Sally Hepworth

Sally Hepworth's latest novel is The Things We Keep. From her Q & A with Caroline Leavitt:

So, rather than ask, “Where do your ideas come from?” (every writer I know hates that!), I want to know what was haunting you at the time that gave root to this novel?

I suppose I was haunted by the question: If you take away someone’s memory, what is left?

Five years ago, I was flicking television channels when I came across a news segment about a young woman—a newlywed—who was pregnant with her first child. She had also recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 31 years old.

A couple of years later, I was having coffee with a friend who is a nurse at a dementia facility. She told me about an elderly man and woman who held hands in the communal living area of the center every day. They came into the facility as strangers. Their memories were less than five minutes long. They were both non-verbal. Yet every day, they sat next to each other. Every day he reached for her hand, and every day she allowed him to take it. And for them, every time was the first time.

It got me thinking about....[read on]

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Writers Read: Sally Hepworth (February 2015).

--Marshal Zeringue