Brought To Book
IAN MCDONA LD
Hope springs eternal: the SF luminary tells us about his new novel
Words by Jonathan Wright
Portrait by Lawrie Photography
OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS, FOLLOWING the loss of his wife Enid, Ian McDonald has been deep within the grieving process. “I’m the Wile E Coyote who’s run over the cliff,” he says. “My feet are still going, they’re still moving forwards. Things are changing, but I have a long way to go to build a new life – I’m not even sure what it would look like or how different it would be.”
Enid, who McDonald first met more than 20 years ago, had been receiving treatment for ovarian cancer, including surgery. When the couple contracted Covid-19 – “the real stuff, not your pissy Omicron variant” – Enid struggled to recover. “The operation had taken too much out of her, and she had a heart attack and died. She didn’t even see the end of the pandemic.”