Preface
A note from the author.
I wrote The Long Wait in the spring of an unusually quiet year, in a borrowed flat above a closed bookshop. The bookshop had been closed for some time; there was a damp patch on the ceiling above the desk, and once a week a man came to look at it, frown, and leave without speaking. He never said his name. I was very fond of him.
The novel is short and untidy. It is, in part, about that flat, and in larger part about a person who reminds me of myself when I was younger — with all the blunt faults that come with that resemblance. If the story has a thesis, it is one I cannot defend in argument: that the people we wait for are mostly versions of ourselves, mailed back to us by the future, slightly wiser and out of breath.
Read it slowly, in any case. It does not move quickly, and is not improved by hurry.