Lionel Shriver Warns Readers Not to Meet Their Favorite Authors
Credit.Rebecca Clarke
May 27, 2021
“The warts-and-all version is almost always a disappointment, and they risk a retroactive taint,” says the novelist, whose forthcoming book is “Should We Stay or Should We Go.”
What books are on your night stand?
Two books to prime for my next novel: Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer” and Charles Mackay’s “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.” One exercise in reverse research writing the novel first and then doing the homework: Katie Engelhart’s “The Inevitable,” about end-of-life suicide. Finally, mercifully, fiction: Ewan Morrison’s “How to Survive Everything,” which sounds like an antidote to the Engelhart.
Les choix de la rédaction – Que lire ce week-end? Trois bons plans
tdg.ch - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from tdg.ch Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Les 10 écrivains anglais à savourer ce printemps
lesechos.fr - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from lesechos.fr Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The novelist and Brexit critic Jonathan Coe suggested the BBC was obsessed with Britishness
Credit: Hay Festival
I am British: I was born in Homerton hospital in Hackney, and have lived most of my life no further than spitting distance from it. And yet I’ve always ticked the box for “Irish” when asked on forms for doctors or employers. Identity is complicated: first-generation immigrants are more likely to embrace “Britishness” in an attempt to blend in, but their kids are often nostalgic for the authenticity of the “home country”. I may hold a British passport, but I liked the fact that, behind closed doors, the flat in which I was brought up was a little Co Wicklow.