Bookclub

Donna Leon talks to James Naughtie and a group of readers about the first in her hugely successful crime series set in Venice, Death At La Fenice.The book launched the career of her fictional detective, Commissario Guido Brunetti in the early 1990s, and he is now beloved by readers. Like an Italian Maigret, he's a policeman of integrity. Brunetti also has a fulfilled family life with his intellectual and feminist wife Carla, and their two children, who are trapped in an eternal adolescence as the Brunetti series progresses and the years pass by. The portrait of the family, along with the subtle and vivid picture of Venice, and the enticing descriptions of what Venetians eat, is at the heart of Leon's books, giving a warmth that balances out the darkness of the crimes.The books also give us an insight as to how Italy as a country works. Donna Leon is an American who's lived in Venice for more than twenty years and she describes the corruption, inertia, nepotism and cynicism so sharply we can only think it's authentic. Although the books are translated into twenty languages now, Italian is not one of them. She tells James Naughtie and assembled readers it's because she wishes to remain anonymous in her adopted city.September's Bookclub choice : 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' by Mohsin Hamid. Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

James Naughtie and readers talk to William Fiennes about his memoir The Music Room.The book is his account of growing up in a castle with an epileptic brother. It's an honest yet discrete story of a fascinating family and how they deal with the eldest brother's struggle with epilepsy. In his upbeat moments, Richard brims with tenderness and high spirits, and at his worst he is threatening and even violent. Richard dies of a seizure at forty-one; his life defined by damage done to his brain by his epilepsy. The book is potted with medical histories of epilepsy alongside anecdotes about the film crews, country fairs and conventions that dominated daily life for Fiennes' family in the castle. Twelve thousand visitors passed through the castle every year - giving, he says, new meaning to the phrase 'tidy your room. But the book is also a testament of a family's love for their ill and sometimes difficult son. William talks about his family story and the result is an unforgettable picture of the disordered world that he experiences through his brother, set in an ancient house where the music room of the title is the place where he sought refuge and enjoyed playing as a child.August's Bookclub choice : 'Death at La Fenice' by Donna Leon. Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

James Naughtie and readers talk to American writer Nicole Krauss, shortlisted for this year's Orange Prize.Our chosen novel is her critically acclaimed The History of Love.It's a complex tale of loss - a lost manuscript, lost homelands, characters grieving for lost loved ones. There are four separate narrators who are all drawn to the lost book - also called The History of Love. Leo Gursky is at the end of his life, tapping his radiator each evening to let his neighbour know he's still alive, drawing attention to himself at the local coffee bar. He doesn't want to die on a day when no-one has seen him. As a young man Leo wrote The History of Love in pre-war Poland. Although he doesn't know it, the book also survived, crossing oceans and generations and changing lives.Fourteen-year-old Alma was named after a character in that book, and lives across New York City from Leo. She and her little brother, who thinks he is the Messiah, are recovering from the loss of their father. The starting point for writing the novel was the story of her grandmother, who came to England as a chaperone on the Kindertransport, and lost all her family in the Holocaust. She had fallen in love with a young doctor, whom she had also presumed dead. Forty years later, he wrote to her grandmother from South America. Nicole's History of Love is like a jigsaw, where all the pieces come together at the end - and she talks about how she has no preconceived idea about where the story will end as she begins. Nicole likens it to being a traveller in a foreign city, walking from street to street, finding her way. July's Bookclub choice : 'The Music Room' by William Fiennes. Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

Andrew O'Hagan is a rising star in the literary world. He joins James Naughtie and readers to discuss his novel Be Near Me, the story of Father David, an aesthetic English Catholic priest working in a working class community in Ayrshire.This is a poignant story of a man who doesn't fit in. Father David is trapped by class hatreds, and troubled by sexual feelings which he struggles to keep submerged. He's a character who's almost intent on self destruction, and as the reader follows his story, we can't help but think it's going to end in tragedy.Andrew O'Hagan talks about the challenges of writing such a story in the first person, how inevitably people think it's about himself - and how by creating a protagonist whose side of the story is not quite reliable leads to intrigue in the mind of the reader.Andrew has drawn on the community where he himself grew up - a community ridden by class and religious divide. One of the novel's strongest characters is Father David's housekeeper Mrs Poole who was based on Andrew's mother and colleagues. His mother was a school cleaner and as a child Andrew spent some of his school holidays watching and listening to their conversations as they went about the 'big clean' - preparing the school for the new academic year. The starting point for the book was when Andrew happened to be in a café in Paris and noticed a Catholic priest drinking coffee alone in the corner. Andrew watched as a tear fell down the priest's cheek, and immediately began to wonder what his story was and went home to write it.As always on Bookclub, a group of readers join the author in the discussion and James Naughtie chairs the programme.June's Bookclub choice : 'The History of Love' by Nicole Krauss. Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

Recorded at the Verbal Arts Centre in Londonderry/City of Derry, James Naughtie and readers talk to one of Ireland's finest writers - Jennifer Johnston. Now in her eighties, Jennifer has been called 'The Quiet Woman' of Irish literature. Her distinguished career has spanned more than 40 years and has netted the Whitbread Prize among her many awards. Her books are taught on the Irish school curriculum and in American Universities. The chosen novel for this edition of Bookclub is one of her later ones, The Gingerbread Woman. Like many of her novels, this story deals with personal conflict, as two characters meet by chance one day on a cliff top overlooking Dublin Bay and form an uneasy friendship. Yet the conflict between these two mirrors a bigger question - the conflict between the North and South of Ireland. Jennifer Johnston is a writer who watches and listens. She's best known for her portrayal of different Irelands, notably the group called the Anglo-Irish, who appear in what became known as The Big House novels. More recently she has moved her protagonists out of the countryside and into the affluent suburbs.Jennifer grew up in a theatrical house - her father Denis was the leading playwright of his day and her mother Shelah an actress. Jennifer describes how her literary upbringing has resonated through her writing, and how much she enjoys writing dialogue.As always on Bookclub, a group of readers join the author in the discussion and James Naughtie chairs the programme.May's Bookclub choice : 'Be Near Me' by Andrew O'Hagan. Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

James Naughtie and readers talk to Benjamin Zephaniah, the poet and novelist who's equally popular with both adults and children. Our chosen novel is Refugee Boy, written for young adults. Benjamin is perhaps best known for his performance poetry with a political edge, but he has also written novels for young people. Benjamin is interested in international affairs and travels extensively throughout the developing world. He has visited refugee camps in places like Gaza and Montenegro and in Refugee Boy he borrows from many of the stories he heard, to create a tale that many refugees would recognise.Refugee Boy is the story of Alem, whose mother is Eritrean and father Ethiopian. With both countries at war, his family are neither safe nor wanted in either country. Alem's father brings him to the UK for a better life.Benjamin has said it's hard being a writer who's labelled as 'political' - because he's first and foremost interested in people, not politics. This edition of Bookclub features a group of young adults as well as older readers from the University of the 3rd age, and is chaired by James Naughtie.April's Bookclub choice : 'The Gingerbread Woman' by Jennifer Johnston. Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

James Naughtie and a group of readers talk to journalist Tim Butcher about his bestselling travel book Blood River. When Tim Butcher was appointed the Daily Telegraph's correspondent to South Africa in 2000, he became obsessed with the Democratic Republic of Congo. This vast country dominated a map of Africa on his office wall and he began to plan a journey following in the footsteps of a famous predecessor - Henry Stanley. Stanley, of Dr Livingstone renown, had travelled along the route of the River Congo in 1876-77 whilst Africa correspondent for the same newspaper.Tim Butcher says in Bookclub that he lost all rationality - people who knew the country well told him his proposed trip was suicidal. The DR Congo stretches the same distance as Paris to Moscow and is one of Africa's most dangerous countries. Although it has immense economic resources, the DR Congo has been at the centre of what could be termed Africa's world war, and this has left it in the grip of a humanitarian crisis.Part adventure story, part travelogue and part history, Blood River tells the account of Tim's own journey along the river in 2004. We hear about the hardships and generosity of the people he met, as well as the fear and the practical difficulties of travelling in a country that has been ravaged by war and neglected for so long.A group of readers quiz Tim about his experience, and James Naughtie chairs the programme. March's Bookclub title: Refugee Boy by Benjamin ZephaniahProducer: Dymphna Flynn.

James Naughtie and readers talk to this year's Man Booker prize winner - Howard Jacobson. The chosen book for this edition of Bookclub is the one he says he wants people to read : The Mighty Walzer, first published in 1999.Peculiarly, it is a comic novel about the joy and despair of table tennis. It's also a portrait of a Jewish boyhood in Manchester, showing how the main character - Oliver Walzer - comes to terms with the demands of puberty and his sporting genius; as well as the attentions of his mother, grandmother and assorted aunties. Back in the 1950s Jacobson, like his alter-ego Oliver Walzer, was one of the top 10 junior table tennis players in the country. This is a heavily autobiographical novel from a writer who's has been called 'the master of confessional humour'.As always on Bookclub, a group of readers join the author in the discussion and James Naughtie chairs the programme.February's Bookclub choice : 'Blood River' by Tim Butcher. Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

James Naughtie and readers talk to Sarah Hall about her novel The Carhullan Army, recorded at the Chapter and Verse Literature Festival in Liverpool.Sarah Hall is being tipped as one of the most interesting up and coming novelists of her generation. By the age of thirty-five she had already been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. The chosen book in this month's programme is The Carhullan Army, her tale about a flooded post-apocalyptic Britain, and how a group of women are living on the outside of a harsh new regime. Sarah Hall is preoccupied by the recent crises of the damaging floods of Cumbrian towns and she'll be talking about how she's used these events in her writing - and how her native landscape inspires her. January's Bookclub title: The Mighty Walzer by Howard JacobsonProducer : Dymphna Flynn.

James Naughtie and readers talk to award winning biographer Claire Tomalin about her life of Thomas Hardy - The Time-Torn Man.Claire Tomalin is celebrated for her ability to create an intimacy of her subjects' life, whether it's Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen, Dickens's mistress Nelly Ternan or in this edition of Bookclub, the author and poet Thomas Hardy.Claire reveals a personal relationship with Hardy - with childhood memories of her sister reciting his poem 'Lyonnesse'; and how she snuck into her local library to read Jude the Obscure at fourteen, much to her mother's dismay. Her mother was born just two years after the publication of Jude in 1895, and was aware of how its revolutionary ideas about marriage and its violence had shaken the literary establishment - Bishops had wanted to ban the book .Thomas Hardy was a man full of contradictions. His marriage to his wife Emma disintegrated and even though they lived together they were no longer on speaking terms. Yet on her death he wrote movingly about their early love in the much praised collection "Poems 1912-13." including 'The Voice' - which begins 'Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me...' and which normally makes Claire cry when she reads it.He was known for his bucolic tales of Dorset but loved spending time in London for The Season. He wrote about the breakdown in rural communities but took no political action. Born into rural poverty, his funeral bier was carried by his great contemporaries George Bernard Shaw, AE Housman and Rudyard Kipling. He was a great Victorian novelist who became a great 20th century poet.December's Bookclub choice : 'The Carhullan Army' by Sarah Hall Producer : Dymphna Flynn.