Mil Millington
Mil Millington's novels include A Certain Chemistry, Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About, and Love and Other Near-Death Experiences.
Danuta Kean interviewed him about Love and Other Near-Death Experiences and "why there is humour in near-death experiences."
Kean's interview-article opens:
Read on.After 9/11 a story quickly circulated about a man who should have been at his desk in the Twin Towers as the plane hit. Instead he was in a shop exchanging the shirt his mother had bought for his birthday. His mother's poor fashion sense saved his life.
Similar stories of lives saved by random chance circulated in 2005 after the Asian Tsunami, the 7/7 bombings, Hurricane Katrina and the Asian Earthquake. It proves that our lives hang on mundane threads, says pink-haired author Mil Millington. "That man is alive because his mother was in a shop thinking, 'Do I get the green or the purple shirt?'" he says in his flat Midlands accent.
It also proves that the theme for Mil's latest novel, Love and Other Near-Death Experiences, could not be more prescient. Is that coincidence? No, says the convinced atheist, he has wanted to tackle the subject for a long time: the attack on the Twin Towers seems to have set off a chain of thought that resulted in the novel. "Even when I was writing my first book back in 2001 I was interested in the idea of randomness," he says. "I am fascinated by the basic questions of why am I here, what is happening and do I have any control over where I am going?"
The Page 99 Test: Love and Other Near-Death Experiences.
--Marshal Zeringue
