[This interview with James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, took place on August 1st 2008 at the Covent Garden Hotel. James Frey was promoting his novel Bright Shiny Morning. The interview was commissioned by Waterstones’ Books Quarterly Magazine, and appeared there in shortened form. Here is the full thing.] Whether or not his […]
[This interview was conducted, the fax says, 21 Sep 2000 at 10:05.] TL: In Curriculum Vitae you say, ‘It seemed to me that the Comforters of Job were not at all distinct characters; they were very much of one type. They were, in fact, like modern interrogators who come to interview and mock the victim […]
[This interview was for the Penguin Website, and took place in September 2000. As it seems to be down there, I’ve decided to put it up here. The ‘Interview About Interviews’ follows.] ‘Grand,’ was the request received, and grand most certainly was the Georgian Room of the Connaught Hotel – venue of the dinner […]
Vastation When it gets to curtain up, The Librettist is intimately uninvolved in the opera she has co-written. She is aware that, some time in the past, if her fingers had struck a different arrangement of keys, then what is about to happen would be other. That this character is already on stage – that […]
There’s been activity. Life-Like is out. It’s a collection of interlinked short stories, concerning the lives of Paddy & Agatha (from Ghost Story) and the individuals that they meet, and the individuals that those individuals meet, and so on. Some of the stories have appeared elsewhere: ‘Paddy & Kavita’, SHORT FICTION, Issue 2, 2008, edited by Anthony Caleshu ‘Agatha […]
‘Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice.’ T.S.Eliot. ‘Ash Wednesday’ With W.G.Sebald’s death his books changed essentially. At the time (the 11th of December 2001) I had read only two of them: The Rings of Saturn and Vertigo. I was intending […]
The first thing you need to write a novel is… Time. The second thing you need to write a novel is… More Time. And the third thing you need to write a novel is… Even More Time. This perhaps seems a bit obvious. But let me explain. Time, More Time and Even More Time are […]
I seem to spend a lot of time in the company of ghosts. I thought when I finished writing Ghost Story, in about 2003, that I wouldn’t write any more ghost stories. It was my best, most complex go at the genre – and, I believed, I had nothing else to say. There had been […]
Here is the brief article about my grandmother that appeared in the New York Times in August 1914. (This follows on from the article I wrote for the Guardian Family of Saturday 26th July, 2014.) My grandmother, known in the family as Gra, lived on in Lytham St Annes to the age of 105. A […]
‘Neil Gaiman has given me permission to write Death.’ About nine months ago, I found myself whispering this sentence to a comics’ fan. It was an attempt to impress them. They were impressed. I was impressed. I was also scared. Although I wasn’t really supposed to tell anyone, I had been given the extraordinary […]
