Melissa Harrison is an acclaimed nature writer, novelist and podcaster. She joins James Naughtie and a group of her readers to discuss her novel All Among the Barley, set in Suffolk in the mid 1930’s. Centring on the experiences of teenage Edie Mather whose family have been farming the land for generations, the novel touches on the backdrop of shifting political and social change, as well as the dramatic change that’s just starting in the English countryside. Presenter: James Naughtie Producer: ...
Jun 06, 2021•27 min
James Naughtie and a group of readers talk to Australian author Liane Moriarty about her New York Times bestselling novel Big Little Lies. Set in the sunny world of Pirriwee Public Primary School in the beautiful North Shore area of Sydney, there’s a dark thread of hidden violence running under the surface of the novel. Liane Moriarty sets an unexpected murder against a wittily written chorus of gossipy and competitive school parents, effortlessly intertwining the darker undercurrents with a bre...
May 04, 2021•27 min
James Naughtie and a group of readers talk to Amor Towles about his bestselling novel A Gentleman in Moscow. The 30 year story of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov takes in the sweep of Russian history from the period just after the Russian Revolution, through the Stalinist purges, and heading towards Kruschev’s thaw – all experienced thorough the lens of Rostov’s long house arrest in The Metropol Hotel. To join in future Bookclub programmes email us: bookclub@bbc.co.uk Presenter: James Naughtie Pro...
Apr 04, 2021•27 min
James Naughtie and a group of readers talk to award winning poet, novelist and essayist Kei Miller about his Forward Prize Winning poetry collection The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion. The collection is set on Jamaica and structured through conversations between the map maker, trying to organise and lay down history with a deep conviction of his own rational knowledge, and the rastaman, trying to explain a more spiritual way of knowing. Kei talks to James and the audience about his own ...
Mar 07, 2021•30 min
James Naughtie and a group of readers talk to acclaimed Irish crime writer Tana French about her novel The Wych Elm, which was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2018, and a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, The New York Times Book Review, Amazon, The Boston Globe, LitHub, Vulture, Slate, Elle, Vox, and Electric Literature. The Wych Elm is the first stand-alone novel from the author of the Dublin Murder series – and Tana French has been celebrated by writers including Stephen King, Gillian Flynn and...
Feb 08, 2021•27 min
Kazuo Ishiguro, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, discusses his novel Never Let Me Go with James Naughtie and a group of invited readers. In one of the most acclaimed novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro tells the story of Kathy, Tommy, Ruth and other school friends growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now 31, Never Let Me Go is her attempt to come to terms with her childhood and adolescence at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School as well as...
Jan 03, 2021•27 min
David Vann discusses his novel Legend of a Suicide with James Naughtie and this month's group of readers. Legend of a Suicide is an intimate and profound account of a family tragedy, told in six linked stories that deal with the complicated misunderstandings between a son and his father, and describes the love, guilt and the painful understanding that begins to come with adolescence. When it was published twelve years ago this autobiographical work of fiction was lauded as a groundbreaker; based...
Dec 06, 2020•28 min
Tayari Jones discusses An American Marriage, which won the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019. The novel tells the story of Roy and Celestial, a newly wed and successful African-American couple in Atlanta whose marriage is tested when the husband is imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. The book tackles the shadow cast by the judicial system over many African-American lives. Tayari tells Bookclub how the novel was inspired by an exchange she overheard between a man and a woman at a shopping mall....
Nov 01, 2020•30 min
Joseph O'Connor talks about his novel of Irish emigration at the time of the Famine, Star of the Sea with James Naughtie and readers. In the winter of 1847, the Star of the Sea sets sails from Ireland for New York. Among the refugees are a maidservant, a bankrupt aristocrat, an aspiring novelist and a maker of revolutionary ballads. As we learn each of their stories, we also learn how each is connected more deeply than they know. The novel has its roots in Connemara, with the characters being co...
Oct 04, 2020•28 min
Oyinkan Braithwaite talks about her novel My Sister, The Serial Killer, a story full of deadpan wit and dark humour about two sisters in Lagos. Korede is bitter and jealous of her beautiful sister Ayoola, who is the favourite child. A kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where Korede works is the bright spot in her life and she dreams of the day when he will realize they're perfect for each other. But after Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row dies, and the doctor asks Korede for her sister's phon...
Sep 06, 2020•28 min
James Naughtie and Louise Welsh discussed Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Aug 10, 2020•27 min
August's edition is a Classic Bookclub - Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped - and is part of BBC Radio 4's ongoing support for students during the Covid-19 crisis. In the absence of Stevenson, our guide to the book is author Louise Welsh, who has written an opera inspired by him. Kidnapped is one Stevenson’s best loved titles. It’s an historical adventure novel set in Scotland after the Jacobite rising of 1745 and tells the adventures of the recently orphaned sixteen year old David Balfour, as h...
Aug 02, 2020•27 min
Scott Turow talks about his first thriller, Presumed Innocent, with James Naughtie and a group of readers. The novel was first published in Britain in 1987 and Scott's books have since sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. The novel was seen as groundbreaking as it spawned a whole generation of legal thrillers. Presumed Innocent is the story of lawyer Rusty Sabich who's investigating the brutal murder of a beautiful and ambitious female colleague, Carolyn Polhemus. In the first twist of ma...
Jul 05, 2020•29 min
Max Porter talks about his highly acclaimed novel Lanny, which was nominated for the Booker Prize 2019, and recently released in paperback. Max is one of the most exciting literary talents to emerge in recent years, with Lanny his follow-up novel to his 2015 debut, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers. Lanny is the story of a family who've recently moved to the countryside and whose village is peopled by the living and the dead. Lanny is a young boy with a gift for friendship, who adores roaming fre...
Jun 07, 2020•28 min
Rebecca Solnit is a leading American essayist and writer. She talks to James Naughtie and a group of invited readers about The Faraway Nearby, her recollections of her mother's advancing Alzheimer's and the power of storytelling. One summer, as their mother was diagnosed with dementia Rebecca's brother decided to harvest all the apricots from their mother’s tree, whether they were ripe or not. He delivered over 100lbs of the fruit to Rebecca and she found herself under deadline to sort them – to...
May 03, 2020•28 min
American novelist Jenny Offill talks to James Naughtie and readers about her novel Dept. of Speculation. The novel is the story of a relationship between two people whose names we never know. They meet by chance - she’s a writer and he's an artist working with sound. They write to each other and the return address on their envelopes is always Dept of Speculation. Egged on by a friend she calls the Philosopher they end up living together in a bug-infested apartment and have a daughter. But eventu...
Apr 06, 2020•28 min
Marian Keyes talks about one of her most popular novels, Rachel's Holiday. Rachel Walsh is an Irish woman in her late 20s living in New York, but whose life is disintegrating around her. She's lost her dead-end job; her boyfriend Luke has broken up with her; her best friend and flat-mate Brigit can't cope with her behaviour any longer – and the reason for all this, which Rachel just can't see, is that she's become addicted to drugs and alcohol. Her 'holiday' is a trip into a rehab clinic in Dubl...
Mar 01, 2020•29 min
Journalist James Meek talks about his novel The People's Act of Love, first published in 2005, a bold and imaginative work based in the wilds of Siberia where a strange and violent group of individuals come together with sinister results. Set in a time of great social upheaval, warfare, and terrorism, and against a stark, lawless Siberia at the end of the Russian Revolution, The People’s Act of Love portrays the fragile coexistence of a beautiful, independent mother raising her son alone, a mega...
Feb 02, 2020•28 min
American author Erin Morgenstern talks about her fantasy novel The Night Circus which has become a cult favourite with readers. James Naughtie presents and an invited group of readers ask the questions. It's the story of a mysterious Victorian travelling circus that only opens at night and is constructed entirely in black and white. Although there are acrobats, fortune-tellers and contortionists Le Cirque des Rêves is no conventional spectacle. Some tents contain clouds, some ice. the circus see...
Jan 05, 2020•29 min
American author Ben Lerner talks about Leaving the Atocha Station, his first novel narrated by a young man living outside his usual experience. Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his relationship to art. Instead of following the dictates of his fellowship, Adam's 'research' becomes a meditation on the possibility of the genuine in the arts and beyond: are his relationships with...
Dec 05, 2019•34 min
To mark Bookclub's 21st birthday Helen Fielding talks about her creation Bridget Jones, with the first novel in the series, Bridget Jones's Diary. Bridget has now become an iconic figure in modern fiction. Bridget Jones started life as a weekly column in the pages of The Independent in 1995, when Fielding worked on the news desk. Refusing to use her own byline, Helen’s column chronicled the life and antics of fictional Bridget Jones as a thirty-something single woman in London trying to make sen...
Nov 03, 2019•29 min
Colson Whitehead talks about his novel The Underground Railroad with James Naughtie and readers The novel is a devastating and imaginative account of a young slave's bid for freedom from a brutal Georgian plantation in the American South. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast among the slaves and as she approaches womanhood is at greater risk of abuse from the owners. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Un...
Oct 08, 2019•27 min
Aminatta Forna discusses her novel The Memory of Love with James Naughtie and a group of readers. The Memory of Love has as its background three decades of unrest and violence in Sierra Leone, Aminatta Forna's father's home country and the one where she mostly grew up. The story deals with two sets of relationships, centering around the University teacher Elias Cole fifty years ago, at the time of unrest, and in the early years of this century after the civil war. In 1969 Elias falls in love at ...
Sep 01, 2019•28 min
Owen Sheers talks about his novel I Saw A Man with James Naughtie and a group of readers at the Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea. After the sudden loss of his wife, Michael Turner moves from Wales to London to start again. Living on a quiet street in Hampstead, he develops a close bond with the Nelson family next door: Josh, Samantha and their two young daughters. The friendship between Michael and the Nelsons at first seems to offer the prospect of healing, and then one Saturday afternoon in June 2...
Aug 04, 2019•31 min
Gail Honeyman talks about her novel Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine which won the 2017 Costa First Novel Award and has been a runaway success since. Gail was inspired to write her debut novel after reading an article in which a young woman described her lonely life. On the outside, her life was a success, with her own flat and a good job but the reality was she often went home on Friday evening and returned to work on Monday morning without speaking to a soul all weekend. Gail created her ow...
Jul 08, 2019•28 min
David Szalay discusses his novel All That Man Is which was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2016. All That Man Is is a meditation of modern man told through the stories of nine men from across Europe, who are all at different stages of their lives. David says the three ages of man was present in his mind as the nine stories fall naturally into youth, middle age and older age. The characters are seemingly unrelated, and their stories are rooted in a contemporary reality, with David present...
Jun 02, 2019•28 min
Louise Doughty talks about her novel Apple Tree Yard, which went on to be a popular BBC television drama. It is the story of Yvonne, a high-flying married scientist, whose personal life is, by turns, erotic and troubled and, eventually, disastrous. Completely out of character, Yvonne has consensual sex with a stranger in the Palace of Westminster. So begins an affair with a man called Mark which in the end leads them both to the dock of the Old Bailey. Much of the book is told through Yvonne’s u...
May 05, 2019•33 min
Richard Holmes talks about The Age of Wonder, his non-fiction account of the Romantic age, as scientific and artistic thinking began to diverge. In the book he describes the scientific ferment that swept through Britain in the late-18th century and tells the stories of the celebrated innovators and their great scientific discoveries: from telescopic sight and the discovery of Uranus to Humphrey Davy's invention of the miner's safety lamp, and from the first balloon flight to African exploration....
Apr 09, 2019•34 min
Simon Mawer talks about Tightrope, an espionage story featuring the enigmatic agent Marian Sutro which is set during World War II and the years into the Cold War. Tightrope opens as Marian returns to England having survived Ravensbruck concentration camp. She had been parachuted into France by the Special Operations Executive and captured by the Germans in Paris. As peace comes Marian finds it impossible to adjust and find a role for herself. Then, enemies become friends, friends become enemies ...
Mar 07, 2019•28 min
Alice Oswald, Radio 4's Poet in Residence, discusses her collection Falling Awake which won the Costa Poetry Prize 2016. Falling Awake explores two of Alice Oswald’s recurring preoccupations - with the natural world, and with the myths of more ancient civilizations. Alice studied Classics at university and on graduation became a gardener. Homer, she says, made her a gardener because in the ancient world, the archaic poets create continuity between human beings and our surroundings. The poems in ...
Feb 03, 2019•30 min
