I am in the bank. “Date of birth?” the cashier asks. I tell her and she smiles – an action that transforms her from a bank teller into a real person. “That’s in two days,” she says. “Happy Birthday. Do you have any plans?” I have plans that involve the cinema,
The WiFi didn’t always work. The vinyl seats – the big ones upstairs, the ones like couches – were pretty worn. Some people might call them shabby. Even though the table next to the bathroom was big, you were better off choosing one of the other ones near the front, because the
Last week I went to a book club where they had read my latest novel. I like going to book clubs. I like to talk about my novels. I like the way arguments break out over the characters as if they are real people because to me they are real people. I also like
The first time I made the journey was on the train, one of three Irish girls with pale skin and oversized backpacks. Boarding at Penn Station, we’d been nervous, indecisive about where to sit, moving twice before deciding on the four seater nearest the door so we could watch the bags while we stood between
The first time I heard the word “lezzer” I was playing a game called “Home Truth.” My friends and I played every day for years and that day two of us were hiding in a hedge between two gardens. A boy cycled up the driveway behind us. He was a boy we never asked to
Last month, I turned 40. Having an age that ends with a ‘0’ makes you think – it makes me think. And the collision of this milestone birthday with the publication of my third novel is making me think about writing, and its place in my life. When people ask if I always wanted to
The year I turned 30 I took three months off from my job to write. I’d always wanted to write a novel – I’d talked about it for most of my 20s. But at 30, I was ready to really give it a go. I was ready to write, rather than talk about writing. Now,
I have something else I should be doing right now, a whole list of things in fact. I hadn’t planned on writing a blog post today and certainly not this one. But sometimes things happen that you just need to write about – that I just need to write about – and this is one
Last year, I was honoured to be asked by Colum McCann to take part in the launch of his non-profit project Narrative 4 and to write 800 words on the first assignment: “How to be a man.”My take on this is below and you can read pieces from other writers and find out more about
I don’t like waiting. I don’t like waiting and I’m not very good at it. I don’t have a lot of – what’s it called again? – patience, that’s it. I don’t have a lot of patience. People are sometimes surprised to hear that. Some people have even remarked on my patience, praised me for
