I want to fly backwards in time, and head for my old Art Nouveau apartment – the one my children and I used to share with our newly opened school. It was right in the historic heart of Kraków, within earshot of the quarter-hourly chimes that drifted from an aortic plethora of medieval churches and [...]
Is there anyone out there? Or to be more specific, is there anyone out there who, like me, was once part of a busy, noisy, thriving family, tangled up in all its inevitable joys and woes, and who now suddenly finds themselves alone? If you are out there, then you’ll understand how I feel as [...]
I wonder how many of us ever get our lives right first time round? And I wonder if there only ever is a first time round. But that’s a deep spiritual question which I don’t want to get into. Most of us have enough things on our plates without worrying about whether or not this [...]
I was wondering whether to put ‘Cultural Differences’ instead of ‘Koreans’ in my title. Could ‘Koreans’ somehow sound a bit … I don’t know … politically incorrect, I wondered. Especially since the word is followed by ‘autism’ and ‘isolation’, neither of which has positive associations. But no, I decided to stick to ‘Koreans’. After all, [...]
I had my first child and my first puppy in close proximity of each other. The puppy was a female mongrel of eight weeks, the child a female toddler of sixteen months. And the novel I was working on at the time was about twelve months old. That is, I’d been writing it for the [...]
I thought I’d have a blog-chat about something completely different this week. Namely, about a novel that everyone in the bookish world appears to be talking about of late: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelikes. I’ve read a lot of books this summer holiday, but The Silent Patient is one that I have found almost impossible [...]
I recently read an interview with a writer who said that she far preferred fictional love stories to real life. The longer I live, the more I agree with that sentiment. I guess that’s why some people write, and some people read, and some people do both. And some people are really, really lucky, and [...]
