If you aren't a reader and you have a kid with his face buried in books, it can be a bit threatening. My parents viewed my reading as somewhat effeminate, but also subversive on some level.
The only responsible way to write about anything is with honesty.
The experience of writing under a pseudonym was tremendously liberating; I could write what I wanted.
Jill Eisenstadt's comic second novel, 'Kiss Out,' is a work of such extravagant wackiness, eccentricity, and exuberance that any attempt to squeeze it into the confines of a simple plot summary seems doomed to failure and is possibly pointless.
I loved Victoria Glendinning's bio of Vita Sackville-West. I also loved Michael Holroyd's immense biography of Lytton Strachey.
It's hard to imagine anyone accusing Lionel Shriver of being a timid writer.
