Offering readers the best in quality literature
When I recently telephoned an author to say that we would be publishing her book, I was struck by how self-possessed and clear-headed the writer sounded. I have no doubt that she’d waited patiently to find the right publisher, and as we spoke I began smiling to myself, remembering the day that I received the phone call from an editor who published my first novel. That day I was anything but self-possessed and clear-headed. [Read more…]
When Joan Didion published her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, I avoided reading the book. I am a Joan Didion fan and eagerly read the excerpt from the book that appeared in the New Yorker before The Year of Magical Thinking was published. Didion, who lost her husband and only daughter within a two-year period, certainly had compelling material at her fingertips.
She was married to the novelist and journalist, John Gregory Dunne, and for many years they were known as a premier literary couple. [Read more…]
SOME TIME AGO, I realized that my strongest memories of a particular moment in my life were almost always illuminated by a novel I happened to be reading at the time. For example, I remembered being in a music class when I was twelve years old and a teacher who’d watched over a boy whose life was already marked by tragedy. [Read more…]
IN RECENT YEARS, since the geographical borders of Booker Prize were expanded to include any work of fiction originally published in English, a debate reignites every October, the month the prize is awarded. This year for the second time in a row, an American has won. [Read more…]
When I heard the news that Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I was delighted. Not only is “Ish” (as everybody calls him) a wonderful writer, from my memory of my London days, he’s a decent down-to-earth-guy, confident but humble – a far cry from the stereotype of the egotistical writer. [Read more…]
Clara’s Heart was published when I was in my late twenties; the sequel, In Clara’s Hands, was published fourteen years later. Just after the sequel was published I was in London promoting the book and was taking a black cab to an interview. Once the driver began to speak to me, I could tell he was from Jamaica and we began to chat. As someone who normally downplays the fact that I am a writer, I very uncharacteristically told him that I’d written a novel and a sequel whose protagonist was a Jamaican woman. He asked me the name of the books and I told him and he’d actually read Clara’s Heart and was surprised to hear there was a sequel. He asked me the plot of the sequel, and I told him and there was silence – I couldn’t tell if it might be the silence of disapproval. After a few moments, he asked, “Do you think you’ll write another book about her?” [Read more…]