Living the stuff of novels: the ghostwriter’s lot - by Roz Morris
An acquaintance from my dance classes read My Memories of a Future Life last month and has since been seeing me in a whole new light. I can tell by the thoughtful looks he gives me as we wince through stretches and wobble through pirouettes; an expression that says ‘I never knew you had that weird stuff going on...’ After class the other day he said to me: ‘that freaky scene with the hypnosis in the underground theatre... you must have been to something like that?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘It's research and imagination.’ He looked a little disappointed. I stomp on your dreams Had that taken away a little of the magic? Do readers prefer to think they’ve been led through your rearranged memoirs than the fruits of your persuasive art? Some clearly do. There’s a long tradition that people who’ve had extraordinary lives sit down to dash off a novel. Many of them are not writers, and so the actual words came from people of ordinary amounts of courage and glamour, in charge of some...