Getting 2 Know Marlyn Horsdal

What is the best book you’ve read recently?

It’s hard to choose a single “best book” I’ve read recently, but I think it would be Old Filth, by Jane Gardam. It’s not a new book — I was a bit late getting around to it — but it’s a riveting example of authorial skill. Old Filth himself is a retired lawyer and judge, and what — and particularly how — Ms Gardam chooses to tell us about his life is eye-wideningly brilliant. She has such control of her material! The structure of the book is extraordinary; she lets fall snippets of information in descriptions of people and events, and builds with an extremely light touch toward a revealing explanation and a startling conclusion.   Her language is deceptively simple (like Pat Barker) but it’s virtuoso performance.

And if I could sneak in one more very quickly — The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennet. Delightful!!

If you could do anything for anyone, what would you do?

If I could do something for anyone, I would make it something for everyone, and it would be to immediately reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere to 350 parts per million. Getting us back down to that level would at least give us a future; at the moment, that possibility is looking pretty dim.

We are a most peculiar species. We know perfectly well (except for the few remaining climate-change deniers) that our lifestyle is killing penguins, dooming biodiversity, acidifying the oceans and reducing our own food supplies, and yet our sense of entitlement prevents us from changing. Tragic, isn’t it?

See Marlyn’s novel Sweetness from Ashes