GUY MANKOWSKI

I often feel like a bit of a fraud when people ask me who my favourite writers are. They seem to be a small, insular crowd which people don’t particularly associate with literary prowess. It seems slightly disingenuous to say that my greatest influences have been records. I’m always attracted to works in which the listener can be drawn in by three or four rich threads. For instance, in Siri Hustvedt’s wonderful novel What I Loved, I found myself enraptured by four or five circling themes that rose recurrently like distant riffs. The idea of faded romance, the way art reveals the psyche of its creator, the vertigo in trying to reign in someone who always remains unknowable, even to themselves. Giving the audience that room is something that in my own writing I’m always trying to achieve. Paul Auster has written eloquently about how he intends his books to ultimately give the reader room to find themselves in. It is perhaps just something I have just found it easier to do with recor...

I read a very interesting blog by fellow Legend Press author Ruth Dugdall the other day, who mentioned that prior to the release of her first novel she wished she had taken the time, just before the novel was released, to ask herself what exactly it was that she expected from her book when it was eventually published. A couple of local book signings, a mention in the local gazette? While I was writing The Intimates for the first time in my life I kept a journal, most of which is filled with vague romantic preoccupations and reflections on the copious numbers of gigs I was attending at that point in my life. But flicking through it last night I noticed one or two mentions to the book that would eventually become The Intimates (known as The Fountains at the time, until my editor Lauren wisely instructed me that that sounded like a Barbara Cartland novel). Reading them I was struck by the rather humble ambitions I originally had for it. For it to be ‘a decent impression of a thoughtfu...