What was the first piece of writing you published?

I published an essay in the London Review of Books when I was in my early 20s that caused a bit of a fuss. It was about two ten year old boys who killed a toddler in Liverpool – the case was famous – but I saw the case differently from how it was being represented in the British press. Their world felt familiar to me and I followed the story into memory and particularity. They day the piece was published I got twenty calls from editors and publishers and agents.

What happened after you got those calls?

I went to lunch with Jon Riley, an editor at Picador. He took me to a restaurant called Kensington Place, which I used to walk past when I first came to London, wondering why everybody inside looked so pleased with themselves. But by the end of our lunch I was very pleased with myself, too, and even more pleased with him: I’d found an editor who seemed to think of writing much as I always dreamed an editor would. By that time I also had an agent, Derek Johns, who was calm and optimistic, just the qualities one wants in an agent. We signed a deal for The Missing and, later, when Jon moved to Faber, I moved with him and signed for two novels.

Have you ever had an important mentor or teacher? Somebody who helped you to become the writer you are?

I’ve been blessed by having very good editors, people who saw themselves as advocates of what I did and who kept me working. My editor at the London Review, Mary-Kay Wilmers, is the chief of these, but I also had Jon Riley and then Lee Brackstone at Faber & Faber, brilliantly attuned and serious. Barbara Epstein and Bob Silvers at the New York Review also drew me out: they gave me more than the time of day, which is all a writer can hope for when they’re trying to work.

Do you agree with the claim that good editing is a dying art?

It is a dying art in many publishers and on many newspapers, where emailed copy is often slung straight onto the page unedited. Publishing often seems like a culture of acquisition these days, where an editor feels more excited bagging an author than making their work sing and finding an audience for it. A good editor knows how to preserve your style and keep you correct, whilst the bad ones just want their authors to win prizes. You need to know the difference and be straight about your priorities: the work will desert you, and so, in time, will a bad editor, if you don’t know how to work as an artist and cleave to what is alive and progressive in the writing itself.

Do you know why you write?

Because it allows me to give vent to what I’ve got and because it pays the bills and makes the days work out well.

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