01-05-2025
Which author does Patrick Galbraith think is 'cold and detached'
What book...
... are you reading now?
I AM just coming to the end of Lamorna Ash's Don't Forget We're Here Forever: A New Generation's Search For Religion.
Her first book, on the Cornish fishing community, written with wide-eyed wonder when she was in her early 20s, was excellent, and her second is even better.
She has that great skill of writing narrative non-fiction in a nuanced way, subtly revealing the complexities of humanity.
One stand-out moment is her presentation of a young guy who hears voices – the doctors want to prescribe antidepressants, his church tells him it's the Devil and they'll pray for him. Neither is presented as being better because, after all, which of these approaches will actually help him the most: faith or pills with myriad side effects?
... would you take to a desert island?
I WOULD have to take John Williams's Stoner or Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes. In both instances I would pore over their prose style and try to understand how they write so brilliantly.
I did once spend eight days in a cave on an uninhibited Scottish island – I took Alexander Trocchi's Cain's Book ('one of the early junky books', in the words of William S Burroughs) and it was the most intense reading experience of my life. It was March and it was very cold. Having no phone reception is a great way to truly read.
...first gave you the reading bug?
THE first book I really remember having a big impact on me was Gerald Durrell's My Family And Other Animals. It made me feel very acutely how great writing can conjure up a long-lost world and I loved Margot, of course, Gerald's sister.
Some years later I went to Corfu and was intensely disappointed. Bad food, no Margot, no Spiro.
I also have a very clear memory of staying off school and pretending I was sick so I could read Jane Eyre – Bertha Mason is a character I think of often. Growing up is realising Bertha was a victim.
...left you cold?
A YEAR or so ago, it seemed as though everybody was going mad for Joan Didion. Sadly I've never really got the hype. She's got that sort of cold, detached, clever girl-in-the-year-above thing going on. I like writers who are excited by life.
