My absolute favorite writer Piers Paul Read – US link/UK link has a new book out shortly and as a result is the focus of The Guardian’s “A Life in Books” Feature. The new book is The Misogynist and is just out in the UK with no mention of a US release date. The interview relates how based on himself the books lead character is:

(Read) says the leading character, Jomier, is based “a bit on myself and a bit on some people I know. We both live the wrong side of Shepherd’s Bush, but the drains don’t back up in my house. He’s a divorced atheist and I’m a married Catholic. But we do share some views on modern life.”

I haven’t read The Misogynist yet – it hasn’t even arrived here yet – so it might be a bit soon to discuss it but from the Amazon desription it sounds like a return to his great form of the seventies and eighties:

Jomier broods. He broods about the present, He broods about the past. He types his gloomy thoughts onto his computer screen – a digital journal. When he has nothing more to say about the present, he returns to the past, copying entries from old notebooks onto his computer. Jomier has reached the age of retirement. His children have grown up. He lives alone in London, embittered and humiliated after his wife, Tilly, had an affair and left him for Max, an uninhibited international banker. Years later he still mourns the death of his marriage, often trying to pinpoint when, and why, it all went wrong. With little now left to fill his time other than formulaic middle-class dinner parties, Jomier seeks refuge in his journals, recalling those years when he had expectations and when he was still loved by his wife. Then Jomier falls for Judith and life starts to improve as, cautiously, they start an affair. But old habits die hard and patterns repeat themselves. It is only when Jomier’s daughter falls ill with a rare blood disorder that Jomier finally begins to reassess his feelings towards those he loves and his ability to forgive. Darkly humorous, ruthlessly satirical and at times surprisingly moving, “The Misogynist” is a perceptive exploration of the ways in which we can unintentionally let past disappointments affect our present, and how difficult it can be to move forward.

I love Read’s gloomier stuff and I can see why he snagged such a good publisher for this work (Bloomsbury).

The Guardian article reveals much I didn’t know about Read – and I am quite the fanboy:

• He once shared a flat with Tom Stoppard
• He was a a shy, plump, spotty youth
• His account of Andes plane crash survivors resorting to cannibalism, Alive – US link/UK link (1974), went on to become a hit movie and sell five million copies
• He feels embarrassment at the thought of his grandchildren reading the sex scenes in his books

and many many others.

There is a great quote from Read about the great success of Alive – US link/UK link:

It was wonderful to be so popular but it probably damaged my career as a literary author. I was a fashionable young novelist, but the fact that I wrote different sorts of books didn’t help. For instance Alive appealed to young men who liked true adventure stories, but my next book, Polonaise, was a novel about a sexually perverted Polish intellectual. Each book seemed to lose the market gained by the previous one. But at least Alive allowed me to live a comfortable life and raise four children.”

I have never read Alive – US link/UK link – it is the only one of his I’ve missed – and I have read the others multiple times each. I think I’ll I buy it today.

The interview is fascinating and the The Misogynist sounds great.