[1] He then gained entry to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he initially studied Law but switched to English, in which he attained a first-class degree and won the Arthur Quiller-Couch Award for Creative Writing.
The collection further explores the concept of relationships, loosely based on the tract The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
One of them, Danny, grows up to be a lawyer after attaining an education in London, while the other, Geordie, works as a labourer and does not pursue extensive studies after school.
When asked whether or not Americans can comprehend and identify with the experiences of people in Northern Ireland, Laird replied: "I think they can, but I don't think they do," and cited the "low level of discourse" that he has encountered in regard to this subject when he travels to America.
At the beginning of the book David goes to an art opening for Ruth Marks, a feminist American artist who is in London on a yearlong residency.
Mr. Laird is also a poet, a day job he reveals in sentences like "David realized he'd been unconsciously pushing his nails into his palms, leaving little red falciform marks.
[8] In a January 2006 appearance on The Leonard Lopate Show, Laird explained how travelling out of Northern Ireland for education in Cambridge had expanded his horizons and opened him up to opportunities that he believes would have otherwise been closed to him: "I met a Jewish person for the first time.
One of the themes in Laird's writing is the interpersonal relationships forged between men and women, and in the Lopate interview, he cited Ian McEwan and Nick Hornby as writers whom he admired for their ability to weave this element into their work.
Laird is also one of the post-Troubles young novelists from Belfast, who have emerged to articulate the identity of the generation whose childhoods were experienced amid some of the region's worst violence, but who also matured in an era of problematic reconciliation.
[citation needed] On Purpose won a Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 2007.