When you were younger, you worked as a nanny in the household of Mary-Kay Wilmers, the legendary editor of The London Review of Books. To what extent did she influence your reading life?
Mary-Kay Wilmers is all for books, and all for women. . . .And, actually, more than my reading she influenced my writing. I once said to her I wasn’t sure I’d ever make it as a novelist. “I just don’t have a fancy enough vocabulary,” I told her.
“That’s why you’ll make it as a novelist,” she said.
—From an interview with British author Nina Stibbe in the August 4th New York Times Book Review.
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