Move over EL James, there’s a new top dog in town.
But she’s only from down the road.
The third installment of James’ saucy ‘mummy porn’ trilogy Fifty Shades Of Grey has lost its vice-like grip on the Kindle best-selling ebook chart, having being ousted by a sweet literary romance about a group of dog walkers – and both writers are from west London.
Monday To Friday Man is the fourth novel and seventh book from Hammersmith-based dog lover Alice Peterson, 38, a former professional tennis player who turned to writing after her promising athletic career was prematurely curtailed at the age of 18 when she was left wheelchair-bound by rheumatoid arthritis.
Alice Peterson is the author of Another Alice.
Love, lust boys and shopping – the main worries of a teenage girl? Not for eighteen-year-old Alice Peterson, who, at the height of her youth and extremely promising tennis career, was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.
In the midst of shock and denial, and the enduring question, ‘Isn’t it old people who get arthritis?’ Alice had to learn to live with what quickly turned from the odd ache and pain to an aggressive form of the illness, and rediscover a new path in life.
Another Alice is at times utterly heartbreaking, and at others laugh-out-loud. Here is a story of how, armed with humour and courage, she left behind a world she loved to overcome the pain of a degenerative disease.
Told with wit, charm and frankness, Another Alice is also a story of friendship, family, growing up and the desire to be normal. Above all it celebrates the power of the human spirit.
Arthritis is the leading cause of disability in the United States. But with a few simple adjustments, life can be easier and less painful for the millions of people who now permit this common condition to limit what they are able to do and enjoy.
Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking.
For Michelle Grosskreuz, the choice came down to her home or her health.
