Isabel Ashdown piece in The Guardian

A lovely dad, a terrible drunk

Isabel Ashdown's novel GLASSHOPPER (Myriad editions) which is getting such a tremendous response across the trade and the press at the moment deals with the story of an alcoholic mother Mary with much of the story told through the eyes of her thirteen year old son Jake. It is a very poised and poignant piece of writing.

Isabel has just published an extraordinary piece of journalism about her own experience of growing up with an alcoholic parent - albeit in a very different sort of family from the one in the novel. Her article in the Guardian also nicely illustrates the distinction between experiences feeding into a writer's vision and the rather lesser version where a writer is just calling their own life fiction. When I first read Isabel's novel I was blown away by the sophistication of her writing and now I am really impressed with her sensitivity and judgement...