Sunday, October 6, 2013

John Lawton

John Lawton's novels include Second Violin, Flesh Wounds, and Bluffing Mr. Churchill. His thriller Black Out won a WH Smith Fresh Talent Award, A Little White Death was named a New York Times notable book, and A Lily of the Field was named one of the best thrillers of the year by Marilyn Stasio of the New York Times.

Lawton's latest novel is Then We Take Berlin.

Not so long ago I asked the author about what he was reading. Lawton's reply:
Hardly ever do I read a single book by an author. The fit (if such it be) runs to three or four novels before I start looking up from the page.

Two writers preoccupied me in this fashion this summer:

Jim Harrison - I read all his Brown Dog novellas. A remarkable twenty-year achievement. . . a character as unforgettable as Huck Finn, for much the same reasons. If Twain had ever bothered to give us Huck as a grown-up he would have been lot like Brown Dog.

Paul Auster - I hate reflexive modernism, books about writing books? Yeah, right. But. . . he got to me. How can I go on spending quite so much time in New York and not read Auster? So I did. A stunning, enviable prose style and a sense of the tissue-thin nature of reality that keeps me hooked. Favourite so far, Moon Palace.
Visit John Lawton's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Then We Take Berlin.

--Marshal Zeringue