Bookclub

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 seems almost to cast a spell over its aficionados, who call themselves the rêveurs, the dreamers. At the heart of the story is the tangled relationship between two young magicians, Celia, the enchanter's daughter, and Marco, the sorcerer's apprentice. At the behest of their shadowy masters they find themselves locked in a deadly contest and the two rivals defy all the rules of the game by falling in love. You can hear a reading of The Night Circus on BBC Radio 4 Extra Monday 6 January - Friday 10 January at 1800 To take part in future Bookclubs apply at bookclub@bbc.co.uk February's Bookclub Choice : The People's Act of Love by James Meek (2005) Presented by James Naughtie Produced by Dymphna Flynn

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 the people he meets in Spain as fraudulent as he fears his poems are? Is poetry an essential art form, or merely a screen for the reader's projections? A witness to the 2004 Madrid train bombings and their aftermath, he needs to decide whether he participates in historic events or merely watch them pass him by. Presented by James Naughtie and recorded with a group of readers asking the questions. To take part in future Bookclubs email bookclub@bbc.co.uk January 2020's Bookclub Choice : The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (2011) Presented by James Naughtie Produced by Dymphna Flynn

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 sense of life and love - and was published as a novel in 1996. Helen says in Bookclub that she honestly expected the column would be axed after six weeks for being too silly. She also describes how much she leaned on the plot of Pride and Prejudice, as in 1995 it seemed the whole country was watching the BBC adaptation with Colin Firth as Mr Darcy. Bridget eventually finds love with aloof lawyer Mark Darcy, who of course was played by Firth in the film of the novel. With fans from women in their twenties now to others in their fifties who lived the life of Bridget at the time, Helen answers questions about the identity of unmarried women in their thirties in the 1990s, with Bridget feeling as alone as Miss Havisham and how perceptions have changed since; as well as how Bridget would fare in this #MeToo, Instagram image obsessed and internet dating world. Recorded as part of the BBC's BBC Arts year-long celebration of literature, The Books That Shaped Us; and presented by James Naughtie and with a group of readers asking the questions. December's Bookclub choice : Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner (2012) Presented by James Naughtie Produced by Dymphna Flynn

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 Underground Railroad, they decide to escape to the North Colson Whitehead explains how the history of the Underground Railroad is taught in American schools, although it's a metaphor for the escape networks that ran in the antebellum South, as a child he understood it was real. so in the novel the idea assumes a physical form: a dilapidated boxcar pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can At each stop on her journey, Cora encounters a different world, where she must overcome obstacles as she makes her way to true freedom; reflecting, Colson says, the epic journeys from Homer and also Gulliver's Travels. And as Colson Whitehead recreates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, the novel weaves the saga of America, from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day The Underground Railroad won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a place on Obama’s summer reading list, and was included in Oprah's book club. To take part in future Bookclubs email bookclub@bbc.co.uk Presenter : James Naughtie Producer : Dymphna Flynn November's Bookclub Choice : Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (1996)

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 first sight with a colleague’s wife, which will affect many around him – her husband, other colleagues, and eventually his psychiatrist Adrian Lockheart who is treating him in the present day. Adrian is the figure who links them all and his investigations into the relationships among all those who’ve experienced war, and are among its victims, is the spine of the story. To take part in future Bookclubs apply at bookclub@bbc.co.uk Presenter : James Naughtie Producer : Dymphna Flynn October's Bookclub Choice : The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2017)