Slimming for the Beach

Christo­pher Nolan’s novel The Banyan Tree

IT ALL begins with words. Words that teem and toss about, they stream and eddy. They’re tor­ren­tial and press­ing and insis­tent. They are lovely to hear inside, they talk to you; they are a delight to hear com­ing in, hov­er­ing, bank­ing, wait­ing to land – that tree, sitka but call it ever­green, the flow­ers “sweet william” but who is he to be so sweet as to be like rasp­berry cur­dling and bleed­ing into cream?

Trib­ute to Christo­pher Nolan by his sis­ter Yvonne in The Irish Times

Update: the arti­cle ref­er­enced above is now behind a pay­wall (August 2010).

This is from Christo­pher Nolan’s Wikipedia Entry

Christo­pher Nolan (6 Sep­tem­ber 1965 – 20 Feb­ru­ary 2009) was an Irish poet and author, son of Joseph and Bernadette Nolan. He grew up in Mullingar, Ire­land, but later moved to Dublin to attend col­lege. He was edu­cated at the Cen­tral Reme­dial Clinic School, Mount Tem­ple Com­pre­hen­sive School and at Trin­ity Col­lege, Dublin. His first book was pub­lished when he was fif­teen. He won the Whit­bread Book Award, for his auto­bi­og­ra­phy in 1988. He was also awarded an Hon­orary Doc­tor­ate of Let­ters in the UK, the medal of excel­lence from the United Nations Soci­ety of Writ­ers, and a Per­son of the Year award in Ireland.