Fish & Chips with OA Author TOM POLLOCK
Tom sits across from me in the lunch hall. It is a Friday and fish and chips are on his plate. We have just come from the assembly he gave to Year 8. In 2018 Tom Pollock (92–02) published his novel White Rabbit Red Wolf , a thriller starring a teenage maths prodigy who suffers from severe panic attacks, his unexpectedly kidnapped mother, and a world of espionage. He is a quick thinker, bouncy and constantly moving. He speaks very quickly – just like the pace of his new book.
When do you get to slow down? In the morning [he says with a wry smile]. All things considered, I prefer a fast pace to a slow one. What inspired White Rabbit Red Wolf? A few different characters, one of whom is Kurt Gödel. He was a mathematical prodigy and friend of Einstein’s at Princeton. However, his fascination with the idea of the incomplete and the uncertain was mirrored by an intense, obsessive paranoia. Gödel’s principle paranoid fixation was the idea that any food not prepared by his wife might be poisoned. He feared this to such an extent, that when his wife was
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