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

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 Book Club, the organization Lucas has co-founded to encourage men to read and talk about books. What makes a great book club pick for an all-male book club? We’re going to be finding out. We’ve even got Valentine's recipe – rigatoni with a long-simmered ‘Sunday sauce’ – and a couple of cocktail ideas. All in all, the perfect ingredients for a literary Valentine’s weekend. Become a member of The Book Club Review community Join The Book Club Review community on Patreon for ad-free listening, extra episodes, Kate’s weekly reading diaries, the opportunity to connect with other listeners in the chat groups, and at the higher tier to talk books in-person with Kate at the monthly book club. Find all the details and how to sign up at patreon.com/thebookclubreview . Booklist You can find all the titles mentioned in this episode in the Book Club Review bookshop on bookshop.org Nearly Departed by Lucas Oakeley Heart The Lover by Lily King All My Friends are Superheroes by Andrew Kaufman Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls John of John by Douglas Stuart Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë Comfort MOB: Food that Makes You Feel Good Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser All My Precious Madness by Mark Bowles The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald Life Out of Order by Audrey Niffenegger Links Follow Lucas on Instagram and Tik Tok @lucasoakeley, and you can find out all the details for the Boy’s Book Club at theboysbookclub.co.uk Housmans bookshop, the longest continuous-running radical bookshop in Britain, established in 1945 and based in London’s Kings Cross since 1959 See Privacy Policy at and California Privacy Notice at .

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Nearly Departed: Love, Loss and Literary Romance, with Lucas Oakeley is an episode from The Book Club Review by W!ZARD Studios.

This episode is 00:46:44 long.

This episode was published on Feb 15, 2026.

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