Nasty Lucky Genes 
Andrew O’Hagan
Elizabeth Smart was browsing one day between the wars in the bookshops of the Charing Cross Road. Young, blonde and original, unclaimed by her Ottawa upbringing or her mother’s social hopes, Smart came to lean against those London bookshelves as if they alone contained all the answers. That day, she drew her finger over a line of volumes, took one down and read the poems where she stood, deciding by the last page that the author was the man she was put on earth to marry.
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Andrew O’Hagan’s The Atlantic Ocean, a collection of essays on Britain and America, will be published in June. Be Near Me, his last novel, has been shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Other articles by this contributor:
Seventy Years in a Filthy Trade · Andrew O’Hagan meets E.S. Turner
Everything Must Go! · American Beauties
The Nominee · With the Democrats
Blame it on the boogie · In Pursuit of Michael Jackson
How to Survive Your Own Stupidity · Homage to Laurel and Hardy
A Journey in the South · Andrew O’Hagan travels to New Orleans
Still Reeling from My Loss · Lulu & Co
Cartwheels over Broken Glass · worshipping Morrissey
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