Literatoor

Culture whore that I am, I went to another event from the wonderful Off The Shelf festival last night with my goodly wife. We saw Lionel Shriver read from her last two books, followed by a Q&A session. She spoke really well, and it's interesting hearing different voices to the characters to the ones you imagine, like the different emphasis and intonation. But the best buit was the Q&A session. I was very impressed by the questions fielded, most of which were intelligent and incisive. She answered them all with a natural grace, and it was just great to hear these conversations about ushc a wonderful book (all the questions were on We Need To Talk About Kevin). It was interesting to hear that the last page, in which the reader is given some relief form the torment she has endured and their relationship seems to have some hope, wasn't planned, and even as she was writing the previous page, she was worried the book was going to end on a downer.

I'm looking forward to her next book (out next Spring) - one of her characters is a pro Snooker player! She's a big fan apparently.