Book of a lifetime: The Waste Land by TS Eliot

It is rare indeed to find someone who has stumbled unburdened by preconceived ideas upon this goliath of a poem. I used to believe that TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, buried deep under a monstrous papier mache pyramid of footnotes, dissertations, theories and essays, was well out of my reach.

“O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag –/ It’s so elegant/ So intelligent.”

I had been put off at an early age. I was told that I needed an English degree to properly understand it. So I didn’t read it. Then, two years ago I began work on my new book The Double Shadow. I knew that at the centre of my novel lay a memory machine. It was while pondering this notion of how memory defines us, collectively and individually, that I started research into the period in which the book would be set, between the two world wars.