She’s a year into her grief and the lover sometimes seems to appear. Physically, he’s falling apart. He says things that may or may not make sense. You think: this is a book that’s not trying, remotely, to be like something else. It’s quirky and peculiar — and all the better for it. She explains her take on lots of writers, artists and film-makers. It’s about how stories and ideas can have a life of their own. Terrific on Dickens, Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf and Alfred Hitchcock, among many others.
