The Art of Reading is a monthly book club hosted by Colm Tóibín, the Laureate for Irish Fiction.
The August edition features Tóibín in conversation with Professor Frank Shovlin about The Barracks by John McGahern - watch above.
"This bleak, unrelenting novel portrays a woman in the Irish midlands who has married a policeman and become a surrogate mother to his children in the time after his first wife's death," says Colm Tóibín.
"Elizabeth, too, is facing her own death. Her character is drawn with great sympathy. The most intimate moments are handled with piercing sensitivity and truthfulness."
The Barracks is published by Faber. Find out more about The Art Of Reading Book Club here.
