Adam O’Riordan: “Last year my mother was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. she is heroic

I am in the garden house annex on our backyard. The door strip is missing. I see the fig tree that we planted with our boys, and the vine slung over the metal arch over the gate; sticks and the last sheets of paper look like a sculpture by Giacometti.

My wife recently gave me her copy paper palace Miranda Coley Heller. Written boldly and powerfully.

I have a pantheon of writers representing the meritorious dead (James Salter, Joan Didion, Penelope Fitzgerald, Cyril Connolly, Nabokov, Chekov, Flaubert, Sebald) and the living (Adam Phillips, David Salay, Adam Fulds, Andrew Miller, Alan) includes Hollinghurst, Gwendolyn Riley, Sarah Hall), but the balance of intelligence and pleasure in William Boyd’s work is hard to beat.

I move between our attic, which overlooks mature trees and Manchester’s ultra-modern skyscrapers, and our home’s former coal cellar, which is my writing space: it’s plastered and painted white, well lit, and has a narrow window. write yours in people’s feet as they approach the front door.

I have always had a soft spot for the voluptuary Steve Oblonsky. Anna Kareninabut actually I’m probably more like a self-improving insurance agent Leonard Bast. End of Howard.

Last Easter, my mother was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. The unfailing generosity of her smile and her unwavering commitment to style seem heroic to me.