‘I was scared I was going mad”: Meg Mason speaks to fellow authors about the parasocial relationships that begin on the page

As a lonely teenager, the novels of Nancy Mitford offered the Sorrow and Bliss author a lifeline - and an imaginary friend. She explores why reading can create a particularly intense bond with a favourite writer In the summer before university, my mother gave me a copy of The Pursuit of Love. We’d moved countries at the beginning of my A-levels and those months in between had been defined by a level of loneliness I had never known in my life. The sort of loneliness so acute and pervasive it f...

By Meg Mason