Face it. Forget about an exit strategy and you can find yourself in an almighty pickle. So tonight, as a public service, we're canvassing a few handy ways to get out of tricky situations (and bad books) with one’s dignity intact. Novelist and journalist Emily Maguire drops in to talk about the drastic exit strategies considered by the characters in her excellent recent novel.  We’ll also talk about the exit strategies available when we find ourselves in the middle of a book thinking ‘do I really have to read this tripe?’ And we’ll ponder the exit strategy that vexes writers more than any other – what to write in the last line of a book. 

Emily Maguire, Smoke in the Room, Picador - interviewed by Benedict Taylor

Charlotte Roche, Wetlands, Grove Atlantic - reviewed by Madeleine James; music by Kevin MacLeod

'Last Lines' - produced by Katherine Keefe with assistance from Tom McMullan; music by Machine Est Mon Couer