Life with small children means you can’t be too picky or precious about how you read. I need solitude and silence to write but can read anywhere. My main concern, when buying a stroller, was finding one I could manoeuvre with one hand, so that I was able to push the sleeping baby and hold a book at the same time.
You can prop up a book pretty much anywhere: at the back of a stove, on the top of the dryer, against the sink taps. I find sisyphean domestic tasks greatly improved by the presence of a good book.
I also have terrible insomnia so quite a bit of my reading happens in the middle of the night. Insomnia, though annoying and debilitating, is rather useful for getting a novel under your belt. There’s a wonderful clarity to the thought processes you have in the middle of the night: perfect for reading.
I’ve recently been inspired by Amy Bloom’s exquisite Where the God of Love Hangs Out to go back and re-read her earlier short story collections. She writes with such grace, panache and precision. I always cry at the Julia and Lionel stories. As a writer who takes over 300 pages to say what she wants to say, I’m always aghast at how much breadth and plot she manages to encompass in such a short space. Her stories are like Japanese netsukes: lessons in perfection, fascination and scale.
Maggie O’Farrell’s latest novel is The Hand that First Held Mine.
