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Alex Clark talks to the novelist Linda Grant about her new book The Story of the Forest. Her ninth novel begins in Latvia, when a teenage girl’s mushroom-gathering walk turn into something darker, and prompts a departure for America. They get no further than Liverpool, and the sprouting families become rooted in the suburbs of Brownlow Hill and Allerton. Linda Grant discusses her personal connection to the story of the Mendel family, her love of Dickens and why she's not that keen on writing about trees!

Golden Age by Wang Xiaobo regarded as one of China’s modern masterpieces. The novel is a smart sature of the Cultural Revolution which was published in 1992 but only now available in its first full English translation . Xialou Guo, the award winning author of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, talks to Alex about the Wang Xiaobo's radical and unique style of writing.

And we head into the garden with the horticultural writer Alice Vincent, whose new book Why Women Grow looks into the many examples of women’s connection to cultivation. For Open Book Alice has dug into the pages of her favourite fictional gardens.

Book List – Sunday 21 May and Thursday 25 May

The Story of the Forest by Linda Grant
The Clothes On Their Backs by Linda Grant
When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Golden Age by Wang Xiaobo: Translated by Yan Yan
Pleasure of Thinking by Wang Xiaobo: Translated by Yan Yan
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo
A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo
Why Women Grow by Alice Vincent
Gaining Ground by Joan Barfoot
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
Because The Night by Tessa Hadley
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Seasonal Quartet by Ali Smith