Disclaimer: Waiting for Kristof

‘You stop at your local bookshop. You want to kill some time in a place where you’re admired.’ This is voice-over in episode 4 of Disclaimer, an Apple TV series starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline which is bad in very many ways – the writing and acting for starters – but let’s focus in here because it’s hilarious. The Cate Blanchett character goes into the Lutyens and Rubinstein bookshop in Notting Hill and asks if the books she has ordered have come in and is told: ‘I think we’re still waiting for the Agota Kristof.’

Many months ago I was emailed by a film production company who wanted to have the CBe edition of Kristof’s The Notebook on the set of a series starring Blanchett and Kline. Yes, go for it, and it was nice of them to ask. There must have been a lot of emails because every inch of every shelf is meticulously curated: jars, plants, fruit bowls, pots and pans. The sex is curated too. Not the cooking – the Guardian review of episode 1 ends: ‘What kind of idiot starts frying sole meunière when it’s already obvious her husband is going to be late?’

I think we are meant to be impressed by the Cate Blanchett character in Disclaimer wanting to buy a book by Agota Kristof; I think it’s intended to signal sophisticated intelligence. (Kafka would have been too obvious; if she’s asking for Kristof, she has already read Kafka.) This is lazy and silly. My bookshelves are not evidence of my intelligence; nor is there any simple correlation between the making of good art and the betterment of society. By the end of next week the new president of the US will be either a women-hating racist or Harris, who needs the votes of everyone who wants to avoid Trump but is in hoc to a colonialist lobby that’s OK with genocide in Gaza.

The US election is next Tuesday, 5 November. Which happens to be publication date of Invisible Dogs, by me, with a nice review in the Telegraph already up, and on Wednesday a lot of good-hearted people will gather to learn which book on the shortlist for the Goldsmiths Prize, Lara Pawson’s Spent Light from CBe being one of them, gets the cash and the pats on the back. It will be a strange week.

In case Cate Blanchett is still waiting for her Kristof, I took Trilogy, The Illiterate and The Notebook into Lutyens and Rubinstein today. (The man I gave them to said yes, there had been filming in the shop for Disclosure but he hadn’t watched it himself and Agota who?) The single edition of The Notebook is out of print – it’s now included in Trilogy – but that’s the one the film company asked for (and there’s a tiny number of copies still around). The two others are available from the website; if you go to the Special Offers on the Books page, you can save yourself £7 by buying both for £16.