Author Archives: susan

2022 was another messy and occasionally downright miserable year on Planet Earth. Russia invaded Ukraine. Covid rumbled on, and despite the end of restrictions, it still does; we just don’t seem to talk about it any more. Where it didn’t … Continue reading →

I’d read and enjoyed two very different books by Heather Rose – the luminous and moving Stella Prize winner The Museum of Modern Love and the gripping political thriller Bruny. I’d never read an interview with her, and I didn’t … Continue reading →

Alastair Santhouse is a consultant psychiatrist at a couple of large London hospitals, and this books draws largely on his work at the intersection of  physical and mental health, with many stories of individual patients as well as his thoughts … Continue reading →

I’m feeling well again, at last. I haven’t had a cold/virus/bug this bad for many years, and it’s come as a bit of a shock. It wasn’t Covid or flu…just stay-in-bed horrible. So lots of reading. When I’m unwell, I … Continue reading →

One day last July, feeling delighted and compelled to both wonder about and share that delight, I decided that it might feel nice, even useful, to write a daily essay on something delightful. I remember laughing to myself for how … Continue reading →

  The difference between my life and a story is I don’t actually need drama and problems for it to have meaning. One of the well-kept secrets of writing is that when we’re really in The Flow, when we’re following … Continue reading →

Last night we watched a DVD. Remember them? It was a 1944 movie called Murder My Sweet, based on Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely. It was the first film outing for Chandler’s famous PI Phillip Marlowe; he was played not … Continue reading →

What I really want to talk about is the short story form itself, and these are good stories for that purpose: simple, clear, elemental… For the young writer, reading the Russian stories of this period is akin to a young … Continue reading →

Recently I swore off crime novels (nightmares, basically) but here I am, back again. We started watching Mindhunter on Netflix. It’s about how the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit gathered information from convicted serial killers, so they could begin to understand … Continue reading →

Isn’t this glorious? It’s called pandorea pandorana, or wonga wonga vine, but as I put out the washing this morning with this fecund froth of flower, bud and blossom bursting into full, overblown sweetness close by, what came into my … Continue reading →