Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan

Born in Waterford, Megan Nolan’s essays, fiction and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The White Review and The Village Voice, among others, and in the literary anthology, Winter Papers. She writes a fortnightly column for the New Statesman. Acts of Desperation is her first novel.

How did Acts of Desperation first come to you?

It came as a series of images, memories both false and true, dreams, of obsessive loving and its harrowing effects. From there, I applied those abstract feelings and images to the structure of a relationship.

What is your favourite opening line of any novel?

It would be difficult to improve on “Today, Maman died.” from The Outsider by Albert Camus.

Is there a book from childhood or adolescence that has stayed with you?

My dad bought me countless Just William books by Richmal Crompton when I was small, which let me in on the secret of reading as pure escape. Less charmingly, I will likely never forget sneaking American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis when I was 11 and reading a scene which involves human body fat splattering against a window.

Which writers have most influenced you?

Their writing bears no obvious relationship to my own, but I count John Irving and Stephen King as my primary influences because they brought me so much pleasure in my early teen years that it made me aspire to write something of my own, whatever it might be.

Why do you write?

Initially, to make sense of my experiences and explain myself to myself. Later, to give attention and scrutiny to some of the small moments of human interaction which often go untold, but make up much of life.

What is the one book you would have on that desert island?

Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. The depiction of a squalid kind of unrequited love has been close to my heart since I first read it many years ago and I love a good meaty classic birth-to-death novel.

Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan is published by Jonathan Cape.