I'd skimmed through yesterday's G2 in the Guardian about 3 times before I realised there was a 2 page interview with Gwendoline Riley about her new novel "Joshua Spassky." Not recognising someone from a picture, may mean its been a while since you've seen them (true), but her hair is darker, and that fools me every time. Though the web article includes the old, old picture. The interview's interesting, as ever, since she's a sparky conversationalist, even if the headline's concentration on graves and Morrissey seems a little out of place. Talking about "Joshua Spassky" she says "it's pretty obvious that the two characters are in love. What is in doubt is: so what?" which in itself makes me want to read it. Given the notoriously short, but never short-changing, nature of her work I was amused to read that she is one of our more "prolific" novelists, her youthful achievements, like Keats, Fitzgerald (or Wayne Rooney), giving her a relatively advanced c.v. Her next book, she says, is exploring misogyny, a subject I've often touched on myself in stories, (I was going to call a novel "The Misogynist" at one point), so I remain intrigued by one of Manchester's (by adoption) most interesting writers, though I'm not sure that next time I see her on the steps of Central Library I'd recognise her.
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Lured here by the Gwendoline Riley piece, you can no doubt find a minute to sign the online petition to support the long-closed "Band on the Wall", in Manchester's regenerated northern quarter, in its quest to reopen.
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