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Led by James Naughtie, readers talk to acclaimed authors about their best-known novels

Led by James Naughtie, a group of readers talk to acclaimed authors about their best-known novels

BBC Radio 4 LW

James Naughtie

Patrick McCabe

Dymphna Flynn

Bookclub: Patrick McCabe - The Butcher Boy

Patrick McCabe - The Butcher Boy

03/09/2017

BBC Radio 4 - Bookclub, Patrick McCabe - The Butcher Boy

Patrick McCabe discusses his modern classic novel The Butcher Boy with James Naughtie.

Patrick McCabe discusses his modern classic novel The Butcher Boy with James Naughtie. Recorded at the Linen Hall Library, Belfast.

Patrick McCabe discusses The Butcher Boy with James Naughtie. Recorded with an audience at the Linen Hall Library, Belfast.

Inspired by comics and small-town life, Patrick McCabe was propelled into the literary limelight by his novel The Butcher Boy in 1992. It was shortlisted for the Booker prize and it has since become a modern classic.

Set in an unnamed town in the border counties of Ireland, The Butcher Boy is is a precisely crafted, often lyrical and darkly humorous story about 11 year old Francie Brady and his descent into paranoia. Francie switches from boyhood mischief to an adolescent obsession with a school friend's mother which ends in horror. 

Patrick McCabe says it is a universal story and not particular to Ireland, and discloses his belief that it would be hard to find a publisher if he was writing it today.

Presenter : James Naughtie
Interviewed guest : Patrick McCabe
Producer : Dymphna Flynn

October's Bookclub choice : Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg (1992).

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