Paperback: How to Read a Novelist by John Freeman (Corsair, £8.99)

When I read a novel, I can’t help wondering what the novelist is like. Where does he or she live? Is the person abrasive or charming? In this book John Freeman has interviewed more than 50 novelists. The list is impressive — John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Ford, Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer, David Foster Wallace. Richard Ford says that, after writing a recent novel, “I was physically ill, and I stayed physically ill for many months.” Updike told Freeman he was worried he might have left something out. Tom Wolfe suggests a Hippocratic-type oath: “First, entertain.”