I like a literary wunderkind as much as the next person, but there’s a lot to be said for being a later starter in the fiction game: look at Penelope Fitzgerald, who was 60 when she published her first novel, or Raymond Chandler, who was 51. Having a bit of a life behind you seems to bring out a certain unruffled confidence, a stability and firmness of purpose that younger debutants resist.
The Irish writer Danielle McLaughlin, a Chandleresque 51, is a debut novelist, but in 2015 published a collection of stories, Dinosaurs on Other Planets, and has rightly won a string of awards for her short fiction. The good news is that The Art of Falling lives up to those achievements.
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