2:32pm Wednesday 3rd March 2010
By Alison Phillips
PEOPLE who can write funny stories are usually excellent performers: Frank Cottrell Boyce admitted, in answer to a question, that without the childhood experience of hearing his writing read aloud, and relishing the audience’s reaction, he could easily have ended up as a comedian.
The award-winning writer of Millions, Framed and now Cosmic had us in fits of laughter as he read from his books and told other funny stories. Cosmic has some great things to say about what it is to be a child and a parent, and his genuine delight when at least one of the home-made rockets they made blasted off ceiling-wards showed how he can be both at once.
Lissa Evans’ musings on the nature of reality as seen by actors, as portrayed in her third novel Their Finest Hour and a Half, might seem a world away, but actually were very similar.
I was especially struck by the parallel relationship of her assertion that the Blitz spirit was no more than a mass desire for the normality we all crave in unusual and frightening situations.
The festival runs until Sunday.
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