EARLY in December, my husband asks me: ‘What would you like for Christmas?’ Every year, I say: ‘I have everything I want.’ And it’s true: every room, cupboard, surface in this house is covered in stuff. It’s like the house in the Somerville and Ross novel The Big House of Inver: ‘Under everything there was something’—and, in this house, it is papers and books.
This year, I was able to reply: ‘I want .’ Published by Faber & Faber, it was on order for the bookstore that occupies our old dairy, so it had another advantage: it would be easy for
