:00:00. > :00:15.Ann Patchett is a novelist who spends her stories
:00:16. > :00:20.They race along with the complexities and their rich
:00:21. > :00:23.subtleties subsume into a narrative that never seems to flag.
:00:24. > :00:39.Commonwealth is a story of American life told over nearly five decades
:00:40. > :00:41.a christening sets in train a series of chance events that
:00:42. > :00:54.Why do you think it is that so many readers want to come back
:00:55. > :00:59.It is the one thing that we all have.
:01:00. > :01:02.We were all a baby, we will all die, we all had parents,
:01:03. > :01:10.and it is irresistible, it is what we know.
:01:11. > :01:12.And this begins, as I was saying, at a christening,
:01:13. > :01:19.It is quite a thing to gate-crash a christening.
:01:20. > :01:22.And then chance events unfold over quite a long period which determine
:01:23. > :01:25.the fate really of a couple of families and all sorts of people.
:01:26. > :01:28.You are fascinated by the business of chance, aren't you?
:01:29. > :01:39.Of course it is something that I am always going to come back to.
:01:40. > :01:43.It is hard to write a really compelling novel
:01:44. > :01:47.when everything is nailed down, when there are no loose bits.
:01:48. > :01:52.To look at it from the other angle, readers are willing to forgive quite
:01:53. > :01:54.a lot of chance and coincidence, aren't they, in the interests
:01:55. > :02:03.I think they are but also it has to be plausible chance
:02:04. > :02:05.and coincidence or it has to be reckless.
:02:06. > :02:08.I remember a Paul Auster novel called Moon Palace
:02:09. > :02:11.years and years ago where everything was crazy
:02:12. > :02:14.coincidence but it was so crazy and so consistent that the novel
:02:15. > :02:18.People always talk about Thomas Hardy who was the master
:02:19. > :02:21.of coincidence and who drove his plot by some of the most
:02:22. > :02:48.Who else do you read for pleasure among the great novelists?
:02:49. > :02:58.I was the big Henry James person and somebody who would reread James
:02:59. > :03:03.over and over again, loved Dickens, loved Austen,
:03:04. > :03:07.but I own a book shop and I have for going on six years and those
:03:08. > :03:11.Now I just read not only things that are just out,
:03:12. > :03:13.the things I read are the things that will be
:03:14. > :03:18.Henry James, once you get stuck into Henry James he is impossible
:03:19. > :03:21.No, I will never abandon Henry James.
:03:22. > :03:28.I will always those go back every few years
:03:29. > :03:36.It is not that I want to read more James.
:03:37. > :03:39.I want to just keep rereading the ones that I love.
:03:40. > :03:43.It is interesting to look at that in respect of your own narrative
:03:44. > :03:47.because as I said narrative has the feeling of it has a pulse that
:03:48. > :03:51.You are a great one for concealing the inevitable artifice of writing.
:03:52. > :03:54.Whereas James was a great one for putting the inevitable
:03:55. > :03:58.I wasn't influenced by him, I just love him.
:03:59. > :04:01.I suspect just reading your prose that you're one of these people
:04:02. > :04:04.once you start a story, although you work at it very hard,
:04:05. > :04:07.and I have no doubt you are very meticulous, it seems
:04:08. > :04:16.The reason is that I make it all up in my head for a year or two in
:04:17. > :04:19.advance and really work out all of the pieces.
:04:20. > :04:21.In your head rather than on a piece of paper?
:04:22. > :04:32.Then I sit down and I actually start to write and its miserable and it's
:04:33. > :04:39.hard but I get it all fixed as I go along, so I write a chapter and then
:04:40. > :04:44.The book takes place just over 50 years.
:04:45. > :04:47.A lot of people, there are 11 main characters in this book.
:04:48. > :04:51.So I had to know what all of the moving parts
:04:52. > :04:58.When I read a novel or when I write a novel.
:04:59. > :05:02.It is juggling and if you throw those balls up in the air
:05:03. > :05:06.When you talk about in the past having read a lot of Dickens,
:05:07. > :05:10.and of course in those great books of his, that is what it's all about.
:05:11. > :05:12.This extraordinary balancing of different plotlines,
:05:13. > :05:17.But all somehow being kept in balance in some almost magical way.
:05:18. > :05:20.And that's very important because you have to have a balance
:05:21. > :05:23.and an equality in the tension of the narrative or what happens
:05:24. > :05:26.is the reader is interested in one plot line more than the other.
:05:27. > :05:29.So they'll read the part they don't like very quickly so they can get
:05:30. > :05:31.back to the character they are interested in.
:05:32. > :05:34.You have to make sure that all of the characters
:05:35. > :05:36.are in a way equally compelling so that the reader is
:05:37. > :05:40.You've made an added difficulty for yourself in this book because it
:05:41. > :05:44.Actually a difficult time in your country.
:05:45. > :05:47.It was the transition to a new presidency,
:05:48. > :05:49.you had just had a president assassinated, which most people
:05:50. > :05:55.It was a very sharp time in American history.
:05:56. > :05:59.Was it easy to get yourself back to that period?
:06:00. > :06:01.It was because it is not about that per se.
:06:02. > :06:06.Certainly these people are living in that time and in 1964 it's
:06:07. > :06:14.probably the end of this world that you see at the opening of the novel,
:06:15. > :06:23.the family, strong Catholicism, strong labour relations.
:06:24. > :06:27.Then one character breaking off and kind of spinning out
:06:28. > :06:36.In a way it's a sort of harbinger of what's to come
:06:37. > :06:49.because the process that Americans went through in let's say the 20
:06:50. > :06:53.years after the opening date of this novel was a tumultuous time in terms
:06:54. > :06:55.of social change, attitudes, all sorts of things
:06:56. > :06:58.were unrecognisable from the America of the 50s by the time it was over.
:06:59. > :07:00.It is interesting to me that you say 20 years.
:07:01. > :07:02.Because I think of it almost like ten years.
:07:03. > :07:04.Basically to the end of the Vietnam War.
:07:05. > :07:09.By the time we had Carter and then Reagan in office
:07:10. > :07:15.What really fascinates me, we could talk about this all day,
:07:16. > :07:18.what fascinates me about this is the way that you have found it
:07:19. > :07:24.possible, and very elegantly, to take us from that period right
:07:25. > :07:27.forward to a much more contemporary age without it ever intruding.
:07:28. > :07:29.Characters have different attitudes to the world because they grow
:07:30. > :07:31.up in different times but the fundamentals
:07:32. > :07:42.Even as we get tired of them, even as we want them to go away,
:07:43. > :07:44.our responsibility, or pull backwards, is always
:07:45. > :07:50.I don't want to ask you an embarrassing question...
:07:51. > :07:56.Why do you think that so many readers have found you irresistible
:07:57. > :08:07.What is it do you think about the way that you cast
:08:08. > :08:13.a story on the potters' wheel that makes it readable?
:08:14. > :08:16.I had no idea that so many readers did find me irresistible.
:08:17. > :08:22.The way I look at it is everybody has their own little chip of colour
:08:23. > :08:29.And their voice and what their interest is personally,
:08:30. > :08:33.so no matter how much I try to get away from it I'm always going to be
:08:34. > :08:35.writing books about class, about family, poverty and wealth.
:08:36. > :08:38.Things that I keep coming back to even if I don't want to.
:08:39. > :08:46.If readers know it is authentic they will listen to it.
:08:47. > :09:01.Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth, thank you very much.
:09:02. > :09:06.It will not surprise you and I say we have had the hottest day of the
:09:07. > :09:07.year so