Pre #MeToo, wed have been thrilled to hop into bed with Philip Roth. Interview by Helena de Bertodano

The Sunday Times,September 22 2019, 12:01am

Ann Patchett is not nice. At least thats what she wants me to believe. For years she has been fighting a charge of extreme niceness, with critics saying her award-winning novels are unrealistic as a result. John Updike once wrote that Patchett gives us the world as it should be, rather than as the dirty, abrasive place it is.

He thought I lacked teeth, says Patchett. And it is true that if my body of work has one glaring shortcoming, it is my inability to write villains. And yet Andrea [the wicked stepmother in her latest novel, The Dutch House] is truly a villain.

Spoken about in the same breath as the likes of Jennifer Egan or Dave Eggers, Patchett is one of the most

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The Interview: author Ann Pachett on #MeToo, political correctness and her book The Dutch House - The Times