The highs and lows of London’s literary scene

Also: a dreamy new novel, and my relapse

Photo by Niall McDiarmid/ Millennium Images, UK

For the past month, I have been focusing on my work, which involves organising book launches and literary parties as part of Soho Reading Series (hosted across London). This dominates my life at the expense of almost everything else. A typical day of preparation looks like this: in the morning, I go to my friend Jago Rackham’s apartment. We sit and work in his main room, which is airy and painted white. I write a speech about him and his book while listening to Playboi Carti. The space around us is stacked high with beer and wine, as well as books for the sold-out party we are hosting to launch his new book, To Entertain: Instructions for a Dinner Party. We break for lunch, and Jago cooks chickpea pancakes, which we eat with haddock.

In the evening, the Rose Lipman Hall in De Beauvoir Town is buzzing. Joana Kohen’s stage design rises in a pyramid-like formation around the readers. The crowd is happy-drunk on free drinks. Jago and I don’t drink as we are sober. The readers perform very well. Ben Pester brings the house down with a piece from his new short story collection, Sail Away Land. When it is over, I kiss my beautiful girlfriend hello, then hand out 150 books, which almost did not arrive on time. I sell the books at cost price. It is expensive and risky, but if I shift all the tickets, I will have sold 690 books in under a few weeks. It is a small battle won in the war against illiteracy. At the end of the night, I wipe melty-soft butter-and-sugar frosting off the waxed floor, stack chairs, then collapse into bed, leaving my sack of McDonald’s cheeseburgers on the landing so they do not make the room smell.

All the right chops

Early the next week, I am at a dinner to celebrate Canongate’s publication of Stephanie Wambugu’s novel Lonely Crowds. It is one of the best dinner parties I have ever attended, with a huge porcelain plate of pink lamb chops. After dinner, I smoke a cig with Jamie Byng, the famously charismatic CEO of Canongate, who is a hero of mine, and I try to imbibe some of his wisdom. There is a lot of chilled Bolly about, but I do not touch any of it. Instead, one of the hosts keeps my glass topped up with bottles of cooled San Pellegrino.

A star is born

I finish Tahmima Anam’s novel Uprising. It has already been noted as one of the novels of the year, and it astonishes me with its assuredness and dreamy style, matched with a strong moral message. It is about a real-life island of sex workers off the coast of Bangladesh, as well as a rebellion there, so it is also something like a modern Lysistrata. I think it will be a big hit in these tough, Trumpian times.

The wheels come off

My next event is with Bruce Omar Yates. I am doing this event because I am a huge fan of his novel The Muslim Cowboy. I wait at home all day for the 70 copies of the book. At the last moment, they arrive. I put the heavy cardboard boxes into a large tote and take them to Ellie’s, the bar in Dalston where we are hosting the event. I cut in to the box, take out the clingfilm-wrapped carton of books, and slit it down the side with a knife. There they are: the wrong books. My heart jitters and I feel like a fuck-up. I have let an author down. I run back home in the over-hot spring sunshine. No more books have arrived. I am crazy with myself. When I get to the bar, I gulp down a beer – my first in two months. I haven’t been going to meetings. I never got a sponsor. That is why I have been so tense, I realise too late. The event goes well, but during it the wheels come completely off. The next morning, the sunrise feels like the worst kind of darkness as the light shines on my relapse. There is only fear, self-pity and organ-aching shame.

Shameless in Shoreditch

It is 8.15pm and I am sitting in an AA meeting in a whitewashed crypt underneath a church in Shoreditch. All around me, people are being honest, and I listen to them; what they say is wise and born of hard experience. Someone speaks about having overcome shame through being in the rooms, and I feel something click in my brain. For a long, peaceful moment, shame leaves me. I realise I can do this again: rid myself of the shame that leads to drink. In the room I no longer, for the first time in weeks, feel tense.

This happens just about every time I go. Why did I stop? Because I was proud and stupid, and thought that working hard was everything. The chair slows the meeting down for newcomers. I raise my hand; kind and understanding faces turn towards me. I speak, and the returning hope feels real and true.