Maggie O'Farrell

A bit more about the After You'd Gone author for all the biography fans...

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Born in Coleraine, Northern Ireland in 1972, Maggie O'Farrell grew up in Wales and Scotland. She recalls wanting to write from an early age, in particular struggling with a story aged around four, when “I asked my mother if she would write it for me and her reply made a huge impression on me. She said, ‘But if I wrote it, it would be my story, not yours.’”

A mystery childhood illness left little doubt regarding her interest in the written word. Aged eight, an unnamed viral infection left her bedridden and off school for two years. She recalls; “I was physically incapacitated, so I couldn't hold a book. I listened to a lot of story tapes. When I had a bit more motor control, I read. Reading was a way to escape.”

She read English at New Hall, Cambridge, and while there attended writing workshops run by poet Jo Shapcott – "she was a big influence on me" – and then, following her move to London, evening classes at City University. While in London, O’Farrell had a variety of jobs, which she lists as including stints as a waitress, chambermaid, cycle courier, teacher, and arts administrator. She finally settled on a position as a journalist and editorial assistant on the Arts and Books desk of The Independent on Sunday, rising to become that paper’s Deputy Literary Editor. She left the paper in 2000, the same year as the publication of her debut novel, After You’d Gone, to go freelance and to leave more time for her own writing.

After working on her debut novel "every weekend and every evening" After You'd Gone (2000), won a Betty Trask Award, but was only published after her Arvon (an institute devoted to creative writing taught by professional writers) course leaders encouraged her to take it to an agent. It was published to almost unanimous critical and popular acclaim, and she followed it with two further novels: My Lover's Lover (2002); and The Distance Between Us (2004), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award. Her fourth novel, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox was published in 2006, and her fifth, The Hand That First Held Mine, set in 1950s Soho, has just been published.

The Hand That First Held Mine
A gorgeously written story of love and motherhood, this is a tour de force from one of our most acclaimed and best loved novelists. When the bohemian, sophisticated Innes Kent turns up by chance on her doorstep, Lexie Sinclair realises she cannot wait any longer for her life to begin, and leaves for London. There, at the heart of the 1950s Soho art scene, she carves out a new life for herself, with Innes at her side. In the present day, Elina and Ted are reeling from the difficult birth of their first child. Elina, a painter, struggles to reconcile the demands of motherhood with sense of herself as an artist, and Ted is disturbed by memories of his own childhood, memories that don't tally with his parents' version of events. As Ted begins to search for answers, so an extraordinary portrait of two women is revealed, separated by fifty years, but connected in ways that neither could ever have expected.

Read more about The Hand That First Held Mine including a free downloadable extract, at Lovereading.co.uk