it seems like olive trees, so they're not native to
• 59:18
  the Americas. They would have been in parts of
• 59:22
  the Americas at this stage, but not in Brazil.
• 59:26
  It wouldn't have made sense to be in Brazil.
• 59:29
  They could have been in more northern parts or more southern
• 59:34
  parts, but it would not have made sense for olive trees to
• 59:39
  have been planted there. So basically with olive trees,
• 59:42
  that means that settlers had to have planted that settlers had
• 59:47
  to have been in the area. It wouldn't have made sense for
• 59:50
  for the olive trees to exist without settlers having done
• 59:53
  this. So yes, you're right that the
• 59:56
  Hollow One, the ship from the first chapter that had the
• 1:00:00
  little girl that they believed was a cannibal and the crucified
• 1:00:04
  man, there was an olive tree growing out of that ship.
• 1:00:09
  It's also mentioned, I believe in chapter one that it could be
• 1:00:15
  left cardio or Camacho. So one of those characters is
• 1:00:21
  talking about in Europe, the girls, when they have their
• 1:00:26
  first periods, they basically have their sheets hung out on
• 1:00:31
  olive branches or olive trees. And to kind of signify that they
• 1:00:36
  have become a, a woman or that they're prepared for marriage.
• 1:00:40
  Whatever way it's described in in the book there there's a
• 1:00:43
  mention of olive trees. The tree that Jacques was hung
• 1:00:49
  from is an olive tree. That tree is the tree that is
• 1:00:53
  then recreated in the play that Molly is hung from.
• 1:00:59
  And because it, it all matches the description, I've locked all
• 1:01:02
  this up. That tree I believe is then used
• 1:01:09
  outside. And that's the tree that Lee and
• 1:01:13
  Verato are hung from. Because we know that it's a tree
• 1:01:17
  from the theatre. I'm I'm presuming it's an olive
• 1:01:20
  tree that they've taken from the theatre, just because we know
• 1:01:24
  that the theatre has olive trees.
• 1:01:26
  Is it not a fake tree? It is a fake tree.
• 1:01:28
  A fake olive tree. It's mostly a fake olive tree,
• 1:01:31
  yes. A representation of an olive
• 1:01:33
  tree. Yes, yes.
• 1:01:34
  In Colony, whenever Chuck is speaking with Bert in a cafe or
• 1:01:43
  outside of a cafe, they are sitting underneath an olive tree
• 1:01:47
  because olives keep falling on the table.
• 1:01:50
  Did you get a copy of this book like in a Word document and just
• 1:01:54
  control F Olive? I thought you're going to say,
• 1:01:57
  did you get a copy of this book that's in olive green?
• 1:01:59
  Yeah. This olive tree at San Angeles
• 1:02:03
  is really important because it's the one where, as I said,
• 1:02:08
  Jacques was hung from. I believe whenever the Benjamins
• 1:02:12
  in this chapter arrive in Saint Angeles, there's a stage that
• 1:02:18
  has been built at this tree. So there's a black tree like,
• 1:02:24
  again, they don't spell it like Ocean Fagan doesn't spell it out
• 1:02:27
  for you that it's the same tree, but it's just the recurrence of
• 1:02:33
  the description of this tree and it just shows up over and over
• 1:02:38
  and over again. Like why is there a stage by it?
• 1:02:40
  Like obviously it's significant in some way.
• 1:02:43
  What I was thinking because I did also pick up on how many,
• 1:02:47
  especially in this chapter, how much trees are kind of well, I
• 1:02:51
  know it is in the other ones as well, but like just kind of
• 1:02:54
  their mentions of trees and all. But I was kind of there's some
• 1:02:58
  part. So I had linked it not with any
• 1:03:01
  other chapters, but with this chapter very much with women.
• 1:03:05
  So like this is where I was kind of thinking, you know, it's
• 1:03:08
  called Eden Shore. And I was kind of getting, we've
• 1:03:13
  talked about Revelation, but I'm going to, I'm going to take it
• 1:03:15
  all back to Genesis now. And I was kind of getting Eve
• 1:03:19
  vibes with some of the stuff that was happening.
• 1:03:22
  And I'm trying to find Noi because just when we were
• 1:03:24
  talking about this, you know, Molly ends up being the person
• 1:03:28
  in the tree in the play, even though she's not Isa, her kind
• 1:03:34
  of looking at the tree and her interactions with the tree and
• 1:03:37
  the fact she was the one that brought the the man into the
• 1:03:40
  tree in the earlier parts. And Marianne Lynch says this.
• 1:03:45
  Oh, who will sail with Angel Noi?
• 1:03:47
  Lynch calls, striding by the tree and cut in twain the plume
• 1:03:53
  plummid wave. And who arrives on Eden shore to
• 1:03:57
  yoke its messenger to slave? It is the tinted star that
• 1:04:01
  breathes the blackened sea, who rests as craves.
• 1:04:04
  Is it the girl within the tree, the forgotten forest, her
• 1:04:08
  ancient graves? So I when I was reading this, I
• 1:04:12
  was like, because I was thinking Eden.
• 1:04:14
  Sure. Obviously Eden and the tree
• 1:04:16
  being the power of knowledge of good and evil.
• 1:04:21
  And I suppose I think there's something in that.
• 1:04:25
  I feel like the book is trying to to be accurate in some way,
• 1:04:29
  like it's quite unflinching about all the horrific things
• 1:04:32
  that are happening. But I think that it's not, it's
• 1:04:35
  not a really depressing book in other ways.
• 1:04:38
  I think it's quite, it's quite fair, you know, on people like,
• 1:04:46
  you know, Angel isn't all bad, Sorez isn't all bad, ESA isn't
• 1:04:52
  all, but all these people are, you know?
• 1:04:55
  Can I just say on what on your point, because up to what we've
• 1:04:59
  said now, you could say ESA's good.
• 1:05:01
  ESA's always been good. She straight out murders a woman
• 1:05:05
  in this chapter that we completely didn't even bring up
• 1:05:08
  yet. Horrible.
• 1:05:11
  Yeah, like I need a woman and who, who is a maid at the
• 1:05:14
  church, opens the door and ESA with her letter opener start
• 1:05:19
  like I think cuts open her throat.
• 1:05:21
  Yeah. And she dies slowly.
• 1:05:23
  And Zhang Zhou is kind of like horrified.
• 1:05:26
  My main theme was like the Garden of Eden story in general.
• 1:05:30
  I thought there's because when I first read it, I didn't don't
• 1:05:33
  think I really made any kind of links.
• 1:05:36
  I knew it was the name of the book, but I kept forgetting
• 1:05:37
  that's the name of the book. You know what you're reading and
• 1:05:39
  you're just like, that could be called anything.
• 1:05:41
  And but I think reading it again, kind of I'm thinking back
• 1:05:46
  to like Eden is what they're striving for and it's not it's
• 1:05:53
  not happening those for Flores to an extent.
• 1:05:55
  Angel does get his Eden in the end, which is San Angeles, which
• 1:05:59
  has the tree in it. Yeah.
• 1:06:02
  So yeah, you you are kind of like tying that up.
• 1:06:07
  Is Issa Eve? I guess because she, she's the
• 1:06:10
  one who ruined it for her people because she yeah, she hit the
• 1:06:15
  apple. Yeah, she they, they had a
• 1:06:16
  community that was doing fine. And then because of her actions,
• 1:06:20
  she took down her entire like civilization, basically.
• 1:06:25
  There's some references, some Easter eggs that that I just
• 1:06:28
  want to to note. And one of these has got to do
• 1:06:31
  with the fact that ESA did do this murder.
• 1:06:34
  So again, I I think this is something that you wouldn't have
• 1:06:37
  picked up on, but maybe you have excited whenever ESA kills this
• 1:06:42
  woman, the floor, the woman's. Sorry, oh, sorry.
• 1:06:46
  I just assumed that it would be floor related because Zhangzhou
• 1:06:49
  gives the woman a floor. I thought you'd be all over
• 1:06:51
  that. No, no, I I wasn't.
• 1:06:53
  Is there a bee there or something?
• 1:06:55
  What? Whenever ESA kills the woman at
• 1:06:58
  the church, first of all, no need.
• 1:07:01
  Yeah, no need for her to do that.
• 1:07:03
  She could have explained, but I guess maybe she thought I don't
• 1:07:07
  have time. The rebellion needs to start
• 1:07:10
  right now. The woman doesn't.
• 1:07:11
  This woman's going to have me back.
• 1:07:13
  She's about to say like you can't, we assume, say she's
• 1:07:16
  going to say you can't come in here, but Lisa doesn't give her
• 1:07:18
  the time to say that because she's already slit her throat.
• 1:07:21
  And by slitting her throat, blood covers half of her face.
• 1:07:26
  Or maybe all of her face, but definitely blood covers her
• 1:07:29
  face, yes. Do you remember what that means?
• 1:07:34
  No, I don't. When Isa was preparing when she
• 1:07:39
  was a little girl for her maturation ceremony, her face
• 1:07:43
  was painted red and the town had all half their face painted red
• 1:07:49
  and they were preparing to celebrate her becoming a woman,
• 1:07:55
  which they never got to do those celebrations because that's when
• 1:07:58
  their their town was annihilated.
• 1:08:01
  So this at this point her face is red and we see her mature
• 1:08:06
  into a woman. She has now progressed from
• 1:08:10
  being the child and is now OK that that taking my mind.
• 1:08:14
  That blew my mind. I also think that Marianne
• 1:08:17
  Lynch, he has clearly had some kind of bigger role in
• 1:08:22
  everything. And I know that that we keep
• 1:08:25
  parking on about how he's been pulling strings, but if he's
• 1:08:30
  been involved really behind the scenes of the revolution, he's
• 1:08:36
  been working with the Benjamins. He's been like he knew to go and
• 1:08:39
  get the letter from Lewin. And and he's obviously had
• 1:08:44
  involvement in this play. He has been intersecting these
• 1:08:48
  letters for with Flores and his daughter.
• 1:08:52
  Like Marianne Lynch is an enigma for me because why does he have
• 1:08:59
  so much power and control over all of these things?
• 1:09:06
  It's not like he's in, it's not like he's a captain.
• 1:09:08
  It's not like he's in some kind of position of power that that
• 1:09:13
  you can be like, oh, of course that's why he is so connected
• 1:09:17
  and so many people rely on him. I think as well the point that
• 1:09:22
  he's we can probably assume by his name, he's not like Anglo
• 1:09:28
  Irish or anything, just Marianne Lynch wouldn't lint.
• 1:09:32
  I mean, there probably possibly were some people of like who
• 1:09:37
  would have been wealthy in Ireland at the time with the
• 1:09:39
  surname Lynch, but it's some fairly standard Irish surname.
• 1:09:43
  So I would have assumed that he would have no, kind of he
• 1:09:47
  doesn't fit in like that random Irish man, a random Irish sailor
• 1:09:53
  pulling the strings is not. It just wouldn't be.
• 1:09:58
  Yeah, his involvement. There has to be.
• 1:10:00
  And I think this is, I hate to say it, but you could be right
• 1:10:03
  with the old supernatural element to him, because who's
• 1:10:07
  going to be taken seriously? This this Irish man, you know,
• 1:10:11
  And he's not Angel. He's not well educated or
• 1:10:13
  anything, you know? Well, yeah, he's a he's a
• 1:10:18
  question mark. No, let's give this chapter a
• 1:10:21
  reading out of five stars. I am thinking that this is a
• 1:10:28
  full 5 stars to me and I think this is my favorite chapter of
• 1:10:32
  the book. Now, initially when I had first
• 1:10:34
  read it the first time, I remembered basically nothing
• 1:10:37
  from this chapter because I had read it in such a quick like I
• 1:10:42
  think I audiobooked it at this point and I didn't take anything
• 1:10:47
  in. I was so confused.
• 1:10:49
  I knew there was a play. Aside from that, didn't really
• 1:10:51
  understand what was happening. But now that we have had so many
• 1:10:55
  discussions and this has really tied most things together.
• 1:11:01
  Obviously there's still some unanswered questions, but I'm OK
• 1:11:05
  with that. So I, I, I, this is my favorite
• 1:11:08
  chapter and it's, it's five out of five.
• 1:11:11
  I'm so I just the re the play really annoys me every time I go
• 1:11:18
  to I like the natives. I get the point of it though.
• 1:11:21
  I kind of, I'm feeling bad if I say 4.5 because it's like the
• 1:11:25
  only reason is because I didn't know it got played.
• 1:11:26
  But I believe that there's a point to play and I believe
• 1:11:30
  that, yeah, like it means something.
• 1:11:32
  But I just Oh my goodness, I could not stand reading those
• 1:11:36
  tarts again. You can read along and share
• 1:11:39
  your thoughts on Instagram. We are at Bookies favorite book
• 1:11:42
  club. You can also e-mail us at
• 1:11:45
  bookiesfavoritebookclub@gmail.com and that has AU in favorite.
• 1:11:49
  Book in the next episode, we'll wrap up our read along with the
• 1:11:52
  final chapter world, and we'll discuss those letters that are
• 1:11:56
  slotted in between the chapters as well.
• 1:11:59
  So remember to send us your thoughts and questions for the
• 1:12:02
  author Ashim Fagan. Subscribe on whatever podcast
• 1:12:05
  platform you're listening on so you don't miss the next episode.
• 1:12:09
  Share this episode with the book lover you think would like this
• 1:12:12
  book. Rate the podcast 5 stars, and
• 1:12:15
  let's end on a final quote from Play.
• 1:12:21
  I swear to you that this is paradise.
• 1:12:24
  You're wonderful. You're a miracle.
• 1:12:27
  Lisa. Goodbye.