Have you ever read a book that felt like it was looking directly into your soul? A book that gave you the exact push you needed to return to a long-lost passion or project? I've just finished reading Virginia Evans’ masterpiece, The Correspondent, and I am still reeling. It's a spectacular novel – elegantly paced, [...]
There’s a thin dividing line between being loyal to your parents and exorcising the demons they cause in your life. I tried to exorcise those demons by writing a novel, Infinite Stranger, about the very close yet complex relationship between a mother and daughter, and the unattainable man who came between them. More specifically, it [...]
The following passage is from my novel,The Diary Keeper, set in Kraków in the snowy winter of 1992 - not unlike the one we're living through right now! The book is a tongue-in-cheek love story about a cranky photocopy-shop owner, Leo, and a mysterious young woman, Tamara, who keeps returning to his shop with a [...]
It’s Good Friday today. That might or might not mean anything to you. To be honest, it’s never meant much to me — despite my many attempts over the years to feel the solemnity of the day. But today, it does mean something. Today, the weight and permanence of death — and the hope of [...]
Before going any further, full disclosure. If you’re someone who hated your schooldays and never wants to be reminded of them, then maybe this blog post isn’t for you. But on the other hand, why not give it a go? My own schooldays weren’t exactly plain sailing – there were some pretty grim experiences, some [...]
‘Wow, you all looked so glamorous back then!’ my daughter said to me the other day, with more than a touch of envy. We were browsing through a selection of old photo albums from the late 1980s and early 1990s, and happened to stop at one particularly fetching snapshot: the one I ended up selecting [...]
Don’t you sometimes just want to grab Time by the scruff of its neck and drag it backwards? Yell at it, “Stop moving! Stop running away from me! Hey, I haven’t finished here yet, dammit, I’m only halfway through … WAIT, can’t you let me take a breath before hurtling forwards again?” And how does [...]
