Reading and righting
Ben Ambridge’s Psy-Q is a mind-bending miscellany of psychometric puzzles, quizzes, jokes and visual illusions that help us to understand and appreciate the workings – and occasional failings – of the human brain. Topics include whether eye colour denotes trustworthiness, if Rorschach’s famous inkblot tests really work, what your musical preferences say about you, how psychology...
An instinct to play
Very few species of animal habitually play after they are adult; they are concerned with eating, sleeping or procreating, or with the means to one or other of those ends. But otters are one of the few exceptions to this rule; right through their lives they spend much of their time in play that does...
Breece D’J Pancake: ‘Trilobites’
Breece D’J Pancake is a legend amongst some of my writing friends – but, like any artist dying young, his legacy is coloured by the shadow of the great work that he could have gone on to create. Once you have read his only collection of stories, published posthumously in 1983, you will most likely,...
Gimme a break
What do Martin Amis, Don DeLillo, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Elmore Leonard, Ogden Nash, Flannery O’Connor, James Patterson, Dorothy L. Sayers and Fay Weldon have in common? Not a lot, you would be forgiven for thinking. But in fact they share a personal history; they all started out as advertising copywriters. Just like me, then, and...
Sonata no.3
Gayle Forman’s best-selling novel If I Stay is now a major film starring Chloë Grace Moretz as Mia Hall, a talented cellist whose life hangs in the balance after what should have been a carefree family drive. We present an eerie extract from the opening chapter that sets the scene. You wouldn’t expect the radio...
Be how it begin
The Country of Ice Cream Star began with the idea of a world in which people only live to be 18–19 years old. I don’t know where that idea came from. There are other similar themes in literature, but I wasn’t consciously thinking of them. The idea seemed rather like it was always waiting in...
Murder symptoms
I dreamt last night that I was a child and alone at home, feeling sick. I kept on vomiting, and there was no one to help me. Distressing. I did actually find myself in this situation several times, after my mother died. Domestics never lasted more than a year at our place – my father...
Abracadabra!
Neil Bartlett’s The Disappearance Boy is a dark tale of lost and found love and fading glamour behind the velvet curtains of 1950s variety theatre, in which magician’s assistant Reggie Rainbow does his best to keep his own thoughts and actions out of sight and mind by sleight of hand. Neil discusses his writing rituals...
Stay flexible
The acclaimed New Wave Caribbean novelist and writing tutor shares her top ten tips for keeping the creative juices flowing. 1. Perfectionism is anti-creative. Get used to the notion of drafting your work, trying things out and making creative decisions on a regular basis. 2. The quality of attention to detail is the measure of...
No subject
It was only a couple of months ago. She was at the office settling in at her desk when she noticed ‘No Subject’ waiting in her email. It seemed strange for her aunt, a notorious perfectionist, to have left the subject line blank. She guessed it had something to do with her father, whose sixtieth birthday...
Grounded and up in the air
Greg Baxter’s tense and gripping psychological thriller Munich Airport sees an American expat whose sister’s body has been found in mysterious circumstances marooned by bad weather in the titular airport with his irascible father and a sympathetic American Consulate official who is trying to help discover the cause of death. He tells us about his...
A mother ago
I entered the hospital filled with hatred and wanting to give thanks. How fragile is anger. We could shout, hit or spit at a stranger. The same person whom, depending on their verdict, depending on whether they tell us what we are desperate to hear, we would suddenly admire, embrace, swear loyalty to. And that...
