Nasim Marie Jafry's Blog, page 12

Radio 3: Childhood, memory, autobiographical narrative & fiction

I have been for some time now been attempting a novella which involves a fierce scraping of my memories in order to fictionalise events in the life of my Pakistani doctor father. Apart from the usual writing/energy challenges, it feels like quite a brutal mining of myself, and for reasons beyond me the narrative is emerging as third person omniscient. A writer friend suggested that the technical challenges of this point of view mirror the emotional challenges. I like that theory.
I am, therefo...

Lou Reed, Doris Lessing and Lionel Shriver

I felt sad about Lou Reed, 71 is not old (especially as I am approaching 50). You feel sad not only for the (at times, grumpy) man, but for the person you were when you listened to his music. Transformer was an album I listened to countless times with my first boyfriend in early 80s. We were together for five years. I can still see us taking the album out of the sleeve to put it on the record player. He lived in a 'rough' area and his dad was a communist. He'd shout upstairs, It's time Nasim...

'While my brain is not shaming me.'

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On the same page

I saw Dr Nigel Speight, retired consultant paediatrician, speak yesterday afternoon, it was a joy to listen to a doctor express such openmindedness and curiosity and compassion about ME. He was on the panel of the International Consensus Criteria 2011, so it is not surprising he is such a great advocate. It was frightening to hear what some children with severe ME are being exposed to in terms of psychiatric assessments. Shame on all of those assessors. This from an ME conference in Northern...

A Tale For The Time Being, some thoughts

I have only read one of the Man Booker-shortlisted novels and am afraid I was rather underwhelmed. Here is my recent Goodreads review of  A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. Even some of those readers who loved the book and gave it 5 stars seemed to find the sections narrated by 'Ruth' to be a little dull. I really was disappointed in this novel but have tried to highlight the positives as well as the negatives - it is always easier to write the negative stuff when talking about a b...

'Everyone must leave something behind when he dies...'

I came across this wonderful Ray Bradbury quote today:

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touc...

America and the Man Booker

I haven't really given it much thought - whether America should be in the Man Booker - though am probably more against than for - but I like meandmybigmouths's thought no.10.
Have just started one of this year's shortlisted, Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being. I can't say I love it yet, but books don't always reveal their strengths immediately. I certainly want to keep reading it.
And delighted to see this great new review of The State of Me up on the Booksquawk review site.

America and the Man Booker

I haven't honestly given it much thought - whether America should be in the Man Booker - though am probably more against than for, but I like meandmybigmouth's thought no.10:10. I don't care what sex an author is, what country they come from, what language they write in, what sexuality they are, whether a book is their first, their third or their twenty-fifth, whether they received a grant or a massive advance, what genre they write in or any other variable. I, like most readers, just want to...

Alasdair Gray's wonderful mural in Hillhead Underground

Alasdair Gray's wonderful mural in Hillhead Underground (Glasgow) was unveiled a year ago, I saw it this weekend for the first time. I lived in Hillhead for almost a decade, so this mapping of Glasgow University and the  nearby streets is gorgeously moving. I can still pick out moments like jewels from many of the uni buildings (some of those moments ended up in my novel, dressed up and showing off for the narrative). It was lovely to see this artwork, but it also unsettled me a little,...

What is fiction?

I am - of course - curious about autobiography in fiction and this is an interesting debate from the Los Angeles Review of Books on genre and pigeon-holing - what is fiction, what is non-fiction, and does it really matter? Some good stuff in here, though it is a long essay and took me several attempts. I liked this from one of the writers: 

'There’s no way for the reader to know what is real, what imagined. Only I know why I choose to call one thing nonfiction and the other fiction. But I...