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Ethan Hawke talks to Elizabeth Day about his new novel A Bright Ray of Darkness, the story of a young actor who finds solace and equilibrium on the stage, while his private life is crumbling. He discusses the parallels between his own life and that of his hero; and the difficulties of writing convincingly, and unpretentiously about acting.

Also on the programme Francis Spufford talks to Elizabeth Day about his new novel Light Perpetual, which imagines how five fictional young children in south east London would have lived, had they not been killed by a bomb in World War Two. Through their possible futures, he creates a chronicle of the sweeping social changes in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century and paints an intimate portrait of lives lived during those changes. Professor David Edgerton joins him to cast an historian's eye over the period.

And Ashley Audrain, author of The Push, on the new ways that psychological thriller writers are depicting motherhood.

Image copyright: Brigitte Lacombe

Book List – Sunday 14 February and Thursday 18 February

A Bright Ray of Darkness by Ethan Hawke
The Hottest State by Ethan Hawke
Ash Wednesday by Ethan Hawke
The Push by Ashley Audrain
Lullaby by Leila Slimani
Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips
Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty by Jacqueline Rose
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferranti
Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford
Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
The Rise and Fall of the British Nation by David Edgerton