Sunday, May 31, 2015

Renée Knight

Renée Knight worked for the BBC directing arts documentaries and has had TV and film scripts commissioned by the BBC, Channel Four, and Capital Films. In April 2013, she graduated from the Faber Academy "Writing a Novel" course, whose alumni include S. J. Watson. She lives in London with her husband and two children.

Knight's new psychological thriller is Disclaimer.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

I'm half way through this and love it. It's a sharp, unflinching look at a family and yet reads soft and beguiling. It's funny and I find myself smiling a lot, but there is a tension running through it with an undercurrent of, not menace exactly, but something uneasy. There is a casual ease to the writing and the structure, as if it just fell into place which of course it did not. A testimony to a brilliant writer. I am sorry every time I have to put this book down.

Through the Window: Seventeen Essays and a Short Story by Julian Barnes

This has been next to my bed since my husband gave it to me a few years ago. The essays are about writers and fiction. There is a wonderful quote on the back: 'novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, how it goes wrong, and how we lose it....' I love Julian Barnes' novels and his essays have the same calm, precise style. I am in awe. The first essay is 'The Deceptiveness of Penelope Fitzgerald' and, being a rather orderly person, this is where I began. As a fifty something woman about to write her first novel it stiffened my resolve to read that Penelope Fitzgerald had her first one published at the age of fifty-eight. What comes through in these essays is Barnes' generosity and honesty. I like having this book next to my bed and am in no rush to finish it.
Learn more about Disclaimer at the publisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue