'Write about what you know' is one of the routine prescriptions handed out to aspirant novelists. The advice will doubtless have an odd ring to anyone who has lived in a province. After all, what could you know that might conceivably interest them? There is a tendency among people who have never lived in a metropolis to suspect that the 'real' world exists somewhere far beyond their own pinched horizons. Faced with what they assume to be the thumping banality of their own experience, they are tempted to write about what they'd like to know.

LRB 21 February 1991 | PDF Download