'A way to write myself in'

'As a novelist, you have a mask. When I started, I wasn't sure how to write non-fiction - especially something so personal. The early process was horrible because the idea of writing something which I wasn't making up was so alien to me. But how much of myself of my father did I want to expose? My natural impulse was to stay out of it, so I started off by writing chronologically about my father's family and his life. It didn't work. The more I tried, the more I realised that I was involved with a book in which I would have to find a way to write myself in.'

Sue Miller in an interview with Sue Box in The Times about writing about her father's Alzheimer's