Bookclub

With James Naughtie. Recorded at the BBC at the Edinburgh Festivals, Allan Massie discusses his novel A Question of Loyalties. First published in 1989, the book is widely acclaimed as his finest.The novel engages with all the complexities and ambiguities of loyalty and nationality as it follows a family through the divisions in France during World War II, and the repercussions which last for decades. In the early 1950s Etienne de Balafré strives to find out what happened to his father when the German invasion of 1940 divided the country between collaboration and resistance. Where some might see an accomplice, the author Allan Massie seeks to understand a human being making difficult choices.As always on Bookclub, a group of especially invited readers join in the discussion.October's Bookclub choice : Dirt Music by Tim Winton (2002)Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed Guest : Allan Massie Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

With James Naughtie. Sadie Jones talks about her novel The Outcast which won the Costa First Novel award in 2008.The book is about a boy called Lewis - his childhood and adolescence - as he grows up in the stultifying world of the home counties in the late forties and fifties. It's a tale of drunkenness, violence and a fair amount of sex, set amongst the well-brought-up professional classes. It is also a love story.Sadie says : There's something fascinating about the 50s, the cataclysm of the war and the 60s. We all think about this explosion of freedom, but caught in between it was ten years of breath held and that fascinated me.August's Bookclub : A Question of Loyalties by Allan Massie (1989)Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed Guest : Sadie Jones Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

With James Naughtie. The celebrated American writer Lorrie Moore discusses her short novel Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? In the early nineties, Lorrie Moore was wandering through an art gallery when she came upon a painting with this same intriguing title, depicting two young girls looking at a pair of bandaged frogs. Lorrie Moore bought the painting, and borrowed its name and imagery for her second novel.She says the book is not autobiographical except "in a spiritual way." Her intent was to examine the passion and purity of adolescence and the special quality of girls' friendships in those teenage years.August's Bookclub choice : The Outcast by Sadie Jones (2008).

With James Naughtie. Emma Donoghue discusses her novel Room with an invited group of readers.Donoghue, an Irish writer living in Canada, tells the story of a five-year-old boy, Jack, who has been imprisoned with his mother in a tiny room - 11 feet by 11 feet - for his whole life. Emma was inspired to write Room after reading about European kidnapping cases such as the Fritzls in Austria, and so Jack was born into captivity after his mother was taken by a stranger at the age of 19 and held prisoner in a converted garden shed.Told in Jack's voice as he learns of a world outside his small prison, Room was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010. But Emma says that the premise of the novel is to explore the myths and realities of motherhood and parenting rather than focus on the crime of kidnapping - and one reader tells her how surprised she was find so much humour in the novel. July's Bookclub choice : Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? By Lorrie Moore (1994).

With James Naughtie.Australian novelist Christos Tsiolkas responds to readers' questions about his award-winning debut The Slap. The book generated considerable debate - should you slap a child who's misbehaving, but isn't yours? In this controversial novel Tsiolkas presents an apparently harmless domestic incident from eight very different perspectives and examines how its aftermath reverberates through the lives of everyone who witnesses it happen. He explains how he uses this one event to discuss the realities of contemporary Australian society - its materialism and racial prejudices, and how lives of the immigrants' children are so different from their parents'.June's Bookclub choice is Room by Emma DonoghueProduced by Dymphna Flynn.

With James Naughtie. Celebrated Irish writer John Banville discusses his novel The Sea which won the Man Booker prize in 2005.In The Sea, middle-aged art historian Max Morden loses his wife to cancer and is compelled to go back to the seaside resort where he spent childhood holidays. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time.John Banville talks about the power of revisiting places from childhood, how he wanted to be a painter as a teenager but found he had no talent. He explains how he painstakingly writes his novels over many years, creating sentence after sentence, but in the end he always feels the book is an embarrassment and a failure, and that he must move on to the next novel. May's Bookclub choice is The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas.Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

With James Naughtie.Naomi Alderman, listed as one of Granta's Best Young Novelists 2013, responds to readers' questions about her first novel Disobedience.Alderman, herself a product of London's Jewish community, tells the story of Ronit, a young woman who's escaped her Orthodox upbringing for independence in New York. Ronit is forced to face her past when she returns home after her father, a pre-eminent Rabbi, dies. Disobedience won the 2006 Orange Award for New Writers.Producer: Dymphna FlynnApril's Bookclub choice : The Sea (2005) by John Banville.

With James Naughtie.Khaled Hosseini talks about his global bestselling novel, The Kite Runner with a group of invited readers.The book describes how the happiness of an afternoon's kite flying competition in late-1970s Kabul is broken when young Amir fails to help his best friend Hassan avoid a terrible incident. The effects on the duo's friendship are devastating. Over 20 years later, Amir returns to Afghanistan from America, determined to redeem himself.Khaled Hosseini explains the unequal relationship between the two boys that lies at the heart of the novel, and how the reader has a sense of dread and impending catastrophe as the story develops. He says that although the West has a view of Afghanistan as a violent culture, he remembers that for most of the twentieth century, Afghanistan was a peaceful place, and that the West has exoticised Afghans as being 'warrior' like.March's Bookclub choice : Disobedience (2006) by Naomi AldermanProducer : Dymphna Flynn.

With James Naughtie.Donna Tartt discusses her cult debut novel The Secret History, first published in 1992."I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell."In a rare visit to the UK, Donna Tartt discusses The Secret History, which she has described as a 'why dunnit'. It's a murder mystery about a group of classic students at a privileged New England college; but from page one she discloses that the friends have murdered one of their number, Bunny. A literary thriller with allusions to Euripides and Dostoevsky, The Secret History was an overnight sensation and has gripped readers for decades.As always in Bookclub, a group of invited readers join in the discussion too.February's Bookclub choice : The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

With James Naughtie.Lee Child discusses the first in his hugely successful Jack Reacher series, Killing Floor, and published in 1997. He's now gone on to write 18 books featuring his grizzled action hero, a former military policeman of no fixed abode.Lee reflects on the genesis of Jack Reacher, who appeared when he decided to write fiction after being made redundant by Granada TV in 1995. Lee says that he and Jack were on a parallel journey in Killing Floor, as Jack has just left the military and is out in an unfamiliar world at the same time as Lee. As he looks back, he can see his own raw emotion in Jack, who in Killing Floor is a character full of fury. But by book seven, the frustration had abated and Jack's anger had calmed down.The books have gone on to sell over 60 million copies worldwide.As always on Bookclub, a group of invited readers join in the discussion.January's Bookclub choice : The Secret History by Donna TarttProducer : Dymphna Flynn.