Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW.kCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt. This is Bookworm, and I'm talking to Michael

Undauchat, who has entered a new phase of his career. I think it began with his last novel, The Cats

Table. It continues with Warlight. It really is a book about two children fending their way

through the end of World War II in London, as they're coming to

understand that what they grew up with during the war is nothing like the truth they face after

the war. Their father is missing. Their mother is not the woman they thought she was. One of the children, the girl,

Rachel, will never speak to the mother again. The brother will actually never be able to speak to her

again by the end of the book. And I was left kind of breathless. The book is punctuated by songs of the period.

One of the songs quoted is Begin the Begin. I think there's down on the shore an orchestra playing.

But the orchestra is playing during the romantic scene going on.

The Beguine is going on as the background to the romantic. And we see in this book

that no matter what's happening, down on the shore, the orchestra is playing. Something else

is happening too. We watch a chess game while an opera is taking place on a stage.

The game is being played in a box at the theater.

There are an incredible number of highly burnished, perfect sequences.

...