Ben Baruch asked Keith Ridgway:

I loved the present day London and its characters represented in A Shock. Are there any books about London that you draw inspiration from?

Keith Ridgway Thank you. I'm really glad you liked the book.

That's a really interesting question, in the sense that I'm drawing a blank - what London books have I read, do I like? I enjoyed Guy Ware's The Peckham Experiment recently, but that was after A Shock obviously. I can recall a couple of Zadie Smith novels, Muriel Spark's London novels, John LeCarré's various bits set here. But there isn't anything that jumps out at me as an influence on A Shock, or even as a contemporary London novel I've read recently. I read a lot of books in translation, set in places I've never been. And I read a lot of books set in Dublin, where I'm from. Maybe I don't read enough English writers. Is there something particular you'd recommend?

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