I’m excited that The Coffee Story has been nominated by Toby Litt as his book of the year for 2011! You can find his spiel here – saying it’s better than Disgrace may be over-egging the pudding a little, but Toby is one of the fiercest intelligences out there, so who am I to argue? […]
See, the way this works is that Stephen May, the author of TAG and the forthcoming Life! Death! Prizes! (due Jan 2012) interviews me for his blog. I then mention here that he has done so. He mentions on his blog that my website will mention that he’s mentioned me on his blog. You, who are […]
Excited to announce that the podcast of my performance at Book Slam a couple of months ago is now available from the site. It was a great night, with a packed house. I revelled in my role as undercard to the very talented and marvellous Caitlin Moran and the very talented and marvellous Grace Dent. […]
‘The coffee here, thankyou for asking, is the worst fucking coffee I have ever tasted…’. Thus opens The Coffee Story. Perhaps not the most graceful of first sentences, but then The Coffee Story is perhaps not the most graceful of books. But – unless you are Graham Greene (‘Hale knew, before he had been in […]
Re-reading The Interpretation of Dreams for a novel I’m working on. I’d forgotten how unnerving it is to read Freud, brought on I think by the tension caused by using measured scientific language to describe the bizarre. This sort of tension has always appealed to me – I think of Memoirs of my Nervous Illness by Judge Schreber […]