My favourite fictional character: I'll never forget these half-wild, 'too much' heroines – Philip Pullman's Lyra and Elena Ferrante's Lila

Lila, played by Ludovica Nasti (right) in the HBO production of Elena Ferrante's My Beautiful Friend. Eduardo Castaldo/HBO

Reading Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights to my children around 2007, I met its heroine, Lyra Belacqua. My children barely remember her. I will never forget her – nor Pantalaimon, her daemon; her soul in protean animal form.

Lyra was the first fictional girl to feel familiar to me. Before her, there’d only been men: Achilles, Julien Sorel, Prince Lev Myshkin, Pierre Bezukhov.