I wrote about Georges Simenon and the Maigret books for the Penguin Books website. Simenon’s productivity was legendary: he wrote most of his novels in 10 or 11 days, and it’s reported that Alfred Hitchcock once rang him only to be told that Simenon was incommunicado, writing a new book. “That’s all right,” replied Hitchcock. “I’ll wait.”
Click here to read my review in The Times of the concluding part of J. M. Coetzee’s trilogy about a boy and his ‘parents’ in a mysterious world both like and unlike our own. Title contains spoilers.
Click here to read my review in The Spectator of Sarah Hall’s sexy and cerebral new collection of stories Sudden Traveller.
If you’ve ever wondered what I sound like, it’s your lucky day! Click here to listen to me discuss some books of the year with podcasters Olivia Bright and Carrie Plitt on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book, hosted by Mariella Frostrup.
Click here to read my review of highly regarded memoirist and editor Diana Athill’s only novel, first published in 1967 and now reissued.
“When they start discriminating against British people at European borders, they’re not going to go after white British people, they’re going to go after people like me.”
Click here to read my interview in The Guardian with Meena Kandasamy, whose new novel Exquisite Cadavers is one of the most unusual and interesting books of the year.
“My husband wants to keep me grounded. He sees that as his mission! You don’t have to keep me grounded, I’ve had a long life, I’m very grounded!”
Click here (no paywall) to read my interview with Bernardine Evaristo in the Irish Times, taking in the Booker, Britain’s hidden black history, literary innovation and French & Saunders.
