Jenny Diski

'Every now and again a sentence really works, but mostly writing is about to what extent something doesn't work ... The most terrible thing is the first sentence, because it's closing down an infinite number of possibilities. Each book is a failure to write the book you meant to write ... There's a perfect novel in my head, and I can't get it down on paper.'

I came across Jenny Diski on Monday morning. She has written two riveting memoirs which invite us to glimpse her disjunctive upbringing. She talks about Polanski, she talks about herself, her travel to Antarctica. She talks about how much she hated her mum and how relieved when she died.

Diski, as she admits, is full of contradictions. Who else would travel "in order to keep still" She can find a coffin-like cabin bliss, while also hankering for the vastness of an ocean or the blank repetition of an Antarctic landscape.