ABOUT TOM CONNOLLY:

Where were you born and where did you grow up?

I was born in Farnborough, where South London and Kent merge, and I grew up in a village in the Weald of Kent.

Were you encouraged to read widely as a child?

If I was I probably turned a deaf ear as sport was all I was interested in. Hugh Pullen, an influential English teacher, made us read The Catcher in the Rye at exactly the right moment in my, at the time, dubious academic life (when I was fourteen), and that was the start.

What was your favourite subject at school?

Football, basketball, cricket. When I finally and belatedly began to study, I grew to love English literature.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Married to the girl next door. Then she moved to Belgium, when we were both seven. That was a kick in the teeth. Belgium … you don’t bounce back from that in a hurry.

Did you write compulsively as a child?

I started writing when I was fifteen. I have written ever since.

What book did you love as a child and why?

I can’t remember any as a young child, but early on at “big school” Hemingway’s Indian Camp was the first story I loved and found thought-provoking. I was a very childish seventeen year old, if that counts, when a girlfriend gave me Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes. It was the first time I read and re-read a novel. I loved that book, still do.

Did writing the book change you?

No.

What do you do when you are not writing?

Earn a living. Coppice woodland. Windsurf badly. Swim. Walk for miles in East Sussex and Kent. Watch Arsenal and moan about us leaving Highbury.

What would you be if you weren’t a writer?

When I was a boy I wanted to be a shepherd on Romney Marsh. So, maybe that. I don’t know. I’d be a completely different person, so who knows?

What is the best job you have had?

I once got paid to spend two months making mini-documentary films about football for a beer company. That was a pretty good combination.

Which authors do you most admire?

William Maxwell, Gabriel García Márquez, Richard Ford, Marilynne Robinson, Harper Lee, Ernest Hemingway. And Raymond Carver for his poems. I’ve just started reading Bukowski and that is a fantastic experience. Then there’s individual books that I have admired greatly, like Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor, Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah, A Box of Matches by Nicholson Baker. Where do you start? Where do you end? I should say, to try to boil it down, that William Maxwell’s work is incredibly important to me.

Which book do you wish you had written?

Gilead is the most perfectly written book I know about, or Middlesex for its invention. Or Barbara Cartland, for the dosh.

Do you have a favourite book?

So Long, See You Tomorrow… by William Maxwell.

What do you look for in a novel?

I don’t look for anything. It either works for the reader or it doesn’t.

Do you have a favourite literary character?

There is something acutely beguiling and hypnotic about Frank Bascombe (Richard Ford’s novelist–sportswriter–realtor) which means that I find myself identifying closely with someone whose life is, on the surface, so foreign to mine. I feel bereft at the end of a Frank Bascombe novel, at the prospect of being parted from him. An awe-inspiring writer, Ford.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

As Ellis would say, not being asked questions like that. But if I were forced at gunpoint to answer, it would involve regular contact with the people I love – but not too regular.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

I give myself a very hard time when it comes to my work. Some would say, with good reason.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

“By definition.” And I swear, which I hate.

What is your greatest extravagance?

I don’t have any. Oh, yeah, going on trips abroad when I am broke – I remember now. When being hassled by utility companies and the council tax people for payment, I tend to sit down with a calculator and put my serious head on, with the intention of working out a budget and a master-plan for cutting costs and surviving a few more months, and ten minutes later I find that I have gone online and booked a fortnight’s windsurfing somewhere hot and real nice, trusting that things will have sorted themselves out by the time I’m back.

What would your superpower be?

A moderate command of English grammar.

What is your view on spiders?

They are good for old houses so I have a vested interest. The more I learned about them, the more awe-inspiring they became. Often, at sunrise and sunset in my garden and in the fields around, I see thousands of silk threads caught in the low light and it reminds me that they are everywhere, creating these extraordinary feats of engineering called webs. I’m a fan.