I’m reading an incredibly moving memoir by the American novelist, Francisco Goldman, whose wife, Aura, died after a freak accident on a beach in Mexico in 2007. The premise of Say Her Name could be very painful but is in fact a beautiful love story. It reminds me of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking which she wrote after her husband died.

I suppose that the thought I have on reading the Goldman is that it represents an attempt to somehow keep his loved one present as a living memory and to celebrate a relationship which was clearly full of great joy. As a consequence what might have collapsed into the genre of misery memoir is in fact incredibly uplifting and romantic.

I’m about to re-read HIsham Matar’s Anatomy of a Disappearance as I’ll be interviewing him at the Voewood festival in Norfolk later this month. Matar is a Libyan-born writer whose own father was kidnapped by the Gaddafi regime and never seen again. The novel, told through the eyes of a young boy, is clearly inspired by these events. The writing is absolutely beautiful and I can’t for the life of me understand why it isn’t on the Booker long list this year.