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January 28, 2021This article first appeared in My Weekly online, 26 January 2021. “So,” asked my interviewer, “what are you working on now?” She smiled approvingly when I said I was writing a novel; a funny book about a serious subject. The smile curdled when I told her it was about stroke rehab. My defence is that when my husband had a…
December 3, 20202020 will go down as a bad year for Napoleonic plans, but a great year for taking up qigong, and in particular, learning to shift your weight without falling over. Anything which involved putting a date in a calendar, or contacting public and private bodies, or even putting physical objects in physical places, has been doomed and we've been thwarted time…- September 2, 2020A brilliant examination of so many things. The way a child is shaped by other people, and the people who love us most of all, for good or ill. The strength of other people's expectations. The pressures on men as well as women to slip into a desired role. The ways in which, rebelling, we fall into line. The permanent…
- July 22, 2020I’ve spent most of lockdown locked down with IT. Which has little to do with writing, but a lot to do with books.The priority was getting Joe Faber and the Optimists out, first as an eBook, and soon in paperback. The last few days were the worst, spent troubleshooting and tracking down missing but essential information that the tech giants…
- June 19, 2020Bernardine Evaristo: Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton, 2019) Twelve characters, twelve identities. There's a lot to say, and a lot has been said, about this novel which won the Booker Prize, so this is a brief personal reaction. I love the way Bernadine Evaristo shows us conflict and then encourages us to believe that conflict can be resolved. (Mr Loverman…
