'Where Are The Kings' by Donal Ryan

The Radio 2 Book Club

Host Sarah Cox welcomes bestselling author Donal Ryan to the Radio 2 Book Club to discuss his new novel, 'Where Are The Kings'. The conversa

Key takeaways

• Donal Ryan's novel 'Where Are The Kings' follows 12-year-old Jack as he navigates life after his mother's death in Ireland.
• The author utilized elements of his own son's personality and his own childhood memories to develop the protagonist, Jack.

Main topics

• Where Are The Kings novel discussion
• Themes of grief and humor

Notable quotes

Meeting readers is the best part of being a writer, I think.

Conclusion

An intimate look at how personal history and cultural nuances shape co

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Speaker 3 (0:06) Is Facebook dying? I'm Tristan Redmond, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. More than 15 years after the social network, a new movie on the inner workings of Facebook hit cinemas in October. The journalist who's reporting Inspire the film tells us why Facebook stopped being cool and whether Meta, its parent company, can reinvent itself. For more, listen to the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your pods. Speaker 1 (0:39) Now, this is The Radio 2 Book Club with Sarah Cox. Speaker 2 (0:51) Well, hello, bug worms. Tis moi, Sarah. Hello. I'll stop manking about now and just welcome you to another Radio 2 Book Club pod. Hello to Flynn, who's emailed radio2bookclub at bbc.co.uk. I'm not exaggerating when I say we absolutely love getting your emails. If they're about books and reading, just tell us whatever, really. Get in touch. Radio 2, the number two book club at bbc.co.uk. So Flynn of Paynton in Devon says, Hey Sarah and the BCG, it's pretty cool, isn't it? That's the book club gag. Speaker 1 (1:24) Thanks to you, I'm now an avid audiobook listener. Oh, thrilled. Speaker 2 (1:28) I so enjoyed hearing the extracts from the various books you feature on the pod that I've converted now. I have a subscription to one of those platforms that has audiobooks and I absolutely love it. So far, I've read Time to Burn by Ellery Lloyd and Hotel Avocado by Bob Mortimer. I am about a third of the way through that on audiobook with Sally Phillips and Paul Whitehouse as well, isn't it? It's a great audiobook. I loved his last one as well. Is it The Tangerine Complex? Yeah, it's great. And I'm halfway through the latest Lisa Jewell, It Could Have Been Her. Yeah, that's a great book too. It's opened up a whole new world of reading to me and I'm really grateful to you for bringing them into my world. Thanks again for the great recommendations. Flynn! You are so welcome. And absolutely, sometimes when my brain's a little bit busy, I'm like, let's just calm things down. Stop doom scrolling, stop watching nonsense. And I will listen to an audio book and it's just brilliant. You can just really lose yourself in them. So I'm thrilled for you, Flynn. If you'd like to get in touch with us, the email as always is radio2bookclub at bbc.co.uk. And like I say, if it's about books, we want to hear from you, please. Right, time to tell you now about our latest Radio 2 Book Club choice. It's called Where Are The Kings and is a tender, moving and funny story about a young boy coming to terms with the loss of his mother and navigating a life without her in Ireland. It's written by Donal Ryan, who I'm very pleased to say joins me now in the studio. Welcome to the Radio 2 Book Club, Donal. Thank Speaker 4 (2:55) you Speaker 2 (2:55) so much, Sarah. Great to be here. Great to see you and congratulations on your new novel. Have you been out painting the town a bright scarlet? Speaker 4 (3:04) Well, not really. I mean, I've been on the road a lot, but we haven't actually been going mad or anything. But it's been really interesting. I love, like, it's just that you know yourself, like, meeting readers is the best part, isn't it? Like, the hard work is done. The book is out there. There's nothing you can do about it. It's finished. And meeting readers is just the most pleasurable part of being a writer, I think. Speaker 2 (3:21) How lovely. So you've been doing a little book tour and chatting to people and hanging out in the bookshops, which is always nice. Are they at night time? Because I quite like a bit of backstage at a bookshop. It's quite cool that you're getting let in through a back door. It's so Speaker 4 (3:34) weird at the start, isn't it? Like this part of the bookshop you don't know exists. Yeah, this labyrinthine kind of mazes around the back of them. Speaker 2 (3:41) Introduce us to Jack, please, and set up the story for us a little. Speaker 4 (3:45) Well, Jack is 12 when the book starts and it starts on a very sad note. His mum dies in the first chapter, so that's kind of out of the way, but it gets better, more affirming, funnier, happier as the book goes on, even though Jack is kind of struggling throughout the book. So it covers about two years of his life. And really, it's a description of Jack's confrontation of grief. And he goes to live with his mum's estranged family on a hillside in Tipperary, about four miles from his home house, and kind of, in some ways, finds himself and in other ways, loses himself. during the two years. So it