Autumn equinox, and we creep from our houses in the new blackness of the mornings and dip in the river, and I am so happy. At home, a breakfast en masse of autumn foods, a consideration of balance and the coming cycle of darkness, and then to our respective works. I have been meaning to write for ages — so many thoughts rattling around my head, and it always takes a festival to make me write them down — and then I hear about the death of Hilary Mantel. 

 
I understand that life is also death, that ends bring meaning, that life is suffering, that I did not know her. But I also understand she is the best writer I have ever read, I think, and when I read her essay on royal bodies nine years ago I was sitting alone in a coffee shop in Sherwood Forest Centre Parcs and I felt her sentences landing like physical blows on me, strong and clear and striking. I have loved so many different writers and books before, but I had never had such a sense of burning intelligence in words. When something happened in the world — political events, cultural, geographic, social — I would always thrill at the thought that she might write an essay touching on it. She was an utterly remarkable writer. 

I want more books as good as hers. I want more minds as intelligent as hers. I want more people with her wisdom and clarity. I want to live in a matriarchy where women in their forties and sixties and eighties and beyond can use their valuable life experience and immense skill to communicate complex, fascinating ideas in cherished essays and novels.

 
Why do we get so upset when the lives of people we don’t know end? Life is balance. I hope I am lucky enough to experience whatever great thing may balance out this terrible one.