What I'm reading
All 2019 and past years here...
September
The Nickel Boys Colson Whitehead
The Testaments Margaret Atwood
Mothership Francesca Segal
The Secret Commonwealth Philip Pullman
October
Notes to Self Emilie Pine
The Water Cure Sophie Mackintosh
Hamnet Maggie O'Farrell
The Country Girls Edna O'Brien
November
Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie (reread)
The Wych Elm Tana French
WHAT I'M WORKING ON
September 2019
Tomorrow is the first Tuesday after Labor Day in the USA - the day I traditionally went back to school as a child. On Labor Day itself, I would lay out the outfit I planned to wear the next day. After that day I wouldn't really care what I wore, but that first outfit was important.
This week my new novel A Single Thread is published in the UK. (It comes out in the USA on September 17th, and in European countries in the Winter and Spring of 2020.) There is a launch party Thursday, and I've been looking for a 1930s-style tea dress, to reflect what the heroine Violet Speedwell might wear. I think I've found it, and I've laid it out:
Superficial? Maybe. But it's a big week, and instead of freaking out over upcoming interviews on tv and radio, or the launch event in the nave of Winchester Cathedral (where the book is set), it calms me to focus instead on minor details: the dress I'll wear, the necklace, the manicure...Long live books!
