In The End, All You Want Is

The Best Fiction Stays With You And Changes You.

In The Mess Of Moving From Place To Place, I Skipped Two Grades In The Space Of One Year.

Everything Necessary To Understand My Grandfather Lies Between Two Stories: The Story Of The Tiger’s Wife, And The Story Of The Deathless Man. These Stories Run Like Secret Rivers Through All The Other Stories Of His Life – Of My Grandfather’s Days In The Army; His Great Love For My Grandmother; The Years He Spent As A Surgeon And A Tyrant Of The University. One, Which I Learned After His Death, Is The Story Of How My Grandfather Became A Man; The Other, Which He Told To Me, Is Of How He Became A Child Again.

At The End Of The Day, Despite All The Other Great Things That Literature Does In Society And In A Person's Life, I Think That We Read To Escape. And I Think That Place, More Than Anything, Provides That Escape Quickly, If An Author Is Engaged With The Place.

In Terms Of People That I Know, My Grandmother And My Mother Are Huge Influences On My Writing Life Because They Are Both Massively Supportive And Always Have Been Of My Career.