Beautiful Creatures

Can I just say how much I love 10-year-old girls? We had a bevy of them sleep over last night for L’s birthday and I’ve come away replete with their gorgeousness.

I love how they are on the cusp of childhood and womanhood and the way they swing between the two unselfconsciously. One minute they’re singing their hearts out to Rosenstoltz and Pink and Duffy, then they’re earnestly teaching each other board games and the next minute they’re on the floor playing farms. They watch Harry Potter and go to sleep cuddling their fluffy toys. Some of them, I might add, don’t sleep at all.

They love talking, to each other and to the grown-ups, and they haven’t swallowed any of the crap about being cool. Or if they have, they’ve forgotten it after an hour when they pull L’s four-year-old brother onto their backs to gallop him around the house.

I love their long legs and flat chests and how they haven’t started believing any of the lies society tells them about their bodies. I love how they’re still caught in the moment, not regretting the past or hoping for some unknown future. I love their potential – what will little S, who I’ve known since she was three, and who is a now beautiful dancer and talented pianist, one day be? Will they be zookeepers and scientists and pilots and archeologists, as they now dream?

I hope the people who are raising these gorgeous daughters are also raising gorgeous sons. I want these 10-year-olds to be respected and loved by men who are as wise and lovely as they are.

Yesterday I glimpsed the future. I hope that the impending teenage years don’t chip away their trust in the world. I hope their dreams don’t implode. I hope the men they encounter don’t expect them to fit into a mould of femininity that constricts their sense of self. If they meet such men, I hope they have the confidence to say, “Stuff you. This is me. Take or leave it.”

Let the future be kind to them, beautiful creatures that they are.

I Love You More than Cheese

Ten years ago yesterday, I became a parent for the first time. My tiny baby girl is now a big, beautiful ten-year-old person, who comes up to my nose and will be taller than me before she’s thirteen. I can’t believe how much I love her, and what a journey the last decade has been.

When she was born, I had no clue, only hope. Her first night home was awful – she screamed for 12 hours while I kept trying to feed her and failed because her mouth was so tiny and I had no idea what to do. She now tells me she remembers that night – how? – and that she was trying to tell me what she needed, but that I didn’t understand her baby words.

Now I understand her words, thank God, and she mine.

Recently she sent me this:

Dear Mummy,

I have no important reason to write to you.
I just love you with my heart.
You are kind and sweet.
And I love you more than cheese
FROM L

I’m looking forward to lifetime of letters and love with you, my darling L.

And lots and lots of cheese.

Lynn Solo III

When it came to meeting “Nice ladies” Trevor, Lynn had almost completely run out of interest. It was clear to her that most men wanted most women to be happy to provide an all-in-one, sex-on-tap, listening and sock-collection service. And it didn’t seem to bother them that in return they weren’t offering much: horrible eating habits, a refusal to listen, and, in David’s case, a complete lack of attention. No, thought Lynn, it was not a good deal for women and if that meant never having a male companion again, she was prepared to go without.

Trevor pleaded poverty so to spare him the RHS entrance fee, Lynn agreed to meet him in Guildford, at a coffee-shop just off the high street. She was surprised when a tall young man, dressed in black jeans, approached her. Lynn had thought Trevor sounded naive in his letter, but she’d had no idea that he would be this young. He joined her and they ordered tea. Lynn watched his slender long-fingered hands on his tea-cup. Trevor talked about the art classes he was doing at college, and listened – with apparently sincere interest – as Lynn told him about her embroidery and her roses. The way he threw back his tea and looked hopefully into the pot made her think he was hungry.

“Do you want something to eat?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

When the waitress took his order, Lynn surprised herself by saying “and the same for me please”. They both had baked potatoes with sweetcorn, and a slice of chocolate cake. He ate like a starving bear, but with no mess. And he listened while, to her surprise, Lynn told him all about David, Agnieszka and the impending divorce.

“She young then?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Lynn. “Very young.”

“Don’t worry. He’ll wake up and regret it one day.”

“You know, Trevor,” Lynn smiled. “I believe I no longer care.”

Lynn was surprised at how relaxed she felt with Trevor. It was like spending time with a pleasant younger brother. He wasn’t a male version of a blanket, more of a light cotton throw.

“So why did you want to meet me?” Lynn asked, when they were done and sipping on coffee.

“You sounded nice,” he said.

“I’m sure you meet nice people all the time,” Lynn replied.

“Have you ever modelled for a painting?” he asked her, and she could feel his eyes wondering over her face and neck speculatively as he waited for her response.

“No, I haven’t,” she said.

“Well, would you?” he asked. “I can’t afford to pay though.”

Lynn felt as if she were standing on the edge of an abyss. Behind her was her life: comfortable, safe and under control. In front of her lay the void. She leapt.

***

Lynn lay back on the plump cushions of her sofa. Her favourite blanket, a turquoise rug, was draped over her lower legs and feet. A fire crackled contentedly in the grate. She felt intensely relaxed. Last night, she’d had a wonderful session with the dancing girls and the body builder and now every muscle in her body felt soothed, calm, at peace. There was an empty mug of tea on the small table near the sofa and another on the window-sill near where Trevor had his easel.

This was her fifth sitting. She and Trevor had quickly settled into a routine: she greeted him in her dressing-gown, they had a cup of tea and a chat, and then she took off the gown and arranged herself on the sofa while he painted. Later, they had a walk in the bracing air, then he gave her quick kiss on the cheek and got on the Guildford bus.

She knew that he went clubbing at the weekends and that he had a boyfriend. He told her he’d experimented with girls as a teenager but for the moment had settled for boys. Trevor had grown up in what he described as a “matriarchy”: his single mother, her single mother and all their female friends. He’d spent most of his childhood hearing about bastard men who didn’t meet their payments, about new men who turned out to be no-hopers, about cracking period pains and disasters at the hairdresser. He’d become a good listener.

Once she asked him why he hadn’t asked any of the women in his mother’s and grandmother’s social circle to pose for him.

“No, that would be too weird. I’m like their kid too, see? Just like their kids are my mum’s.”

“And what about girls at art school? Or people that you meet at the clubs? Wouldn’t they pose for free?”

Trevor gave her his artist’s look, the one that thrilled her.

“I needed to find someone different. Different from me, and the people I know. I answered a few other lonely hearts, but they weren’t right. I soon as I saw you I knew I wanted to paint you.”

Lynn took that piece of information to heart, and held it there.

Now she lounged on her sofa, somewhere between being asleep and awake, listening to the fire chatter and watching Trevor paint her. It was as close to bliss, or to John Travolta, that she had ever come.

The End

(Copyright Charlotte Otter 2010)

See Part I and Part II.

Lynn Solo II

Lynn made three new piles: those who were over-confident (too much like David), those who were desperate, and those who were in-between. From the in-between pile, she chose three likely candidates: “Nice ’n cosy” Robert, widower of 63; “country lover” Patrick, a bird-watcher and hiking enthusiastic of 49, and “bookish” Trevor, who wanted “only to chat with a nice lady”.

Lynn met Robert at the Wisley cafe – a neutral place. She had RHS membership, and hoped he didn’t mind paying the entrance fee. While Lynn sipped her tea, and picked a croissant into a flaky pile, Robert ate a sandwich, a bowl of soup and a pain au chocolate. His favourite meal was breakfast and he took off on verbal perambulations on the subject of great breakfasts he’d had. His preferred breakfast country, it turned out, was Germany, where breakfast was a marathon that started with Sekt, traversed through eggs, smoked salmon, yoghurt, selection plates of ham and cheese, fruit, came to a rest with mounds of bread, jam (“which they call marmalade”), honey, butter, chocolate spread and collapsed, exhausted, with coffee.

“You’d really enjoy it,” said Robert.

Lynn, looking down at her shredded croissant, doubted it.

Robert went on to talk about his three children, his five grandchildren, his cookery classes and what he’d had for supper the night before. He didn’t mention his wife, but he did talk about being alone, especially in the context of food. He didn’t like cooking and shopping for one, and couldn’t stand going to restaurants alone. Lynn thought he was probably looking for someone to eat with. That was fine with her; when she was hungry she liked to eat. The problem would be watching Robert. He gulped his drinks, lathered crumbs all over his face and chest and talked with his mouth full. Lynn knew she couldn’t spend a minute more with him.

Outside the cafe, croissant crumbs adhering to his chin, he asked her if they would see each other again. As she began to shake her head regretfully, he burst into loud tears. She patted his shoulder until he stopped crying.

“You’re awfully kind,” he said, holding onto her hand. “It’s just that I haven’t had sex in so long.”

Lynn considered this, and made a practical suggestion.

“If that’s the way you feel, then you must pay for it,” she said. She waved and walked blithely away. Robert was his own problem, not hers. It was wonderful to feel nothing about his predicament. She caught a glimpse of herself in the cafe window – cheeks red from the cold, eyes glittering – and blew herself a kiss.

A week later, she called “country lover” Patrick. Lynn very clearly reiterated her “no sex” stipulation and he said he understood. He tried to persuade her to meet at the Worplesdon pub, from where they could have a lovely walk, but Lynn stood firm, insisting on the Wisley cafe where she felt comfortable.

Lynn sat in her spot watching the door. Patrick had mentioned that he generally wore khaki, so she knew him immediately when he came in, dressed head-to-toe in army fatigues. His hair was extremely short, and he had bronzed and muscled forearms. He shook her hand lingeringly and managed to touch her three times before they sat down. Lynn began to think that Patrick, like Robert, had not listened to her.

Her attention wandered while Patrick had a cup of tea and a tuna roll. She remembered the moment in her marriage when she’d realised that David had stopped listening to her. She’d asked him three times if he’d wanted scrambled eggs or spaghetti for tea, and he’d looked up at her from his Atlas Man magazine and said, “I’m not bothered.” As she beat the eggs in the kitchen those three words had pierced her.

“I’m not bothered” had been the theme of her marriage but now he was very bothered about Agnieszka, the Polish facialist. Drifting back to Patrick, who was talking about the range of bird species that Wisley hosted, she noticed that at least he ate neatly.

After finishing his roll, he said, “How about that walk, then?”

Patrick liked talking, which was companionable. He talked her out of the cafe, across the meadow, past the pond and towards the Seven Acres. Guiding her in a gentlemanly fashion along the garden paths, he used every opportunity he could find to pat her arm as he made a point about the mating call of the robin or to bump arms as he pointed out a nest in a tree. Lynn realised he was leading her into the darker recesses of the park near the Arboretum, and that she couldn’t bear listening to him talk or enduring his sly approaches any longer.

“Guess what, Patrick?” she exclaimed, coming to a halt near a bench. “I’ve just remembered I’ve got a dentist appointment. Must be off then!”

Patrick clenched his jaw. “Jesus!” he exclaimed. He beat one of his fists against a nearby tree.

“What did I do wrong this time?” He looked at Lynn, face hardening. “Because when it comes to you women, I always, always do something wrong.”

Lynn didn’t need to think. She said, “Patrick, you talk too much. You should listen more. Be attentive.”

With a jaunty wave, she left him, enjoying the swish of her skirt against the back of her legs as she did so.

(Copyright Charlotte Otter 2010)

To Be Continued …

See Part I here.

Lynn Solo

When her marriage ended, Lynn decided that the only way to have sex was solo. There was too short an interval between having sex with a man and picking up his socks. And after seventeen years of picking up the socks of someone who’d treated her as a human mirror in which to view his charming reflection, she felt it was no longer worth the effort.

Three months after David left and moved in with Agnieszka, a twenty-seven-year-old Polish facialist who’d given him a deep-cleanse, Lynn took a train from Woking into London and visited a subterranean shop in order to select her new sex partner. The shop wasn’t actually underground, but Lynn felt so odd, so removed from herself, on entering it, that it was like being on an escalator to the underworld. With the help of a perky girl with an array of piercings, she selected a piece of pale pink rubbery non-flesh with odd attachments, had a cup of tea at Waterloo, and headed home to get better acquainted.

Solo sex worked for Lynn. She had a couple of screenplays that she filmed on the inside of her eyelids – one involving John Travolta and a log cabin, and another featuring a troupe of feather-clad dancing girls and a large female body-builder. The best thing about it was that the only clothes left on the floor afterwards were hers. Since she now lived alone, she could choose whether to leave them there for a few days in an ecstasy of slovenliness or collect them and do a small low-temperature wash for one.

Life in the days after David left passed very satisfactorily for Lynn. Fortunately, they had not had children, so she had no-one’s grief to manage and didn’t have to hide her palpable relief from anyone. Her mother, enjoying a bout of dementia in a local old-age home, didn’t notice his absence and of their mutual friends only a few had taken her side. The others had followed him to Agnieszka’s Twickenham love-pad, where she imagined them drinking Bellinis on a rooftop terrace and watching the sun set. No-one at work knew him either; although he’d worked at the estate agent’s down the road, he had not been the type to pop into the hobby-shop of a morning and meet Lynn’s fellow crafters.

However, Lynn began to feel it would be pleasant to have a male companion – someone who liked going for walks, enjoyed sitting in front of a fire listening to music and who might enjoy sharing a pot of tea at her favourite cafe in Wisley Gardens. These were all things David had not enjoyed, being far too busy sculpting his abs and selling houses, so it would be nice to find someone who did, a kind of male version of a blanket; warm, cosy and friendly, but with no interest in sex whatsoever.

She scoped out a few potentials. There was the tall sandy man at the Woking second-hand bookshop. They had enjoyed a few conversations about PG Wodehouse and Barbara Pym – her favourite authors – but she suspected that his professorial twinkle might indicate that he was less prepared to be a blanket than to want to get under one.

There was the lovely ruddy man at her garden centre, but he was too jolly to be single. And his attention to detail when she asked about the blight on her roses, and the way he insisted on carrying her plants to the car and tenderly laying them in the boot, indicated that he might want to be tender with certain parts of her that she preferred keeping to herself and her new plastic friend.

As Lynn did some shopping in Woking town centre, she looked at the men around her. Were they all thinking about sex? Or could there be one, just one, amongst them who’d like only to hold hands while going for a country walk?

After giving up on the few single men of her acquaintance, Lynn decided that the way forward was to advertise. She realised too, that she would have to be frank. She placed the advert in the Sunday edition:

“Middle-aged single woman seeks male companion (45 – 60) for country walks, fireside chats and pots of tea. No sex please.”

When she read her own advert in the paper, she decided not to expect any response at all. She hoped, but didn’t actually believe, that there was a man out there who would consider a sex-free relationship. It was not in their make-up, Lynn felt.

There was a torrent of responses. They flooded out of the post box that the paper had recommended she use instead of her home address “to avoid harassment”. Lynn stuffed them into her handbag and into the carrier bags beside the shortbread biscuits, Earl Grey tea and Kittibix, and took them home.

She piled them neatly on the dining-room table, made herself a pot of tea and sat down to read. The first was startlingly graphic, so she quickly threw it on the fire. So were the next five. Lynn began to wonder if she had done the wrong thing: just by mentioning sex, she seemed to have awoken in her respondees an urgent need to persuade her that they were the answer to her sexual dreams. Except that her sexual dreams were only about John Travolta or dancing girls, whom they clearly were not. Also the tone of the early letters was not exactly appealing: the writers were all obsessed with their size and their ability.

Lynn decided the only way to manage the situation was with practical speed and to not let the graphic and bizarre suggestions upset her. She opened every letter and made two piles: those that mentioned sex and those that didn’t. All the ones that mentioned sex, she consigned to the fire. Then she made a fresh pot of tea and started again.

To Be Continued …

(Copyright Charlotte Otter 2010)

Looking Forwards, and Back

I’ve gone off resolutions. I think they set us up for failure. As I try to live more in the moment, I think resolutions make me spend too much time regretting the past and feeling anxious about the future. However, I do believe in goals, and those are what I have for the new year – a series of goals that I can use on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Before I share these, I want to sum up last year before moving forward to this one. If you sense a resolution in this post, feel free to reach out and slap me.

Here are some of 2009’s highlights:

• Finished my novel, twice. The first draft was literary fiction, written in third person, with three voices, and I had no idea where it was going. The second draft was crime fiction, in first person, with a strongly defined beginning, middle and end. There was a narrative arc, growing tension and a main character you could get behind.
• Kept up 2008’s exercise and healthy eating routines, albeit patchily. I completely recognise that exercising comes in spurts for me, and healthy eating is something that comes and goes, with the wind, usually according to how many weddings I have to attend.
• Travelled! South Africa, Crete, Berlin, Switzerland, South Africa, Dubai. Three of those trips were for weddings and each time it was more than worth it to be there and see people I love get married.
• Applied for a job and out of the 180 applicants was one of four people interviewed. I didn’t get the position, but will start writing freelance for the company this month.
• Read many, many books (see my incomplete list of Books 2009), the highlight of which was Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. It’s a triumph of imagination and exacting research. I can’t wait for the sequel.
• Watched my children grow and mature and delighted in who they are becoming.
• Loved my husband truly, madly, deeply. It is a place where I feel both free and hugely connected, which is, I believe, how a relationship should be.
• Visited a doctor who is helping me take control of my migraines (a gum guard and jaw massages – not pretty, but a whole lot better than having to spend two days a month in a darkened room, crying with pain and vomiting).
• Tried to leave the Burg, but found to my surprise that I am still here and despite myself, loving it.
• Enjoyed my blog’s fourth year and met two long-term blog pals (Jeanne, the Cooksister, and Kit, who hosted my family to a superb Sunday lunch. On a Monday.).

And here are my goals – not resolutions – for 2010:

• Tidy up the novel, submit it to my beta readers, then submit to literary agents. Work on the cycle of short stories that I’ve got buzzing under the radar and flesh out my other novel ideas.
• Step up the exercise routine, and let the Christmas eating go. Eat fresh, healthy, life-giving food.
• Keep travelling.
• Keep reading.
• Keep loving my family.
• Step up my freelance writing business: build a website, do some marketing, hire a nanny if necessary.
• Keep fighting the migraines.
• Rediscover the joy in blogging, and tidy up my very out-of-date blogroll.
• Keep trying to leave the Burg. It will happen, one day.

Wishing you all a splendid, successful Twenty Ten.

Adieu, Farewell … till 2010

Dear friends, I have been AWOL and aware of it. Life at Burg Central has been extremely busy, what with D and I having to celebrate our birthdays in the same week as Christmas – mine involved going out for dinner and unwrapping a lovely … hard-drive, whereas hers involved six of her closest friends and a complicated sleepover; three carol services to attend, one in a barn at -5°, the other two actually ON my birthday; Grandma arriving and needing tender loving care; plus Christmas and etcetera to shop and prepare for.

I am taking off, both literally and figuratively. I plan a blogging break until some point in January, and I am also flying to South Africa for a whirlwind visit for my youngest brother’s wedding, with the stopover on the way back in Dubai to have New Year with the very famous G.

All this will be happening … ALONE. I am deserting my family and going away by myself on Christmas Day. I have been dealing with feelings of maternal guilt, but am getting over them. I’m ready for a break, plus the kids have both Daddy and Grandma to look after them.

I will see you on the other side. Wishing you a wonderful festive season, whether it is in the northern or the southern hemisphere, and a good slide, as we like to say here in the Burg, into the new year.

Women Writing

I finished the second draft of my novel on Monday night. This was a complete rewrite of the first draft, and took six months to complete. (The first draft took 15 months.) When I finished, I felt scattered, unsure, anxious. I was prepared to dive in and start a third draft in the voice of yet another character – the feeling of being scattered also pertains to the novel, where I can’t seem to commit to a protagonist. It’s the same story, over and over again, with different narrators.

I went to my new writers’ hangout, Litopia, where I received some sage advice: put the manuscript in a drawer and take a rest from it. Look at it again in six or eight weeks’ time. In the meanwhile, carry around a notebook and note down any novel-related epiphanies. Write other things. Just don’t look at the manuscript.

After a day’s grief (this is my baby; we’ve been together for 21 months), I decided to follow the advice. My emotional reaction to the words of wisdom was indication enough that I absolutely needed to pause, reflect and gain some distance from the words in which I’ve been entangled for nearly two years. I am in no place right now to edit; I’m too tied up to be objective, and I strongly feel it is too early to bring in my readers.

One of the books I read this year was A Room of One’s Own, which made me think about my own writing process, about interruption and about having to live life as well as write about it. Then I read Rachel Cusk’s superb article on women writers in today’s Guardian. Here she talks about the woman writer:

What compromises women – babies, domesticity, mediocrity – compromises writing even more. She is on the right side of that compromise – just. Her own life is one of freedom and entitlement, though her mother’s was probably not. Yet she herself is not a man. She is a woman: it is history that has brought about this difference between herself and her mother. She can look around her and see that while women’s lives have altered in some respects, in others they have remained much the same. She can look at her own body: if a woman’s body signifies anything, it is that repetition is more powerful than change. But change is more wondrous, more enjoyable. It is pleasanter to write the book of change than the book of repetition. In the book of change one is free to consider absolutely anything, except that which is eternal and unvarying. “Women’s writing” might be another name for the book of repetition.

Cusk talks about how both Woolf’s book and de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex shaped the discourse of 20th century women’s writing, a discourse that is about property. She says, “A woman needs a room of her own to be able to write; thus her silence has been the silence of dispossession.”

How funny then, that as I put down the manuscript, I immediately began writing a story about a group of women who get themselves a room. Some like the version of themselves they find there, some learn something and take it back to their real lives, others are inspired to recreate themselves and still others run in terror back to their own lives, hating their new reflection. What happens to us when we are graced with space and time? Why is it so scary? Why is it so much easier to be in the flow of everyday life and not think too hard? Not challenge ourselves?

My family have made sacrifices over the last 21 months for me to get my novel written – my children have had a mother constantly at the laptop, they’ve probably watched too much TV (though they have done some stunning independent crafting too – my son turns out to be a dab hand at basteln), I’ve earned less in the last two years than I have previously, and I’ve been grumpy and distracted. On the other hand, they have a mother who has a passionate interest, and all three of them have written their own books this year, not necessarily completed, but the thought counts.

My writing life will continue to be a juggle, probably forever. But what I love is that as I’ve gained confidence, I’ve taken more time for myself, moved from writing sneakily or when people are sleeping, to openly spending large chunks of time writing. I’ve made the space in my life for my writing. I have given myself that gift, terrifying though it seemed at first to even suggest I deserved it.

Since I stopped writing my manuscript, I’ve written one short story, revived two old ones and started a fourth. Twenty-one months of writing means I have momentum, ideas and energy. I’m getting the novel-related epiphanies, as well as amazing support from online and real life friends. And my family are there, being sweet to me and greeting me with smiles when I deign to arise from the cellar.

I have given myself a room, I have allowed myself the time. All I have to do is keep writing.

South Africa: Drugs for HIV+ Babies

According to a report from the BBC, South African president Jacob Zuma announced today, World AIDS Day, that his government would provide all HIV-positive babies under the age of one with antiretrovirals. He also promised that the drugs would become more widely available to children and pregnant women. Zuma said in his speech at the Pretoria Showgrounds that he was preparing to take an AIDS test himself. He urged everyone to test.

While this may seem a drop in the proverbial ocean, it is also an urgent and imperative about-face from a government that ignored AIDS for too long. A decade of denialism has cost hundreds of thousands of South Africans their lives. It is estimated that by 2015, 5.7 million children – a third of South Africa’s children – will have lost one or both parents to AIDS. There are currently 1.4 million AIDS orphans in the country. I read a blog run by orphan careworkers. Go and see the faces. These are the children who no longer have parents because the South African government acted too slowly to contain the epidemic.

Zuma’s announcement is a positive change, say AIDS activists Treatment Action Campaign. Let’s hope so. Let’s see the South African government save lives instead of waste them.

ETA: Times Live journalist, the very excellent Claire Keeton says World AIDS Day 2009 in South Africa was “an historic event”.

What I Am Grateful For: Books

I am having to cancel our family’s attendance at a Thanksgiving dinner tonight since three out of five are ill, but I am still grateful. Mourning the pumpkin spice cake, but grateful. Like Litlove, today I am grateful for books.

What reason do you have to be grateful for books?

I think we all love to be told stories, and there is nothing better than reading the first few pages of a novel and thinking, “Aha, I’m in the hands of a master.” I love that moment of relaxing into a book, trusting that the author is going to take me somewhere safely and at the end, I will be better for it. So to me books are journeys, escape, freedom, new horizons and new destinations – and I am grateful for those, always.

Is there any author for whose existence you are especially grateful?

It’s hard to say because I have loved different writers at different stages of my life. Right now, the two writers whose work I’m relating to most are Siri Hustvedt and Lionel Shriver – they write burning psychological novels that cut to the quick of what is important. I like being exposed to their world-views, and I love how both write ungendered stories – there is no female perspective or male perspective, but a human one. I gasp in admiration.

What positive aspect does reading have in your day?

Firstly, it provides escape and a welcome one. Daily life can be a grind, and it is a relief to have a book to escape into. I was home with a sick child yesterday, and we snuggled in bed together, he working on getting well and me frantically flipping the pages of Ildefonso Falcone’s Cathedral of the Sea. I also read myself to sleep at night.

What good things has reading taught you?

I’m generally empathetic and a listener, maybe more so because I read. In a way, my reading is selfish – it’s something that’s for me and me only, which as a parent, is a healthy escape. I think it’s sane to have a place to go off to and not be drinking in the family’s every emotional tide. I guess it’s also a learning experience have such personal access to a writer’s mind. Then there are some writers whose minds are so gruesome, I don’t particularly want to spend time there. Reading teaches me discernment. Slightly off-topic, I know that my many hours of reading aloud have turned my kids into readers. I’ve just watched my second child get the bug, and now have the joy of going into her room every night and wrestling the books off her before I switch off the light.

Is there any particular book that’s special to you?

Once again, it’s hard to pin down. I think the Narnia books for cementing my love of reading forever, The Canterbury Tales for teaching me the universal appeal of a story, Othello for teaching me the dark power of jealousy, everything by Athol Fugard for opening my mind to the insidious nature of oppression, Harry Potter for being my birth partner, everything by Nigella Lawson for teaching me how to cook, and everything by my two heroes Siri and Lionel for teaching me that women can write big, intelligent, sweeping books. So, no, would be the answer, not one particular book.

What are you most happy to have read recently?

Chris Cleave’s The Other Hand (known as Little Bee in the US) for an object lesson in voice, my friend Nova’s debut novel Dani Noir for its charm and, come to think of it, another object lesson in voice, and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall for its sheer excellence.