Month: February 2014

Historical novelist Maria McCann on Ace, King, Knave

[An] exuberant revivification of grave robbers and gamblers, hucksters and whores in 18th-century London: like Hogarth sprung to life. – Hilary Mantel, Books of the Year 2013, Observer This is my second interview with Maria McCann – I first interviewed her back in 2010 about her previous novel, The Wilding, which was longlisted for the Orange Prize. That novel was set during the Restoration in 1672. For her new book, Ace, King, Knave, Maria has moved forward almost a century to the Georgian England of the mid-1760s. The novel is the tale of two young women: Sophia, born into the Somerset aristocracy, and Betsy-Ann, the daughter of travelling fair people, and their relationship with the same man, though they each know him under a different name. To Sophia, he is Mr Zedland, heir to an estate in Essex with an elegant townhouse in London. The man Betsy-Ann knows as Ned, however, comes from a much more disreputable background. The Georgian capital is a world where everyone, whether highborn or low, is looking for the Great …

Jon Ronson on The Psychopath Test

Early on in his book The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson writes: Having explored the world of extremists in Them, and the wilder shores of the US military’s psychic operations in The Men who Stare at Goats, Jon decided to turn his attention to psychopaths. In this entertaining interview, he explains why. To listen, click here. And to read the first chapter of the book, click here.

Inside Writing: The Faber Academy podcast (1)

We recorded the first Faber Academy podcast last autumn. The aim is very simple: to bring together two writers (or a writer and editor) and get them to discuss a theme or a skill likely to be of interest to other writers. The guests on each programme select a text to focus the discussion and to give listeners something read (or reread) afterwards. My guests on this first podcast were novelist Louise Doughty (above left), author most recently of Apple Tree Yard, and her editor at Faber, Sarah Savitt. The text they chose was Anne Enright’s The Forgotten Waltz, and the theme Unreliable Narrators. The podcasts are free, not tied to any particular course, and not intended to sell you something. While they are principally aimed at new writers, my hope is that hearing authors talk about what they have worked out about their craft will also be of interest to readers. In this first podcast, among the things we touch on are: keeping a writer’s notebook, reading with a novelist’s eye, self-delusion, John Le …