In 1999, Patrick Hemingway published True at First Light, a new novel by his father Ernest. In his role as literary executor of the late writer’s estate, Patrick edited an unfinished manuscript of some 200,000 words down to a more marketable ‘fictional memoir’ of less than half that length. The book hit the bestseller lists but received largely negative reviews, most notably from Joan Didion in the New Yorker. ‘This was a man to whom words mattered,’ she wrote. ‘His wish to be survived by only the words he determined fit for publication would have seemed clear enough.’ To which the man charged with safeguarding Papa’s posthumous reputation responded, somewhat plaintively:
I think it’s a very valid argument. The only trouble is my father did leave the material; he didn’t destroy it. Perhaps he didn’t intend to have it published, but when people are dead it’s hard to know what they want.
The setting of Blake Morrison’s new novel is that zone of uncertainty: how can we know what dead people want? Matt Holmes is the deputy editor of the books section of a broadsheet newspaper.
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