This week I was delighted to read Emma Darwin’s post with advice on prologues, particularly as it confirmed my own somewhat jaundiced view that a prologue is more likely to hold-up proceedings that engage the reader, and even a good one is a risk, at least for a wannabe author. Then, lo, up popped an … Continue reading Warning: epilogues can damage your imagination
In State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (this is the first of her novels I’ve read) Maria Singh works for a pharmaceutical company in Minnesota and the last place she wants to go is Brazil, in particular the tributary of the Amazon where her good friend and colleague Anders Eckman has just met his death. But Maria … Continue reading State of Wonder
Once you’ve started to write a novel and to reflect on how it can be achieved, reading becomes not just entertainment but also a learning experience. That’s why I sometimes hesitate to post book reviews here, and why I’ve decided to rename some of them as ‘Writer’s reads’, because the aim is not so much … Continue reading A Writer Reads: Maggie O’Farrell
Maybe it’s because I was brought up a stone’s throw from the first Carnegie Library, but aside from a brief flirtation with book clubs and a couple of periods in my working parent days when I never had time to get to the library, I’ve always read a lot more books than I have bought, … Continue reading Mrs. Kindle and the Slushpile
The blurb on the back of Isabel Ashdown’s second novel (Hurry Up and Wait from Myriad Editions) suggests it’s about a school reunion, but don’t be deceived. This is a novel about school days, or more precisely how it was to be fifteen in 1985. Now it so happens that the mid-eighties somehow passed me … Continue reading Hurry Up and Wait
Ali Bacon, Author 