Featured Author: Matt Greene

Matt Greene was born in Watford in 1985 and studied English language at the University of Sussex, where he edited The Badger newspaper and first became interested in writing for the stage. He has co-written four plays for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, including the sell-out farce The Straight Man. Ostrich is his first novel.

Q & A with Matt Greene

Can you describe your book in 10 words or fewer?

A life-enhancing and laugh-out-loud look at loss (with a lot less alliteration than that would imply).

Where did the idea for the book come from?

Three years ago I had some minor surgery--the worst sort of oxymoron. The anaesthetic practitioner told me to count to ten. I made it to the "r" in three and have no memory of what happened between then and waking up on a morphine drip. That sense of vulnerability and lost time stayed with me and, combined with a lot of other stuff that I'd been itching to write about, became Ostrich.

Ostrich is your first novel. Have you always wanted to be a novelist?

I wish I could pretend that was the case but until the age of twelve I wanted to be professional footballer. Fortunately, that career was curtailed by a chronic lack of ability, which forced me to get a little more imaginative. When I was twenty-three I was offered the job of ghost-writing a tie-in book for a TV show I'd never watched. I turned it down because I'd once heard that everyone has one book in them and I was worried about using mine up. So, yes, I guess it's something I've been planning on for a while.

Which writers do you think influenced you?

Short answer: every one I've ever read and some that I haven't. Longer but considerably less thorough answer: Kurt Vonnegut, Anne Tyler, Jospeh Heller, P.G. Wodehouse, J.D. Salinger, John Swartzwelder, David Foster Wallace, Richard Yates, Lorrie Moore, John Kennedy Toole, and, of course, the Jewish Holy Trinity: Philip Roth, Woody Allen and Larry David.

What are you currently reading?

I've just finished the frighteningly funny May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes and am nearing the end of the achingly sad Stoner by John Williams. Next it's The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, almost certainly chased with something by Nicola Barker.

What is your favourite book?

I'm not accustomed to answering this question the same way twice but for now I think I'd have to say Something Happened by Joseph Heller. The title is not as ironic as many would lead you to believe and quite aside from anything else it taught me a hell of a lot about good bracket use.

What are you working on now?

Right now I'm working on my second novel, provisionally titled The Second Day Of The Rest Of Your Life. It's about a (relatively) young guy who's cleaning out his childhood bedroom after moving his mother into a care home and discovers a love letter he never sent to his childhood sweetheart. I'm about 300 pages in and I still can't tell if it's a comedy or a tragedy. To be completely honest I'm kind of hoping the reader can decide for me.