The author, best known for Girl with a Pearl Earring, reveals how Adam Driver is helping her keep boredom at bay
What I’m watching
Now is the time to catch up on the programmes I’ve missed out on. I’m loving Sally Wainwright’s Last Tango in Halifax. Serious but also funny and sweet – two things I need right now. Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi are magnificent as the couple getting together after 60 years apart.
What I’m listening to
Even before the Covid-19 crisis I was listening to the most wonderful piano pieces called Unsent Love Letters by the contemporary composer Elena Katschernin. Apparently when the composer Erik Satie died his friends discovered love letters in his apartment that he had written to his neighbour and never sent. Kats-chernin responded to them with beautiful spare piano, rather like Satie’s Gymnopédies. I listened to them walking around Venice in early January, back in those innocent times. Now I listen for solace.
What I’m reading
I’m reading Hilary Mantel’s
The Mirror and the Light but breaking it up with shorter books like Jenny Offill’s
Weather, a novella about a nation in crisis, and Emma Jane Unsworth’s hilarious
Adults, about a thirtysomething woman whose life is in freefall. The Mantel is wonderful but like eating a rich dense chocolate cake; you need a pause between bites. Her descriptions are so good, her writing so perfect that I alternate between admiration and rage.
What I’ve taken up
The novel I’m writing now is about Venetian glass and when this crisis is over I’ll be spending time in Italy as well as reading sources in Italian. I have Italian tapes, and now’s the time to use them. It’s also a way of honouring a country I adore and whose current pain I mourn.
The thing that made me laugh this week
Thank God for the Whatsapp group of eight mothers who have known each other since we had babies more than 20 years ago. (Thank you for putting us together, National Childbirth Trust!) For the past few weeks we’ve shared crises and jokes, tips and frustrations, easing each other’s anxieties, as well as talking about biscuits, shoes, and why Adam Driver is hot. They have made isolation so much easier, keeping the connection going even when we can’t see one another. Our children are jealous at how much time we now spend on our phones, and how much we laugh. I couldn’t get through this without them.