While it may be common at the Guardian book club for good will to flow from readers to author, it is rare for the former explicitly to cheer that author's commercial success.
When Diana Athill came to discuss Somewhere Towards the End with readers, one of them spoke of his anxiety at the money worries that she had matter-of-factly outlined in the memoir, and his delight and relief on hearing that "this book has sold well". He expressed the particular hope that her uncertainties about being able to afford good care, should it be necessary, had now evaporated. It was good to think that all those enthusiastic book buyers had done their bit.
It is, of course, quite a thing to publish a bestseller at the age of 90. Athill confessed to a reader who wondered if she was pessimistic about the future of publishing, that her own sales were helping to persuade her that the book trade was in good shape.
"What are you working on now?" The question has a special voltage when an author has written a book that so squarely contemplates death. "I can't think of anything to write at the moment," Athill replied, rather implying that a book-shaped thought might well seize her at any time. Having never properly written a diary (though Somewhere Towards the End does include a fragment of a such a record) she has now begun doing just this, she admitted. Might she write some more fiction? "I'm definitely not a novelist." Even when she wrote a novel she had to base the main character closely on a particular person whom she knew (we all wondered who, but no one asked).
Was she aware of editing her memoir as she wrote "not for literary reasons, but in order to avoid treading on other people's toes"? This returned us to the quality for which many of her readers most value her: her "tone of voice" - the fact that she seems to be talking rather than writing. Athill seemed well aware of this stylistic quality, and argued that her tone of voice was fine for writing unceremoniously about herself, but would quickly cause offence if applied to others. There are family members "who don't really like it very much". Though "they are greatly cheered up by the fact that I got an OBE", a signal that, however indiscreet her chosen genre, she must, as a writer, be all right really. (The mention of the gong prompted immediate and loud applause - the honours system in this instance vindicated.)
What about the sexual adventures discussed in Somewhere Towards the End? In her memoir of her career as an editor with André Deutsch, Athill remarks of the advent of the 1960s, "Most of the people I knew had been bedding each other for years without calling it a sexual revolution." Were the people she knew unusual? She did concede that her friend Jean Rhys - "everybody was going to bed with everybody" - was not necessarily representative of her age. "She was moving in rather louche circles." On Chesil Beach, I suggested, would hardly have been possible if Athill's picture of relations between the sexes at the beginning of the 60s had been generally true. McEwan's novel, she replied, "really surprised me". Yet the first questioner of the evening was less surprised. "I was very much the girl in On Chesil Beach ... Lots of us were as ignorant as that in those days."
There was one moment of real audience consternation. Athill was asked whether she might consider publishing her correspondence. One of her readers felt that she must be a good letter writer - and surely her recent volumes of memoirs, especially this one, had attracted the letters of readers and former acquaintances. "I love writing letters," she said, and yes, she did get plenty of them, some of them interesting, but she did not keep them or any copy of her replies. She lived in a very small flat and kept feeling the need to throw things away. "Perhaps this is foolish." Many of her readers were nodding.
It is a penalty of writing such an unusual book that Athill is sometimes asked for her wisdom. Did she think that realists survive longer than romantics? (The questioner observed that the old people she knew were among the former camp.) "Are you as cheerful as you appear in the book and as you appear tonight?" Or was she putting on a brave show pour encourager les autres - "the rest of us who are coming up behind you".
One reader seemed to sum up the thoughts of many when she spoke of relishing the book for its clarity about "things that old people don't normally admit to", from exasperation at physical decline to boredom. Diana Athill could not resist some words of counsel, in response to being asked about her addressing of a taboo subject: the end of sexual desire. "When you stop wanting something you don't mind not having it." We left with this slightly unsettling solace in our ears.
• John Mullan is professor of English at University College London. Next week he will be looking at The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
