Yesterday I met a couple named Joe and Mary in Boston downtown. I had been to them, exchanged pleasantries and asked if I could donate some monies for the peace and the yeomen service they are doing. The couple who also spoke in Hindi gave a big smile and said, "we are just giving a message of peace to our fellow Americans." I was nonplussed for a while and the smile meant that I could help them by standing with the placards for a while. They...

I read the introduction by Jonathan Franzen. I can’t remember much of what he said. I’d guess that he talked about the way she makes a long story a short story. I’d guess that he talked about the way characters come to life on the page and just when you figure you’ve got a fix on them they do something that throws you, a poetic volte, and the story switches direction, goes on a different track that lets the reader see the characters—their...

Hard to do; to make a play with 3 main characters which is confined to one room into a production which works on widescreen cinema. The Young Vic made a cracking good job of it. It helps that Blanche, Stella and Stan do not simply talk, they drink themselves insensible, shout, fight and screw with clothes on. Physical stuff. At least one person in the cinema last night walked out, she did not know the story and the title tells us little. Perhaps...

Rebecca sits at number eight on fiction classics at Sainsbury books ( The Great Gatsby in number one). My Cousin Rachel is a more mature work with echoes of Manderlay. Du Maurier loved her English home so much that even her two daughters took second place to the house and gardens. When du Maurier locked herself in her study to write – they no longer existed. It’s all here, the English upper class that run the world. Ambrose Ashley is a...

Ewan Lawrie , a long-time editor on ABCtales, is two-thirds of the way to publishing his historical novel Gibbous House on Unbound. If you haven't already, have a look at the short movie and the excerpt of the book on his Unbound page . Gibbous House was written in serial form on ABCtales - and influenced by many of you. Ewan talked to us about that process, about intertextuality and the identity of the mysterious Moffat. 'Moffat is an imposter...

The first letter dated September 1982 is addressed to Dear Vic (that’s Nina’s sister) and she gives her address as 53 Gloucester Crescent London NW1. If you’ve got an NW1 address the Mosaic algorithm which credit companies favour and sorts postcodes into easy to read bundles, which brackets what kind of person you are, by where you live, and determines how much credit you can be pushed, would use terms for NW1ers as Cultural Leaders (or Global...

Prose with added line breaks? Once I got down to a careful read I decided Ruth's poetry has a poetic drive and flow. Often quietly fiery; '.....Fire the best servant and also the most dangerous.' (Fire). Personal and also far ranging poetry. There is a sequence of 19 sibyl poems: Delphic Sibyl, Shinto Sibyl, Blocked Sibyl, Hallucinating Sibyl... Each unit works as a stand-alone and she also captures the weirdness of the job; women kept in a cave...

Northanger Abbey isn’t so much a place as a time. In the introduction to Jane Austen’s (2000) Northanger Abbey the reader is informed it was written in 1897-8, but not in publication until 1803. So it’s a relatively old book, written in English, in a style of indirect free discourse (whatever that means) which Austen patented. It is also steeped in the sensibilities and, in particular, the Gothic literature of the time. The reader is addressed...

You see, being a fantasist can be a problem. Unless you write. In which case it can be a good thing. Maybe. It means you might not sleep too much. You might fall out with people who used to like you – before you started going crazy. You might have a little trouble holding down a job – although I still try. I’ve held down jobs through worse. And anyway, there’s always the outside chance you’ll get noticed and someone will start making some money...