William Boyd: Melting in the dark
In swinging Britain in the summer of 1968, three characters are leading troubled lives. Sexually conflicted producer Talbot Kydd is overseeing an archly arthouse movie in Brighton while sneaking away from his wife to a secret London flat and pondering a possible future with a scaffolder named Gary; his star, American actress Anny Viklund, is...
Samanta Schweblin: Passion and terror
Samanta Schweblin is an acclaimed Argentinian short-story writer whose compact debut novel Fever Dream is shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. A disorientating and utterly gripping psychological thriller and an unsettling exploration of family ties, panic and dread, it is told in spare dialogue between a woman called Amanda who lies dying in...
A novelist by default
This year I became an accidental author. Not that I didn’t want to write a novel, I always thought I would one day, but it wasn’t on my to-do list anytime soon. My previous writing career had encompassed scriptwriting for everything connected to cinema and TV, from soap opera to drama, short film to feature...
The author project
Graeme Simsion’s debut novel The Rosie Project tells the story of Don Tillman, a genetics professor with undiagnosed Asperger’s, and his awkward attempts to find love via a highly personalised psychometric questionnaire. Mark Reynolds fires off some questions about his mid-life reinvention as an internationally bestselling novelist, a transition that began when he sold his...
