Where were you born, and where did you grow up?
I was born and raised in Belfast during The Troubles. My parents grew up in working class families and were determined to ‘better themselves’. When my older brother was eight they bought a newly built, three bed semi-detached house and moved from the central area of the city to what was then its outskirts. They still live there today.
My sister and I were born after this move. My brother left home when I was six so I never really got to know him – he now lives in Australia. My sister and I both passed the 11+ exam and attended an all girl state run grammar school before going up to the local university. We continued to live with my parents, although I did move into student digs for around six months after yet another row about my behaviour – aged twenty I was staying out beyond my curfew and drinking alcohol. I suspect we all wish I could have afforded to stay away, but my part time job wouldn’t cover the rent longer term.
Belfast felt parochial, cut off from what we referred to as the mainland due to the violence. We were expected to attend church and conform to a code of conduct that demanded we put on a front to the world of chastity and sobriety. It always felt that what I was seen to be mattered more to my parents than what I was or aspired to.
Despite this I look back on a largely happy childhood. Certainly at the time I felt loved. My determination to leave Belfast and to be myself stems from the frustration of being guilt tripped into conforming to a wide range of strictures I didn’t agree with. Continue reading Blogosphere Interview | Jackie Law, Never Imitate, @followthehens
Tag: bookblast online
Review | Green Lion, Henrietta Rose-Innes | Book of the Week
In the popular imagination, Africa is one great big game reserve where man can hunt to his heart’s content, relishing the thrill of the dangerous chase. Theodore Roosevelt, and Ernest Hemingway (that hackneyed darling of writing course instructors), recounted testosterone-fuelled tales of derring-do as they pursued their prey across the vast “uncivilized” plains of Africa. Roosevelt returned to the US with thousands of specimens – lions, elephants, rhinoceros – duly donated to the Smithsonian Institution. Disney’s film The Lion King is the second-highest-grossing Disney film of all time. It depicts all kinds of animals frolicking across great, untamed African landscapes devoid of human beings – whereas the reality is more likely to be that Africa becomes a great landscape empty of animals.
Green Lion is a deftly-executed novel about man and beast and extinction; about bereavement, animal magic and the human desire for connection. It opens with the mauling of volunteer zoo keeper, Mark Carolissen, who ends up in hospital in a coma. He was looking after a rare black-maned Cape Lion, Dmitri, kept in kept in captivity for breeding with lioness, Sekhmet. Visitors gawp in thrilling terror at the kings of the animal world, safe behind glass. Continue reading Review | Green Lion, Henrietta Rose-Innes | Book of the Week
Spotlight | BookBlast® on the blogosphere
The literary blogosphere is pullulating with writing and opinions on every imaginable subject, era, or school of writing; writers promoting books; readers offering an opinion or amateur reviews; and comment by informed book critics. Here are a few favourites . . .
– blogs for Francophiles
Paris Diary by Laure is ‘a very personal and subjective view of Paris life, like a morning phone call to my best friend’.
The Paris Review was founded in Paris by George Plimpton and friends in 1953 to introduce important writers of the day. The blog is great for readers wanting a shot of culture, but are short on time to read in depth.
Gallic Books publish some of the best French writing available in English translation. Publisher, Jane Aitken, was interviewed exclusively for The BookBlast Diary in November 2016.
– blogs for design aficionados
Browns Editions offer a design feast for the eyes and über-chic ideas.
Thames & Hudson has been an independent, family-owned company since it was founded in 1949 and its World of Art series of books is especially well known.
For that stylish LA look, you couldn’t do better than Mallery Roberts Morgan – a Los Angeles-based writer, curator and interior designer; and the Los Angeles correspondent of Architectural Digest France.
– blogs offering informed opinions
The Times Literary Supplement’s blog about books and ideas is a must-read regular.
Andrew Gallix is editor-in-chief of 3:AM Magazine, credited by The Guardian as being the first literary blog ever. He writes fiction and criticism, edits books, and teaches at the Sorbonne.
Maria Popova’s brain-pickings is a treasure trove of the heteroclite and the offbeat; an inspiring resource for browsing and sharing.