Madasa (Marianne Kavanagh)

I'm a Mum to toddler twins and a teacher of French. I'm busy and happy! However since having the twins my brain has fallen into disrepair and my thoughts drift off incomplete and disjointed as my brain fails to make the rapid connections of which it was once capable. Most of my sentences remain unfinished, or common nouns are replaced by "the thingy" or  "the ooojamiflip" a trait which used to drive me to distraction in my own mother.

Favourite Authors

1. Tom Robbins. I love his dry satirical style and his uncanny ability to get to the unerring truth of things within the guise of the fantastical. "Jitterbug Perfume" and "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates" just blew me away and I would go so far as to say changed my life!

2. Philip Pullman. "His Dark Materials Trilogy", what can I say? Breathtaking and achingly beautiful. I never wanted it to end and wept long and hard throughout and when it was all over.

3. Clive Barker because he wrote "Weaveworld" which marked me so much that I'm afraid to read anything else by him, just in case it disappoints. (Also too much of a pussy to read horror)

Also in no particular order Ben Okri, Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison,  George Orwell, Armistead Maupin, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Paulo Coehlo, Milan Kundera, James Frey, Patrick Suskind.