A favourite interviewee was clearly Alice Walker, “one of the fundamental visionaries of our time”, whose writing “remains languid and effortlessly graceful, and has not lost its enormous power to prod at the sorest, most critical anxieties of the human condition”.
It was Walker whose kindness disarmed Evans when, interrupting a transatlantic telephone interview in 1998, she asked her, “What’s wrong? You don’t sound happy”. Evans had just lost her identical twin to suicide, the most seismic event of her life. She wondered what she could have said to her, given the chance, to persuade her not to do it.
“I would have told her to hold on,” Walker replied, “until it passes. Everything passes.”
She has, she says, remembered the advice, ever since.
Sue Gaisford, FT book review
I Want to Talk to You: And Other Conversations by Diana Evans
Majicman Notes 
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