‘Why do you care so much?’ I ask, closing the book and handing it back to him.
He looks at me. ‘Stories weave our lives together. Didn’t you know?’
‘I don’t know’ I mutter, thinking of The Island in the Mist. ‘Maybe they do. Maybe everything is a story.’
‘Everything,’ Corentin agrees, spreading his arms in a wide gesture. ‘This hall, this dust, the hands that carried the books down here; the Ark, you and me and the bog... We’re all a thread in the tapestry.’
- A (translated) fragment of my novel The Island in the Mist
I am
fascinated by story, by what it wants to tell us and how we are affected by it.
Truth, I’ve found, is mostly to be discovered in books. Most of the time not
very factual books either– however well-researched they were, the author had
always implemented elements of pure fiction and imagination. But truth all the
same – like the undertow of a river. And they helped me realize, as a writer,
why stories matter so much.
