Nottingham Novelist
My partner Sue died five weeks ago today. I’m not ready to write about her at length – I’ll be writing the introduction to her final collection of poetry, What to do Next, which she completed in April, when I feel up to it. However I know that people will come to this website looking for information, so here’s some. Our dear friend David Almond has written Sue’s obituary for The Guardian, and done a beautiful job. Thanks also to Graham Lester George, who snapped the accompanying photo, which captures Sue so
Martin Amis was the only contemporary novelist that my late friend Stanley Middleton kept up with. I tuned in with ‘Other People’ and greatly enjoyed ‘Money’, went off him with ‘London Fields’ but really liked ‘The Information’. I didn’t get on with ‘Night Train’ or ‘Time’s Arrow’ (a gimmick that worked when I first read it as a short story but didn’t at novella length). I decided to give up on him after the execrable ‘Yellow Dog’ but Stan persuaded me to read ‘House of Meetings’ and it was really good. I a