Madly, futilely, I wrote novel after novel, eight in all, that failed to find a publisher. I persisted because for me the novel was the supreme literary form - not just one among many, not a relic of the past, but the way we communicate to one another the subtlest truths about this business of living.
Everyone deserves to be the hero of a novel.
When I began to write seriously, 40 years ago now, my chosen form was the novel.
There are dozens of great American writers who write about the family.
A well-off plastic surgeon can suffer just as much as an Irish lad who has been abused or whatever.