Terrible at doing that, they allow their start to fade. When martin came in and said the football we looked a bit blankly hash star. |j looked a bit blankly hash star. |j look blankly at football as well but it is something i do for a living star. It is something i do for a living star. Thank you very much, it has been a pleasure tonight. Another look at the papers online. Now its time for meet the author. Ann patchett is a novelist who spends her stories without letting the effort show. They race along with the complexities and their rich subtleties subsumed into a rich narrative that never seems to flag. Commonwealth is a story of American Life told over nearly five decades from the early 60s, when a gate crasher at a christening sets in train a series of Chance Events that change two families forever. Welcome. Why do you think it is that so many readers want to come back so often to Family Stories . It is the universal after all. It is the one thing that we all have. We were all a baby, we will all die, we all had parents, and it is irresistible, it is what we know. And this begins, as i was saying, at a christening, with a gate crasher. It is quite a thing to gate crash a christening. And then Chance Events unfold over quite a long period which determine the fate really of a couple of families and all sorts of people. You are fascinated by the business of chance, arent you . Iam. I think that chance propels plot. A chance is the nature of story. Of course it is something that i am always going to come back to. It is hard to write a really compelling novel when everything is nailed down, when there are no loose bits. To look at it from the other angle, readers are willing to forgive quite a lot of chance and coincidence, arent they, in the interests of a good story . I think they are but also it has to be plausible chance and coincidence or it has to be reckless. I remember a paul auster novel called Moon Palace Years and years ago where everything was crazy coincidence but it was so crazy and so consistent that the novel was really brilliant. Yes. People always talk about thomas hardy, who was the master of coincidence and who drove his plot by some of the most unlikely devices. The letter going under the carpet. Angel clares carpet. Yeah, that is fabulous. Are you a hardy person . I am a hardy person. I like the way that sounds. Are you a hardy person . Yes, iam. Who else do you read for pleasure among the great novelists . Where does your taste take you . It is an interesting thing. I was the Big Henryjames Person and somebody who would reread james over and over again, loved dickens, loved austen, but i own a book shop and i have for going on six years and those days are over for me. Now ijust read not only things that are just out, the things i read are the things that will be coming out in six months. This is a confession. Henryjames, once you get stuck into henryjames he is impossible to abandon, isnt he . No, i will never abandon henry james. I will always those go back every few years and reread the awkward age. That is the thing. It is not that i want to read more james. I want to just keep rereading the ones that i love. It is interesting to look at that in respect of your own narrative because as i said narrative has the feeling of it has a pulse that just seems to keep going. You are a great one for concealing the inevitable artifice of writing. Good. Whereas james was a great one for putting the inevitable artifice of writing. Absolutely. I wasnt influenced by him, ijust love him. I suspectjust reading your prose that youre one of these people once you start a story, although you work at it very hard, and i have no doubt you are very meticulous, it seems to just rattle along. The reason is that i make it all up in my head for a year or two in advance and really work out all of the pieces. In your head rather than on a piece of paper . In my head. Dont take notes. Then i sit down and i actually start to write and its miserable and its hard but i get it all fixed as i go along, so i write a chapter and then work on that chapter for two months. Then i go onto the next chapter. The book takes place overjust a little over 50 years. A lot of people, there are 11 main characters in this book. A lot of different locations. So i had to know what all of the moving parts were and where i was going. Quite a balancing act. Yes. And thats something that i love. When i read a novel or when i write a novel. It is juggling and if you throw those balls up in the air i want to see you catch them. When you talk about in the past having read a lot of dickens, and of course in those great books of his, that is what its all about. Yes. This extraordinary balancing of different plotlines, different characters. Yes. But all somehow being kept in balance in some almost magical way. And thats very important because you have to have a balance and an equality in the tension of the narrative or what happens is the reader is interested in one plot line more than the other. So theyll read the part they dont like very quickly so they can get back to the character they are interested in. You have to make sure that all of the characters are in a way equally compelling so that the reader is reading at the same rate. Youve made an added difficulty for yourself in this book because it covers about half a century. It begins 119611. Actually a difficult time in your country. It was the transition to a new presidency, you had just had a president assassinated, which most people had never known before. It was a very sharp time in american history. Was it easy to get yourself back to that period . It was because it is not about that per se. No. Certainly these people are living in that time and in 1964 its probably the end of this world that you see at the opening of the novel, the family, strong catholicism, strong neighbour relations. The end of innocence. Then one character breaking off and kind of spinning out into the unknown world. In a way its a sort of harbinger of whats to come because the process that americans went through in lets say the 20 years after the opening date of this novel was a tumultuous time in terms of social change, attitudes, all sorts of things were unrecognisable from the America Of The 50s by the time it was over. It is interesting to me that you say 20 years. Well. Because i think of it almost like ten years. Basically to the end of the vietnam war. Yes. To the middle of the 70s. By the time we had carter and then reagan in office we were heading back to the 50s. We were really tamping down. What really fascinates me, we could talk about this all day, but what fascinates me about this is the way that you have found it possible, and very elegantly, to take us from that period right forward to a much more contemporary age without it ever intruding. Characters have different attitudes to the world because they grow up in different times but the fundamentals of family do not change. Correct. And our responsibilities to family. Even as we get tired of them, even as we want them to go away, our responsibility, or pull backwards, is always going to be there. I dont want to ask you an embarrassing question. Why ask me . Why do you think that so many readers have found you irresistible and continue to do so . What is it do you think about the way that you cast a story on the potters wheel that makes it readable . I had no idea that so many readers did find me irresistible. I am glad to hear it. Who knows . The way i look at it is everybody has their own little chip of colour in the larger picture. Their voice. And their own voice, and what their interest is, personally, so no matter how much i try to get away from it, im always going to be Writing Books about class, about family, poverty and wealth. Things that i keep coming back to even if i dont want to. Thats my voice. Its a calm and kind sort of voice. If readers know it is authentic they will listen to it. I hope so. Ann patchett, author of commonwealth, thank you very much. Hello it once again. It is almost the end of saturday and boy do we have some weather. Some of it was really rather, it is not quite surprising, that is on the word. But it was a warm day. 27 degrees are a number of locations. Many of you had a glorious day and it stayed that way. But the others, it got ominous, didnt it . For others, it really came to pass. Torrential downpours for some to finish off the afternoon into the evening. For others. You told us about it on twitter. And could be cool in the south, single figures, i would could be cool in the south, single figures, iwould have could be cool in the south, single figures, i would have thought. Could be cool in the south, single figures, iwould have thought. So could be cool in the south, single figures, i would have thought. So a quieter, easier night for sleeping. Running into the new day on sunday, and, as they say, it could be a little bit tricky to start with with Experimental Cloud across the North Western corner of scotland, then moving up towards the northern isles. Further south, there will be afairamount of isles. Further south, there will be a fair amount of cloud and rain eventually moving in. We will come to that in the second. But but having had a dull start on the western side of scotland, things will improve. With others, there will improve. With others, there will have a developing rizal day. Nothing compared to what will go on eventually across the south west. Some of this rate could be quite heavy. Could be a rumble of thunder. Either do you get to seed in the east midlands, is anger, and so on, until the late date. This band will push ever northwards. As it moves further north, we will find muggy conditions returning into the selling candies. It might go bang yet again as the temperatures never get a lot 15 or 16 degrees. So tricky night for sleep again. A fresher feel further north. That rendered pushes its way into the northern half of britain for bank holiday monday. Atta was the east here, i think we will see that Muggy Aircoming here, i think we will see that muggy air coming together again to give the potential for some areas to seed thunderstorms. Temperatures could get up to about 25 or 26 or even 27 and the brightness. Tuesday, wednesday, thursday, well push the Weather Front through on very strong winds across the northern half of britain through tuesday. 0nce winds across the northern half of britain through tuesday. Once that isa britain through tuesday. Once that is a way, i think we can relax a little. Come wednesday and into thursday, it will be that a High Pressure that really dominates, and it will feel very pleasant and springlike across all parts of the british isles. See later. Goodbye. This is bbc news. Our top stories colin British Airways blames a Power Supply Problem for the massive computerfailure which Supply Problem for the massive Computer Failure which has left thousands of passengers stranded. Images are taken on cctv of the Suicide Bomber in manchester. President trump leaves without indicating whether the us commits to the paris climate agreement. And arsenal chock up a surprise victory over chelsea. Arsene wenger the most successful manager in fa cup