“What we don’t tell each other creates all kinds of misunderstandings. I’m a great fan of northern European restraint.”Finely restrained, The Dream Room evokes the provisional feeling of life. The young David hopes to become a chef, the grown David is a maker of kites. “In a way, he’s a wonderful failure,” says M?g enthusiastically “He decides not to be what everyone wants him to be It’s about doing what you want to do That’s the decision I made at 13, wanting to write. I never wanted to compete with the boys in ties.” Marcel M?g: Biography Marcel M?g was born in the Netherlands in 1957 in Enschede, near the German border; his family moved in the late Sixties to the northern town of Assen.
After winning a national essay-writing competition at the age of 13, he decided to become a writer. On quitting secondary school, he studied Dutch literature at night classes while doing odd jobs. After a stint as a journalist, he published Mendels Erfenis in 1990. His second novel The Great Longing won the AKO Prize (the Dutch equivalent of the Booker). His novella Decay is the Way of All Flesh was followed by the historical novel In Babylon (published in paperback by Flamingo), winner of the Golden Owl award for the best Dutch/Flemish book of 1998.
His new novel, The Dream Room, is published this month by Flamingo, in a translation by Stacey Knecht. Marcel M?g lives with his partner and their two children in Rotterdam.. Scaffolding still be hiding much of Foyles bookshop in London, but that doesn’t seem to be deterring shoppers Soon they will have another reason to visit. Just a month after Silver Moon women’s bookshop found a new home there, directors Bill Samuel and Christopher Foyle have announced the purchase of another specialist business – Ray’s Jazz Shop. The Shaftesbury Avenue caf?nd shop had been forced to close following the rent hike also threatening the music shops of Denmark Street, London’s Tin Pan Alley.
Founder Ray Smith, who began selling jazz in 1956, rang Samuel out of the blue, having read about the rescue of Silver Moon, and found Christina Foyle’s nephew most receptive. Foyles has bought the name: Ray’s at Foyles will open in the autumn, with 50 per cent more space than now. Foyles once had its own record department, where Samuel’s mother, Winnie, served such greats as Louis Armstrong and Paul Robeson in the Twenties.
• Almost inevitably, Bridget Jones has become a subject for academic scrutiny. Continuum Contemporaries will soon publish Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary by Dr Imelda Whelehan, reader in English and women’s studies at Leicester’s De Montfort University. Dr W examines the novel and the film, and intends her book as a source of discussion for reading groups, students and general readers.• Crime fiction fans have a treat in store from 11 to 14 July at London’s National Film Theatre, when the third Crime Scene festival takes place. A celebration of crime, thrillers and mystery in print and on screen, its theme is Sherlock Holmes and it features Val McDermid, John Harvey, Julian Rathbone and Lynda la Plante. There’s also the chance to check out US talent: Steven Saylor, whose thrillers are set in ancient Rome, and Sarah Strohmeyer, who will ask: can crime raise a laugh? If you’ve followed the exploits of her hairdresser-cum-reporter Bubbles Jablonsky, you’d have to say it can.