Thoughts about things I’ve written or read or heard or seen. An attempt to stay positive in a turbulent world.
Recent Articles
Fog Island Mountains and Dr Atal Gawande, this year’s BBC Reith Lecturer
Michelle Bailat-Jones has written a beautiful novel called Fog Island Mountains. I’ve just posted a review of it here. The novel won the 2013 Christopher Doheny Award and I hope it goes on to sell, and so to affect, many many readers. It deserves to because it deals with the most serious event in our lives with eloquence, compassion, honesty...Continue reading→
Sequels, Literary Festivals and Natasha O’Farrell’s heavenly handbag
There have been some heart-warming reactions to The Dance of Love and several people have suggested I write a sequel, possibly set in the Depression and the lead-up to the Second World War because, they said, it would be fascinating to find out what happens next in the characters’ lives and how they do or don’t live...Continue reading→
Haworth Parsonage, Richard Flanagan and Anselm Keifer
In September we holidayed in England: we travelled north-west to Stratford (and saw a wonderful production of The Roaring Girl, a play about Mary Frith, an astonishing sixteenth-century woman who lived and dressed as a man, partly in defiance of her times to give herself freedom, partly so she could act as pimp, procurer and...Continue reading→
The Launch of The Dance of Love, History of the Rain, and Emily Young’s Kew Gardens angel video
The DANCE of LOVE was launched at the wonderful Barnes Bookshop last Thursday: I wrote about on Robert Hale’s blog – the book’s publishers – here. It was a happy family affair: my whole family was there: my two younger sisters smuggled my American sister into the country for it which was a wonderful; the family of...Continue reading→
Today for one day only THE DANCE of LOVE is .99p on the Kindle Daily Deal (or $1.64 in the US)
If you own an electronic reading device (why does that sound so odd?) and you’d like to download and read a historical romance that’s received kind words from reviewers (‘Lovers of Austen will find much to admire here’ Shiny New Books; ‘A beautifully-written book that moved me deeply’ BooksPlease; ‘Sparkles with rich and authentic detail’ Fiction is...Continue reading→
Niall Williams’s History of the Rain
I’m so full of Niall Williams‘s History of the Rain that I don’t want to write about anything else this month. It is the most beautiful and beautifully-written novel I’ve read, probably ever, and if not ever, then certainly for a very very long time. And it is – naturally – a book I would love to...Continue reading→
The DANCE of LOVE is published today
Hurrah! A big thank you to Buried River Press for publishing it. You can find out more from the YouTube film here, or the book’s pages on my website, here: and, if you’d like to, you can buy it in paperback here and here and with worldwide free delivery here or in an electronic edition here....Continue reading→
THE DANCE of LOVE PUBLISHED SOON; GOODREADS GIVEAWAY; FIRST TWO REVIEWS and … StuckinaBooks’ letters and Letters to an Unknown Soldier
Happy news, THE DANCE of LOVE will be published on 31 July by Buried River Press. You can pre-order copies here and here and here with free worldwide delivery, and, of course, here. There’s also a Goodreads Giveaway running from today until early on 17 July for four free copies. Enter here, if you’d like...Continue reading→
THE DANCE of LOVE : goodreads giveaway. And Bill Viola at St Paul’s, London
In a few days’ time, 17 June to be exact, for a couple of days until midnight on 19 June, two uncorrected paperback pre-publication proofs of THE DANCE of LOVE will be available free in a goodreads giveaway. If you’d like to enter the draw – it’s limited to people living in the UK and...Continue reading→
Writing a novel is just like life …
… it’s only in the doing of it that I discover what works and what doesn’t. I can plan and plan and plan and I do, but when I do I tend, at least some of the time, to let myself get away with vague descriptions, half-formed theories or, sometimes, whole ideas that don’t hold...Continue reading→
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