:00:11. > :00:14.Tonight, on a Book Review Show special, Christmas has come early,
:00:14. > :00:19.we are helping you to pick the best books to put under the tree this
:00:19. > :00:23.year. With just 21 shopping days until
:00:23. > :00:31.Chris marks we have asked each of our panelists to pick their top
:00:31. > :00:36.tips for boorbist presents this year. Kate Mosse enthuses about
:00:36. > :00:46.Caitlin Moran's How To Be A Woman, and Ian Rankin's crime thriller,
:00:46. > :00:46.
:00:46. > :00:51.The Impossible Dead. Marcel Theroux argues the case for Matthew
:00:51. > :01:01.Hollis's Fransolent. Mark Ravenhill champions shoe selected stories by
:01:01. > :01:04.
:01:04. > :01:11.Alice Munro, and Factory Girls, and Sophie Hannah battles for Why Be
:01:11. > :01:14.Happy When You Could Be Normal, and the very, very bad Sex Awards. In
:01:15. > :01:23.the week of his death, we know the scene for which Ken Russell will
:01:23. > :01:33.always be remembered. Here for a premature Christmas the
:01:33. > :01:38.
:01:38. > :01:42.four crickets you dream of meeting under the mistltoe, Kate Mosse,
:01:42. > :01:47.Mark Ravenhill, Sophie Hannah and Marcel Theroux.
:01:47. > :01:50.This week each of my guest has chosen two books, one fiction, one
:01:50. > :01:56.non-fiction, that they recommend you buy someone for Christmas. Each
:01:56. > :01:59.has two minutes to argue their case. First up is Kate. Kate's first
:01:59. > :02:03.choice is Caitlin Moran's How To Be A Woman, a bomb bastic memoir that
:02:03. > :02:07.makes sure there is fun in feminism. It is the funnyiest book I have
:02:07. > :02:13.read this year, possibly one of the funnyiest books I have ever read.
:02:13. > :02:17.It is part rant, part philosophy, part feminism, part memoir. This is
:02:17. > :02:20.not a feminist manifesto, or a call to arms. This is absolutely an act
:02:20. > :02:24.of personal enlightenment. And saying, these are the things that I
:02:24. > :02:30.thought, this is why I call myself a feminist, you too should call
:02:30. > :02:34.yourself a feminist, I will tell you why I think it is. This is the
:02:34. > :02:38.anti-Cosmo, it is the anti-women's magazines, this sort of woman or
:02:38. > :02:42.that sort of woman. This woman says you can be any woman you want to be,
:02:42. > :02:46.you know what, it is fun. Trust me, the minute you do that and lie on
:02:46. > :02:50.the floor and look up at the starsa decide the person you want to be,
:02:50. > :02:53.your life will change. Anybody who gets this book will laugh all the
:02:53. > :02:57.way through Christmas and Boxing Day, they will feel liberated to
:02:57. > :03:01.drink and eat as much as they want. When they shut it they will think I
:03:01. > :03:05.will give that to another ten people I know. Kate's choice of
:03:05. > :03:12.fiction is Ian Rankin The Impossible Dead. His second crime
:03:12. > :03:18.drama, featuring DCI Malcolm Fox, a very different rozzer to Rebus.
:03:18. > :03:21.Rankin is one of the most important British crime writers, it not, the
:03:21. > :03:25.most important. Many people have not been able to get into him,
:03:25. > :03:29.because he wrote so many Rebus novels, this is just the second in
:03:30. > :03:34.a new series. I want to say to anybody, who has always wanted to
:03:34. > :03:38.read Ian Rankin, but put off by the fact there is 25 Rebus novels.
:03:38. > :03:43.These new ones with Malcolm Fox are great. They work, why, because they
:03:43. > :03:47.are proper plotting, characters, properly clever. They also have
:03:47. > :03:50.what all great crime writing has, which is a proper sense of social
:03:50. > :03:55.context, and really showing a mirror, holding a mirror up to the
:03:55. > :03:58.world. There are all sorts of things about what it means to be a
:03:58. > :04:02.carer and juggling the personalal life and professional lie. These
:04:02. > :04:06.people are all men, that is refreshing foo. It is absolutely a
:04:06. > :04:10.crime novel you can give to anyone who likes crime, it won't offend
:04:10. > :04:17.anyone, but when you shut the book you will think that was a proper
:04:17. > :04:23.old fashioned puzzle. Caitlin Moran, Sophie did you read it and want to
:04:23. > :04:26.give it to ten people and shout hurray? It is a brilliant and
:04:26. > :04:30.hilarious book. You can't imagine that any woman with a sense of
:04:30. > :04:36.humour wouldn't love it and wouldn't be able to relate to it
:04:36. > :04:40.completely. It is just hilarious. It is riven with humour, but makes
:04:40. > :04:44.some incredibly serious points. I thought one of the best things was
:04:44. > :04:49.when talking about a 14-year-old boy and girl saying, on-line porn,
:04:49. > :04:54.why can't it be lovely, it is so scary for both girls and boys at
:04:54. > :04:58.that age, let's have more of it, but let's make it consensual, great
:04:58. > :05:04.sex. Do you think it was worth reading? I would regift it, I'm
:05:05. > :05:09.afraid! After about 25 pages, because I think Caitlin Moran is a
:05:09. > :05:14.very attractive person and I love her columns. But that voice, after
:05:14. > :05:18.about 25 pages it really pulls. She has developed this thing, a nerdy
:05:18. > :05:23.teenager, she's a woman, as the title of the book says. This nerdy
:05:23. > :05:28.teenager with a snake bite in one hand and menthol cigarette in the
:05:28. > :05:31.other, just ground me down, I found it hard to get through. I'm with
:05:31. > :05:34.Mark, I found the serious sections more moving, when she was writing
:05:34. > :05:41.about her decision to have an abortion, when she's writing about
:05:41. > :05:44.breaking up with a boyfriend. These kinds of things. I felt she had six
:05:44. > :05:48.espressos and tried to write jokes about her underwear. It is funny,
:05:48. > :05:52.what is great about the book is her sharing stuff that one would be
:05:52. > :05:56.embarrassed to share. That is liberating. There is a great line
:05:56. > :06:02.about talking about overweight, saying we were the elephants in the
:06:02. > :06:05.room. When you are fat when you are not shaped like a human. Did'nt you
:06:05. > :06:09.think the threading of this idea, particularly for younger
:06:09. > :06:12.generations, the idea that the serious stuff is threaded through
:06:12. > :06:16.with all this humour. I think in terms of talking about abortion, it
:06:16. > :06:21.is one of the best and most moving things I have read ever about
:06:21. > :06:27.abortion. That is true, I'm obviously not its demographic. I
:06:27. > :06:34.thought it was feminism as seen through Sunday Times style section,
:06:34. > :06:41.Mulberry handbags and Jimmy choos. Jo there were developments of the
:06:41. > :06:47.last 30 years, and if we went back to 1970 most of the problems would
:06:47. > :06:51.be solved, it is a peculiar idea of feminism. There is ladishness to it,
:06:51. > :06:55.I'm too old for it. I read it because my 21-year-old daughter
:06:55. > :06:59.recommended it to me. Although you say it looks slightly regressive to
:06:59. > :07:03.cancel it all out, it is more about a different way of looking at some
:07:03. > :07:08.of the issues that have not been solved. I didn't find the voice
:07:08. > :07:13.greated at all -- grated at all. I loved that voice, she came across
:07:13. > :07:20.as such a lovely, funny person. does in her columns too.
:07:20. > :07:24.message comes across strongly. is the message? Being a feminist
:07:24. > :07:30.involves asking the question, would the men be doing this, are the men
:07:30. > :07:36.doing this? I thought feminism was just about discovering you are a
:07:36. > :07:39.human being. It is not about saying you can have all kinds of ways, it
:07:39. > :07:44.is about personal self-respect and having a reasonable deal in the
:07:44. > :07:48.world. She has these ground rules. How do you judge whether you're
:07:48. > :07:54.being a feminist and whether you are behaving in an appropriate way,
:07:54. > :07:58.she says the question is to ask "are the men doing this?", I
:07:58. > :08:04.thought when I was having my mascara put on in the make-up room,
:08:04. > :08:09.I thought are the men having mascara. We asked, we were denied.
:08:09. > :08:13.Even just the pubgt situation annoyed me, if I had a pound for
:08:13. > :08:19.every -- pubgt situation marks annoyed me, if I had a pound for
:08:19. > :08:23.every one I would be a rich man. She loves a list, it was like
:08:23. > :08:26.reading an awful teenage diary. Final word? I think there is an
:08:26. > :08:30.element of age, I think I'm probably too old for this, maybe
:08:30. > :08:35.you are too. I think what it is, this is individual feminism, but it
:08:35. > :08:39.is also a feminism that is refusing to be defined about what other
:08:39. > :08:46.people said feminism should have been. That is incredibly important
:08:46. > :08:51.in terms of liberating girls and boys. We move on to Ian Rankin, did
:08:51. > :09:01.you find with the book that he absolutely had got his mojo back?
:09:01. > :09:02.
:09:02. > :09:05.wasn't aware of him ever having lost it, I have to say. I thought
:09:05. > :09:09.it was a brilliant book, what I particularly loved was the absolute
:09:09. > :09:13.focus on story. You can tell, all the way through, that the author
:09:13. > :09:16.just loves telling a good story, that is his top priority, and I
:09:16. > :09:20.sometimes get slightly tired of reading, I read an awful lot of
:09:21. > :09:26.crime novel, often I get the sense that telling a brilliant story is
:09:26. > :09:31.not the writer's main priority. Here is absolutely was. As you say,
:09:31. > :09:41.it is immaculately plotted, it races along. The characters have
:09:41. > :09:44.
:09:44. > :09:49.real depth, it is so sort ofers and economical in terms of the prose, -
:09:49. > :09:53.- terse and economical in terms of the prose. It is a true story, the
:09:53. > :09:56.murder, it felt to me that Ian Rankin had embraced this, and
:09:56. > :10:00.thought I will put everything I have into it? It goes like a train.
:10:00. > :10:05.You don't know until the last ten pages, which is everything you ask
:10:05. > :10:09.in a thriller. I really enjoyed it, in that respect. It was my first
:10:09. > :10:14.experience of Ian Rankin. Was it? was glad I could come into a second
:10:14. > :10:21.novel in a series and not feel I had all this baggage. It was
:10:22. > :10:28.refreshing that the detective was a, he wasn't a maverick, he was a wuss
:10:28. > :10:33.and shying away from conflict, it was a relief to dispense from the
:10:33. > :10:37.cliches. There is real wit and sharpness about it. It is my first-
:10:37. > :10:42.ever Ian Rankin book, the first time I have ever tasted the mojo.
:10:42. > :10:47.And it was absolutely fantastic, he's so topical on the money with
:10:47. > :10:50.SNP politics, and just feels so much as though it is right in the
:10:50. > :10:55.moment. Just the lightest of touches he can establish a
:10:55. > :10:59.character and situation. Just as a writer you are rereading this and
:10:59. > :11:06.say how can you so quickly establish a character. The dialogue
:11:06. > :11:11.is fast, the short sentences, the genre pleasure, he says do you
:11:11. > :11:16.think we should speak to the former psyche cotic Scottish terrorists,
:11:16. > :11:20.does he have anything to do it, of course he does. He's part of
:11:20. > :11:24.investigating other policemen and the mistrust and disDane they are
:11:24. > :11:28.held in, and taunted by the other policemen. It is fascinating.
:11:28. > :11:34.had all these different sets of cops, he managed to delinate them
:11:34. > :11:38.incredibly well very quickly, you got a clear sense of character.
:11:39. > :11:44.What is so clever about it, there are essentially two parallel
:11:44. > :11:47.stories, the nature of terrorism, how in the mid-1980s many of us
:11:47. > :11:50.lived in that sort of way, now we are in a different generation of
:11:50. > :11:55.terrorism. It is so light, there is no, let's pretend we were in the
:11:55. > :11:58.same place as then, it means you come away thinking the patterns go
:11:59. > :12:03.around and comes around. It does end with two guys chasing each
:12:03. > :12:08.other in a forest. Which is standard. As elaborate as it is,
:12:08. > :12:15.the pay-off ends up there. Any way, one for the stocking I think. Next
:12:15. > :12:24.up to get into the Santa spirit, is a different selection, a biography
:12:24. > :12:30.of the war poet, Edward Thomas, and a 700-page graphic novel. The non-
:12:30. > :12:34.fiction is Now All Roads Lead To France, a touching biography of
:12:34. > :12:38.Edward Thomas. It is not the first biography but the best. It focuses
:12:38. > :12:41.on the last five years of his life. He's an interesting character, he
:12:41. > :12:45.came to his poetic vocation late. It is about the crisis he went
:12:45. > :12:49.through that leads to him finally discovering what he's supposed to
:12:49. > :12:54.be in life, which is a poet. It is about the world of 100 years ago.
:12:54. > :12:57.It starts around 1911, it is a world that is vanishing, but it is
:12:57. > :13:02.the world that our grandparents and great-grand parents knew. It has a
:13:02. > :13:08.trace of fame yart about it, at the heart of it is a really --
:13:08. > :13:14.familiarity about it, and at the heart of it is about creativity
:13:14. > :13:19.ruining your life. He's a miserable sod throughout the book, not a
:13:19. > :13:22.sympathetic character. The catalyst of his become ago poet is his
:13:22. > :13:25.meeting with Robert Frost, coming to London, part of the literary
:13:26. > :13:30.world, their friendship uncorks something in him and it comes to
:13:30. > :13:33.right. He gives a good account about how poetry happens, a very
:13:33. > :13:38.plausible description of what a poet does and how a people comes
:13:39. > :13:42.into being. It is a timely book, we are coming up to 1914, the
:13:42. > :13:46.centinary of 1914, and thinking about the First World War, this is
:13:46. > :13:49.one of those books that sets the scene for that period of
:13:49. > :13:53.remembrance. For his fiction choice, he hasic
:13:53. > :14:03.abouted Habibi, a rich and summous graphic novel by Craig Thompson.
:14:03. > :14:05.
:14:05. > :14:11.What I liked about the book. It is graphic Noel that tells the story
:14:11. > :14:17.of two orphans, it is a rip-roaring read t has a lot of sex in it. It
:14:17. > :14:24.isn't for children, it is graphic, it is for adults. It is set in an
:14:24. > :14:34.Arabian Knights world of desspottic Sultans and uniques and hare
:14:34. > :14:36.
:14:36. > :14:40.recommends, it is also -- There is Arabic kal lig fee, there is an
:14:40. > :14:50.extraordinary lovely object out of this, which would be a lovely thing
:14:50. > :14:50.
:14:50. > :14:55.to find under the Christmas tree. The he had war Thomas first. I
:14:56. > :15:01.wonder -- The Edward Thomas first, I wonder if Richard Thomas set out
:15:01. > :15:05.to write this, and thought how difficult a person Edward Thomas
:15:05. > :15:12.was, it starts as a story of someone who becomes a poet from
:15:12. > :15:17.being a cricket, then there was all this dark stuff about him? The film
:15:17. > :15:21.was so suck sibgt in why the book works. It was beautifully written.
:15:21. > :15:25.There is the life and the expression of poetry and how
:15:25. > :15:30.creativity works, the destrubgtiveness of being poisoned
:15:30. > :15:40.by creativity with no outlet. But I wish I hadn't read it. I have
:15:40. > :15:41.
:15:41. > :15:44.always very much enjoyed his poetry. I hate to look at art through the
:15:44. > :15:48.prisism of his life, they are not the same thing, the man, the woman,
:15:48. > :15:52.the art. I have always, there is always a filter around the First
:15:52. > :15:57.World War, we all know a lot about it, it is one of those periods of
:15:58. > :16:01.history that we know. He's not just a miserable old sod, he's self-
:16:01. > :16:05.obsessed, preoccupied all the time, he leads his wife, children,
:16:05. > :16:11.friends a merry dance, and there is a horrible sort of mythology of the
:16:11. > :16:15.great man of letters, when he isn't even one. So I found it very
:16:15. > :16:22.interesting as a biography, or all sorts of reasons, but I wish I
:16:22. > :16:27.hadn't read it. Ted Hughes talks about him being the father of us
:16:27. > :16:32.all? God help us. His wife wrote a memoir of their relationship, which
:16:32. > :16:36.is an interesting work. I'm not claiming anything exemplary about
:16:36. > :16:39.their relationship. They got married very young and it was a
:16:39. > :16:43.difficult relationship. He was so cruel to her. The idea of him
:16:43. > :16:50.blossoming out into a poet, before he gets to that point, the one time
:16:50. > :16:53.he actually turns back on his critque, is on pound. He says Ezra
:16:53. > :16:58.Pound is this marvellous as new writing, then he reverses his
:16:58. > :17:03.decision when he's facing other poets' wrath. I thought that was an
:17:03. > :17:06.interesting point in the book, it was almost when he stopped being
:17:06. > :17:11.the critic, when he realised it wasn't for him. I found all the
:17:11. > :17:15.gossip about the poetry world, all these people who you hear as
:17:15. > :17:20.legendary games in poetry, you read their work, suddenly -- names in
:17:20. > :17:25.poetry, you read their work, and suddenly they are ordinary human
:17:25. > :17:30.beings with ambition and squabbling. I agree with Kate, Edward Thomas
:17:30. > :17:35.comes across as such an awful person. I'm usually sympathetic to
:17:35. > :17:41.unsympathetic characters, I love them, he was a peculiar brand of
:17:41. > :17:44.self-absorption. Spiteful. It says his children sat in silence at the
:17:44. > :17:48.dinner table every night because they were so scared of saying
:17:48. > :17:51.something that would bring on one of his bad moods. I thought I'm not
:17:51. > :17:57.interested any more. If your children were that scared of you,
:17:57. > :18:02.then I don't care how good your peoples are, I'm not interested.
:18:02. > :18:08.Poems are, I'm nod interested. makes the book powerful is we know
:18:08. > :18:13.where it is heading, it is going to the war. This man gets obsessed by
:18:13. > :18:17.these little battles between poets and the daily grind of cruelty to
:18:17. > :18:21.his family and hardship of living. We know we are heading towards the
:18:21. > :18:26.First World War, when we get there he can't quite say why he's going
:18:26. > :18:29.or fighting. He has a fatalistic sense of why are we doing this?
:18:29. > :18:32.thing we haven't mentioned is his love for the landscape, and what he
:18:32. > :18:39.feels about nature, it is very profound. I feel I should say a
:18:39. > :18:43.word in his defence. I think one of the things that makes him so
:18:43. > :18:48.prickley, is because he hates himself for the way he behaves
:18:48. > :18:53.towards his family.'S on the bread line,'s earning beans and he can't
:18:53. > :18:56.feed his family. He finds -- he's on the breadline and earning beans
:18:56. > :19:01.and he can't feed his family. not just his family, there is one
:19:01. > :19:04.bit that resonates, it describes a friend of his builds him a house to
:19:04. > :19:09.live in from all the best new materials, his comment is the house
:19:09. > :19:13.is full of old griefs, full of new griefs to come. I just thought what
:19:13. > :19:21.an ungrateful get. There is something ruthless about an artist,
:19:21. > :19:26.any artist. I think maybe we are a bit schemeish because we recognise
:19:26. > :19:33.something in our glrb squemish because we recognise it. Let's talk
:19:33. > :19:41.about Habibi, it is the Koran, Old Testament, it is sex, saidism,
:19:41. > :19:43.isn't it? I thought it was great. I hadn't appreciated how much
:19:43. > :19:50.connection there was between the Koran and the Old Testament, and
:19:50. > :19:55.how many of those stories from the two Bibles cross over. Then it
:19:55. > :20:00.takes on this huge epic journal year, it is graphic novel, all
:20:00. > :20:05.about ink and symbols, it has this weird sexuality in the centre of it
:20:05. > :20:10.that is really quite disturbing.S had attitude to sex and sexuality
:20:10. > :20:12.is very strange, that drew me through the book. He grew up in an
:20:12. > :20:20.evangelical household, there is some distaste or something about
:20:20. > :20:24.the sex in the book. I found it difficult to navigate it through,
:20:24. > :20:28.you had to go back, you were trying to work out was she telling the
:20:28. > :20:31.story to the little boy. That was good, you looked at all the
:20:31. > :20:41.beautiful caligraphy. That was so beautiful about the book, the
:20:41. > :20:42.
:20:42. > :20:47.stories within stories, the reminding of the be a -- be a
:20:47. > :20:50.hammic faiths have. It is beautiful and interesting about the Old
:20:50. > :20:54.Testament and Koran faith, but I was appalled. This book starts with
:20:54. > :20:57.the rape of a nine-year-old. Although we are saying this sex is
:20:57. > :21:02.distasteful, I think it is a bit more than that. If this was a book
:21:02. > :21:08.that had been discovered, in the deserts, in 1600, I would possibly
:21:08. > :21:14.find it less worrying than I do. This is written by a young man, now.
:21:14. > :21:19.All the way through the book, it is a series of, the lead child, as she
:21:19. > :21:24.is, being raped over and over again. It is not sex, it is rape. For me
:21:24. > :21:28.it was too much. What did you think about that? My views on this book
:21:28. > :21:33.should probably be completely discounted, because I hated it. But,
:21:33. > :21:40.I'm sure it is brilliant, I have a problem with the graphic Noel as a
:21:40. > :21:46.form, eventhough I abs -- graphic novel as a form. Eventhough I love
:21:46. > :21:52.novels, as soon as I saw Habibi I thought, oh no, I just hated it. I
:21:52. > :21:57.don't know how much was that this specific graphic novel. The great
:21:57. > :22:01.thing about this as a graphic novel is he is able to move through
:22:01. > :22:06.different forms of story telling, some of the pictures look like
:22:06. > :22:09.something out of a Disney film and he moves through into script.
:22:09. > :22:13.is the problem, it is seductive. The idea that some how, because it
:22:13. > :22:18.is very beautiful and very clever, all of those things I agree with, I
:22:18. > :22:24.did actually, in a weird way, enjoy touching it and looking at it in
:22:24. > :22:26.all sorts of ways. But in the end it is still images of a child being
:22:26. > :22:31.raped repeatedly through this entire book. I couldn't get past
:22:31. > :22:38.that to appreciate the beauty, I'm sorry to say. You will be getting
:22:38. > :22:42.it. The sex is disquieting. It is meant to be. Next to poke their
:22:42. > :22:46.head above the parapet is Mark, with a selection of short stories
:22:46. > :22:54.that almost qualifies as new, and unChristmassy account of working
:22:54. > :22:58.life in China. Mark's non-fiction choice is
:22:58. > :23:02.Factory Girls by Leslie T Chang, knows narrative of the largest
:23:02. > :23:07.migration in history, is an explanation of what motivates the
:23:07. > :23:10.largely female work force. expect the book to be an expose say
:23:10. > :23:15.of the terrible conditions, and the conditions are very, very tu. But
:23:15. > :23:20.it is also a tribute to their energy, and their determination.
:23:21. > :23:25.What Chang manages to do is really personalise it, she is of Chinese
:23:25. > :23:34.origin herself. She has really personal connections with the sbt
:23:34. > :23:38.matter, but she -- Subject matter, but she follows it into the
:23:38. > :23:42.factories. When you read the book you get projected back to yourself,
:23:42. > :23:47.the past, you get a sense of what it must have been like to be part
:23:48. > :23:52.of the Industrial Revolution in England in the 1840s, that sense of
:23:52. > :23:58.phenomenal social change. The most popular book to date about the
:23:58. > :24:04.Chinese situation has been Wild Swans, that very much focused on
:24:04. > :24:07.events of 40, 50 years ago. For any reader, this is a really great book
:24:07. > :24:11.to get a sense of where China is now, and where it might be going.
:24:11. > :24:21.In the fiction catagory, mark has chosen New Selected Stories by
:24:21. > :24:26.
:24:26. > :24:32.Alice Munro, a compendum of some of the author's finest work. What is
:24:32. > :24:38.great in a few pages she manages to capture 30 years. There is huge
:24:38. > :24:42.momentous changes in individual's lives, often women, often set in
:24:42. > :24:47.her native character. There is as much incident as a Thomas Hard
:24:47. > :24:50.Times novel, but written with the - - Thomas Hardy novel, but written
:24:50. > :24:56.with the lightest of touches. They are ordinary situations, how we
:24:56. > :25:00.feel about being married, being a parent, our relationship to the
:25:00. > :25:05.past. There is something about the sense of humour, there is a slight
:25:05. > :25:09.sense of her characters being pioneers. I think there is
:25:09. > :25:15.somewhere in there a Canadian sensability. I don't think that
:25:15. > :25:19.could have been written by an English or Scottish writer.
:25:19. > :25:24.This is some of her best known stories, do you think reading them
:25:24. > :25:28.again, did it reinforce her reputation as a famous short story-
:25:28. > :25:33.teller? I think she's one of the best writers on the planet right
:25:34. > :25:37.now, this collection is amazing. She has a buy onic level of
:25:37. > :25:40.observation. She's -- bionic level of observation. She's hearing and
:25:41. > :25:44.seeing things that other writers don't get. Whether it is nature or
:25:44. > :25:48.a glance between lovers, or something in a marriage or
:25:48. > :25:51.relationship, as you read the story you see it with an incredibly
:25:51. > :25:55.enhanced level of intensity, that stays with you some what when you
:25:55. > :26:01.put the book down. She has an exceptional gift. It is a gift for
:26:01. > :26:04.the short story, but is the short story itself satisfying, she brings
:26:04. > :26:08.these wonderful characters to life and they are gone in a puff of
:26:08. > :26:12.smoke? That is always my feeling about short stories. That I often
:26:12. > :26:18.feel a little bit like a need another piece of toast, I'm not
:26:18. > :26:21.quite full. I think she's equisite. It is the literature of observation,
:26:21. > :26:27.it is the literature of the moment, rather than the overblown, purple
:26:27. > :26:30.prose, that would be all over the place. I think that what makes her
:26:30. > :26:40.different from any of the other short story writers, of course, is
:26:40. > :26:50.she had sequences of characters, ages -- ageing of characters, there
:26:50. > :26:50.
:26:50. > :30:05.Apology for the loss of subtitles for 195 seconds
:30:05. > :30:10.They were liberating themselves in a way. She had -- she said she had
:30:10. > :30:19.read more about the bottom of Oprah Winfrey than about China! I was
:30:19. > :30:23.really pleased to have read it. There is no sense at... You are
:30:23. > :30:29.right that this is liberating and actually these young women, I
:30:29. > :30:35.thought particular the chaps in the village and that was all very good.
:30:35. > :30:44.They have not got more power. That is precisely it. For me, the most
:30:44. > :30:47.poignant moment... It is about their possessions. Depending on
:30:47. > :30:53.their job status, their power relationships within the family
:30:53. > :31:01.changes. But still, that counts for a lot. It has one of the characters
:31:01. > :31:06.is... Hang on. Let her finish at point! I found it an incredibly
:31:06. > :31:10.gripping book and I could not put it down. I thought it was so
:31:10. > :31:14.interesting about the relationship between women's career aspirations
:31:14. > :31:17.and their family relationships and how those things work together.
:31:17. > :31:24.There are so few books about women's attitudes to their working
:31:24. > :31:29.lives. Even in the West. brilliant thing about this was that
:31:29. > :31:33.it was life-affirming in the way they helped each other. Some of the
:31:33. > :31:37.girls didn't but many did. What we don't see are these terribly
:31:37. > :31:42.downtrodden slaves, which we thought we were going to see. But
:31:42. > :31:47.things are changing and you get the sense of massive upheaval. Let's
:31:47. > :31:57.move on to your choice, as Sophie. One from the celebrated crime
:31:57. > :31:59.
:31:59. > :32:04.writer and the real story behind Oranges Are Not the Only fruit.
:32:04. > :32:09.This non-fiction choice details and upbringing in Accrington and a
:32:09. > :32:15.child who had lived in the shadows of her mother. The title is a
:32:15. > :32:20.direct quote from Mrs Winterson, Janet's adoptive mother, when she
:32:20. > :32:25.tells her she is in love with a girl and she tries to explain to
:32:25. > :32:33.her that it makes her happy being in a relationship with this girl.
:32:33. > :32:37.Why be happy when you could be normal? It is a brilliant title.
:32:38. > :32:43.And debris and moment in the book, because at that point, a new kind
:32:43. > :32:48.of realise, well, this is what we are dealing with. I don't buy into
:32:48. > :32:51.this idea that if you write about upsetting things then you have
:32:52. > :32:55.written a depressing book. If you have written brilliantly about
:32:55. > :33:00.difficult, traumatic experiences, that is uplifting. To see somebody
:33:00. > :33:10.can go through such a horrendous experience and come out not only
:33:10. > :33:15.
:33:15. > :33:25.intact, but also as brilliant a Sophie's fiction choice is Faithful
:33:25. > :33:25.
:33:25. > :33:30.Place by Tana French. The police detective Frank, is told by the
:33:30. > :33:33.police that the suitcase of his girlfriend has been found of 20
:33:33. > :33:37.years ago, they were supposed to elope together, and she disappeared
:33:37. > :33:40.and nobody saw her again. Frank is determined to get to the bottom of
:33:40. > :33:45.this and find out what happened to the love of his life who
:33:46. > :33:50.disappeared 20 years ago. My main interest in Tana French's writing
:33:50. > :33:54.and this book is the human story. Her characters are so real. I think
:33:54. > :33:59.thatth's because she gets right into their minds. She writes about
:33:59. > :34:02.character -- I think that's because she gets right into their mind, you
:34:02. > :34:06.know what they are thinking, even when they are having unworthy
:34:06. > :34:10.thoughts, even if they are being selfish and a bit grotty and not
:34:10. > :34:15.doing the noble thing, you are right there inside their heads with
:34:15. > :34:20.them. It is as well written as any Booker Prize winner. And as
:34:20. > :34:25.brilliantly plotted as any best- selling commercial novel. It is
:34:25. > :34:31.virtually a perfect book, in my view.
:34:31. > :34:39.Mark, for you is a virtually a perfect book? On the re-gift pile
:34:39. > :34:45.again. For me, the central character was PC Plodding, really.
:34:45. > :34:48.I'm not good with crime models, maybe a bit butch for me. These
:34:48. > :34:51.middleaged men with troubled family lives, plodding through a plot, I
:34:51. > :34:55.find dull. I thought the writing a novel about how much Dublin,
:34:55. > :35:03.Ireland has changed, was really a great thing. I wanted that theme to
:35:03. > :35:07.have room to breathe. I felt it was trapped by genre and even the
:35:07. > :35:13.tropes of genre writing. Very much like Ian Rankin's book was set in
:35:13. > :35:17.Scotland, the Dublin of this was very well realised? I have never
:35:17. > :35:21.read Tana French because the jacket it had made me think it was
:35:21. > :35:25.extremely violent and not for me. I think it is a superbly written book.
:35:25. > :35:30.I entirely agree, there is the unusual combination of a very well
:35:30. > :35:36.put together story, but there is also this incredible sense of place,
:35:36. > :35:40.and outstanding dialogue, I would say. The sense of poor Dublin. For
:35:40. > :35:44.me, what made it work particularly was, oddly with the books we have
:35:44. > :35:47.in this programme, it was how do you get out of a life that you
:35:47. > :35:53.don't want to live. How do you get away from the violence that is
:35:53. > :35:56.endemic and all around you? How do you carve yourself a tiny bit of
:35:56. > :36:03.space? Almost like The Facts Of Love, and I thought this was, for
:36:03. > :36:10.me I went and bought her other books because I wanted to read them.
:36:10. > :36:13.I don't think it is a Booker Prize winner, but it is exceptionally
:36:13. > :36:18.good dialogue. You had read Ian Rankin and converted to crime
:36:19. > :36:23.novels, did this do it? I found myself shouting out "he's behind
:36:23. > :36:29.you" from page 40, it was obvious who done it. For 300 pages you are
:36:29. > :36:34.thinking why on earth. To me it was bizarrely, badly-plodded, it was
:36:34. > :36:44.obvious who the killer was. I have to disagree with that. I had no
:36:44. > :36:50.clue who the killer was. Don't say who it is? I won't, absolutely not.
:36:50. > :36:54.I'm not the Grinch! I think it is interesting, the fact that you say
:36:55. > :36:59.you don't read a lot of crime. I think if you read as much crime as
:36:59. > :37:07.I do, you would know that Frank, the central character in this, he's
:37:07. > :37:12.not like all the other cops. He's a maverick hard-drinking cop divorced.
:37:12. > :37:20.Seeing his children on the weekends. He's fighting to get back on the
:37:20. > :37:24.case, I recognise all the cliches. You are looking at the CV points,
:37:24. > :37:29.you are right inside his mind, I promise you, he is far more
:37:29. > :37:34.lovingly described and fleshed out and psychalogically complex than
:37:34. > :37:39.almost any detective I have read. Led's move on to the second choice
:37:39. > :37:43.-- let's move on to the second choice, Jeanette Winterson 's, what
:37:43. > :37:47.Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit was to fiction, this is the story of
:37:48. > :37:54.Jeanette Winterson, I found it a deeply, deeply sad book. I found it
:37:54. > :37:58.a very sad book, but a superb book. It is neither a memoir or biography.
:37:58. > :38:03.For me, it was actually, how do you, the same point, working-class men
:38:03. > :38:06.and women, particularly in the context of this show, working-class
:38:06. > :38:10.girls, how do you get out of the path that you have been put on.
:38:10. > :38:14.Whether it is the Caitlin Moran in a totally different way, and the
:38:14. > :38:18.Jeanette Winterson, that is why I suppose I found the Factory Girls,
:38:18. > :38:21.something depressing for me, doing it through the make-up and the
:38:21. > :38:25.selling. Here you have Jeanette Winterson, books saved her loif,
:38:25. > :38:31.she just made the decision she could -- life, she just made the
:38:31. > :38:36.decision that she could not be this person, this pretty abusive
:38:36. > :38:38.childhood, she started with A, B, in the library, she made herself so
:38:38. > :38:43.powerful she didn't needing to through the alphabet in order. It
:38:43. > :38:51.was sad in some ways, but it is an incredibly uplifting book about the
:38:51. > :38:56.power of words. She is unflinching about herself? She doesn't come
:38:56. > :39:01.across amazing. The other figure in the book, the mum, Mrs Winterson,
:39:01. > :39:05.her adoptive mother. One of the things I took away with the book,
:39:05. > :39:09.the sense her mum is her muse, I know it was a miserable childhood,
:39:09. > :39:16.you wouldn't wish it on anyone, this is what made her a writer.
:39:16. > :39:21.This is her Dickens in the factory experience. As strange as her mum
:39:21. > :39:27.was, her mum has huge respect for words, she burns books. Of the ones
:39:27. > :39:30.we have read, this was a stand-up book i thought it was incredible.
:39:30. > :39:34.Although Jeanette Winterson's story in some ways is so peculiar, it is
:39:34. > :39:37.all our stories, it is about reconciling yourself to your
:39:37. > :39:41.relationship with your parent, whatever that parent might be. She
:39:41. > :39:45.is rawly honest about herself, but it is a much bigger story than her
:39:45. > :39:50.own story. This whole experience of a working-class culture that
:39:50. > :39:57.educates you, and finally she goes back to the library, and the
:39:57. > :40:05.literature A-Z section is take Anne way and it is devastating. It is
:40:05. > :40:09.wonderful to the way to describe adoption, culling through part way
:40:09. > :40:14.through the story. -- coming through part the way through the
:40:14. > :40:19.story. Going to find her birth mother, confession about how she
:40:19. > :40:23.has felt low in her own story. identity crisis is brilliantly
:40:23. > :40:26.paralleled. The adoptive family and the birth mother, that is
:40:27. > :40:30.paralleled by the reference she maids to her public persona as a
:40:30. > :40:38.writer, in brackets she mentioned her critical reception, some people
:40:38. > :40:42.say she's brilliant, and some say she's rubbish, that is mentioned in
:40:42. > :40:46.passing. Even as a writer she doesn't know who she is. So much I
:40:46. > :40:51.had reading the book, where Jeanette Winterson became a loved
:40:51. > :40:56.public figure like Alan Bennett, Victoria Wood, like a warm, cuddly
:40:57. > :41:01.northerner, then she says something so sharp like "I could murder
:41:01. > :41:05.someone", then you think she won't be that character, she will always
:41:05. > :41:09.be edgey. The thing I loved about it, she really is one of the stand-
:41:09. > :41:13.out writers, whatever the books you might like or dislike. The fact
:41:13. > :41:16.there is a bravery, to say, you know what, these 20 years inbetween,
:41:16. > :41:21.I won't tell but those, they are not your business at the moment.
:41:21. > :41:26.That takes a writer of real genius to go, you know what, it is my book.
:41:26. > :41:30.The line by line is great, it is so easy, it is like someone chatting,
:41:30. > :41:34.she will turn a phrase, you think this is not someone chatting, this
:41:34. > :41:40.is honed prose. Buy it for Christmas, at least for one person.
:41:40. > :41:47.Do not regift. If one thing enthuses people more than Christmas
:41:47. > :41:52.books it is Santa-size-sackfuls of sex, next week's literary awards
:41:52. > :41:56.will capture the imagination. As an extra treat, or not, we asked each
:41:56. > :42:03.of the panel to raet their favourite nominee. Going first with
:42:03. > :42:11.his -- rate their favourite nominee. Going first is Marcel.
:42:11. > :42:17.The Land Of The Painted Caves, "he went lower, found the entrance of
:42:17. > :42:22.her warm, wet cave, she spread her legs to give more access, he got up
:42:22. > :42:28.and lowered himself". Kate? Mortgagefying, I'm reading Lee
:42:28. > :42:32.Child for The Affair. "we stood up again, and kissed again, by that
:42:32. > :42:37.point in my life I had kissed hundreds of girls, I was ready to
:42:37. > :42:41.admit this was the finest of them all. She was spectacular. She moved
:42:41. > :42:46.and quiffered and trembled, she was strong but gentle, passionate but
:42:46. > :42:50.not aggressive, hungry but not demanding. The clock in my head
:42:50. > :42:57.took a break, we had all the time in the world. We were going to use
:42:57. > :43:00.every last minute of it. This is Sebastian Barry, "we got
:43:00. > :43:05.rid of our dammed clothes, and clung, he was in me when, they were
:43:05. > :43:09.happy, lapy, young n that room by the water, and in those -- happy,
:43:09. > :43:19.happy and young, in that room by the water, and in those moments we
:43:19. > :43:25.knew we would marry and not a word would be spoke about it ". This is
:43:25. > :43:29.Stephen King, 1/11/63. "is that all of it, or is there more? I haven't
:43:29. > :43:36.been with a woman in such a long time. It turned out a lot more, in
:43:36. > :43:42.the end she began to gasp, oh my dear, oh my dear, oh my dear God,
:43:42. > :43:47.oh sugar!" Luckily we have run right out of time before mine! On
:43:47. > :43:50.that salacious note, that is all for this week, thanks to my little
:43:50. > :43:54.helpers, Kate Mosse, Sophie Hannah, Marcel Theroux and Mark Ravenhill.
:43:54. > :43:58.You can find out more about tonight's items on the website.
:43:58. > :44:04.Don't forget Twitter, he will look at your comments in a few moments.
:44:04. > :44:12.Next week matter that has a are you adaptation of Great He can peck