![]() (Incidentally, and because it’s the question everyone asks first, I started the novel several months before COVID-19 was even on our radar. When we first meet Meredith Maggs, she has been in self-imposed isolation for 1,214 days. Loneliness happens to be one of the themes of my novel, Meredith, Alone. And perhaps, although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, it was also my way of dealing with loneliness. ![]() I like to think It was the right book, at the right time. ![]() It was the culmination of twenty years of false starts and insurmountable periods of imposter syndrome. I also finished the first draft of a novel of my own during lockdown-an outcome nobody was more surprised by than me. During the pandemic, I discovered new voices (Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half Kate Elizabeth Russell’s My Dark Vanessa). That’s definitely been the case throughout my own life, from the childhood melancholy I was too young to understand ( Little Women was my go-to in those days) to the Beat poets I sought out in the vintage stores of my university town. ![]() charity The Reading Agency and think tank Demos found a link between reading and loneliness, showing that reading books can reduce feelings of isolation for those aged 18-64. Yet books have an incomparable ability to help us feel less alone. Bedtime stories and book clubs aside, reading is largely a solitary pursuit. ![]()
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