Otherwise, here is the link to the sessions I'll be appearing in at the Melbourne Writers Festival.
I'm thrilled to learn that Life in Seven Mistakes is Number Three on the Highest New Entries list of the Bookseller and Publisher for August 2 and Number Five on the Most Mentioned list for August 10. Now even a review-shy author is very pleased to hear that.
I won't be blogging again until I come back from Australia at the end of August. Very much looking forward to meeting up with friends, collegues and readers at the Festival -- am off now to endure the hideous 24 hour flight to Oz. Can't someone please tow it closer? (Actually, no. I love the idea of Australia's uniqueness, the shape of it cut so precisely into the sea...long may it stay in its isolated majesty -- and of course it is only isolated from the point of view of somewhere else, and not isolated at all when you are standing on it -- if you see what I mean). See you!
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It was more a case of Cactus in Catus than Last Tango in Toulouse I'm afraid. I am finally back in London after the car gave up the ghost ( terminal mort en France )....resting now in a scrap yard in the wilds of the Lot, co-incidentally the very same region where the Australian writer Mary Moody was seduced by the charms of the man from Toulouse.
I don't know anything about the charms of Frenchmen from Toulouse but I can tell you a bit about car mechanics from Catus. The mechanic turned up with a tow truck which did not fill me with confidence. She was a woman with a bad case of eczcma on her hands and wrist, bandaged up, so that when she shook my hand in greeting, it was like shaking hands with the invisible man. (Doesn't the invisible man wrap himself in bandages when he wants to be seen? I might be making this up...)
I believe my book has come out. Oh, yes. There is nothing like having your car blow up and having to make a decision whether to fix it or scrap it, then get back to London in the company of two children, enough luggage to fill a car but not to carry back by hand via two hire cars, two taxis, a ferry (on and off with all the luggage that used to fit in the car) to make you forget such a thing.
And Elliot caught nits.
Apologies to everyone who has contacted me. I will respond when I have gathered my wits. And a big thank you to Emma and Sandra and Margaret who are vetting all my reviews. Actually, I think now that I have braved un catastrophe mixed reviews are a walk in the park.
Will get to the Melbourne Writers' Festival stuff too...
Bon courage tout le monde! La vie continue!
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This flurry of activity is because I am going away, and won't be posting again till mid-August.
I am not entirely sure that my foray into youth culture (see right: NEW!!! Susan goes groovy!!!) is appropriate behaviour for a 51 year old woman but, hey, I'm not a baby-boomer for nothing. We invented youth culture, sonny!
Toodlepip, bruv...more about the Melbourne Writers' Festival schedule when I get back.
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If anyone is getting the impression from this blog that the literary life is generally more one of struggle than of pleasure, well, sometimes there are some very great pleasures to be had along the way.
One such pleasure for me was during my (brief) return to journalism as editor of the (now defunct) Saturday Extra Saturday Extrasection of the Melbourne Age was commissioning articles from writers who would not normally get a shoe-in. I know a lot of people thought that book about the baby-boomers controlling the media in Oz was a lot of bollocks (what was it called again?) but in my experience you read the same tired old names all the time in Australian newspapers. I could easily happily live the rest of my life without seeing the name 'Phillip Adams' again in print (although I think his ABC radio show Late Night Live is rather wonderful).
Anyhoo, one of the undiscovered writers I commissioned was a terrific writer by the name of Dmitri Kakmi (I was alerted to his work by the equally terrific artist and children's book writer, Leigh Hobbs). Dmtri wrote an intelligent, eloquent, poetic piece about growing up in Turkey, the child of Greek parents, and his double sense of dislocation from this experience, combined as it was with that of a child later exiled to Australia.
Very happily, this essay has grown into a memoir, released this week by the excellent Giramondo. Now that is a result, and a great pleasure indeed!
Go out and buy it.
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