Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

For you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm. I'm Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is Roddy Doyle.

He's the author most recently of a star called Henry, five other novels, The Commitments,

The Snapper, The Van, Patty Clark, Ha Ha, Ha, which won the Booker Award, and the woman who walked into doors.

Now, I noticed that in this series of books, there's a gradual broadening from the contemporary books, the first three, to a book, Patty Kar Kha-ha-ha, which is concerned

with memory in the past, to the extraordinary enactment of a beleaguered woman's voice and

the woman who walked into doors.

And this is the first historical panoply with a wide

range of times, of voices, sudden shifts of scene. And I wondered if that had been an intentional

progression for you.

Yes, I suppose so, although when I was writing the first book, I didn't anticipate writing the sixth.

You know, so yes and no, I suppose.

I suppose having written one, I always wonder what will I do next,

and I always try to just explore a bit.

Rather than slip into a happy rut and try to repeat some sort of success, I've always tried to

just go and do something different, to put it as simply as I can do, just to do something different.

And I suppose the work has got more ambitious as I go on. As I learn, I sort of managed the linear

plot in the first three and then decided, well, I'll do something a little bit different this time round.

...