My earliest reading memory
Sitting on the floor with my mother, reading word cards cut out from an All Bran box. The Ladybird classics soon followed. I recently found a battered copy of The Golden Goose by the Brothers Grimm and read it to my kids. My word, how times have changed. A character called Simpleton? Cake and a bottle of wine for a midday meal? (Only on holidays, mind you.)
My favourite book growing up
I was once at a drinks reception in an embassy and a towering venerable poet sidled over. “So who are your formative influences?” he asked. I met him with a half-serious look and said, “The Hardy Boys”. The great brow came down and his eyes closed. There was silence for a moment. “Ah,” he said, “Thomas Hardy!” I meant what I said, though. Aged nine to 10, I read all 85 Hardy Boys books, except for one, The House on the Cliff, which could not be had in 1980s rural Donegal. I moved shortly on from there to Jack Higgins.
The book that changed me as a teenager
Thomas Hardy, of course, was soon to come. At 16, I read The Mayor of Casterbridge for school and sat on the bed and bawled when Michael Henchard met his desolate end. That a novel could make you feel this way! What sweet suffering! I’ve been chasing the hit ever since.
The book that made me want to be a writer
It started with Soundings, a beloved poetry anthology on the Irish Leaving Certificate. Gerard Manley Hopkins rewired my brain. A pal and I used to walk the corridors bellowing his verse: “No worst, there is none!” and so on. The overwrought poetry soon followed.
The book I could never read again
At 18, I got more than halfway through Joseph Heller’s Something Happened. I loved it but then put the book down, musing: “I really don’t need to know this mid-life stuff.” Now that I know this mid-life stuff for myself, I don’t want to go anywhere near it.
The author I came back to
I got Virginia Woolf wrong at university. My mind was thoroughly made up. I just could not understand the fuss. Then I read her again in my late 30s and realised I was being an ass. She is very dear to me now.
The book I reread
I was a subeditor and then a film critic for the Sunday Tribune through my 20s. One day, a sub handed me a book that changed my life. Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo is a high peak of Latin American literature – a shapeshifting classic that has the purity of myth. Rulfo’s exquisite, granitic short story collection, El Llano in Flames, was recently translated by Stephen Beechinor for Structo Press and is an essential read.
The book I discovered later in life
Elsa Morante’s 1957 Neapolitan novel Arturo’s Island, newly translated by Ann Goldstein, is a book worthy of being a world classic. The boy in the tale has the ineffable charm of a Defoe narrator, with oceanic depths and mysteries quaking under the surface.
My comfort read
Speaking of Daniel Defoe, I was met with major illness last year and Robinson Crusoe was the only novel I wanted to read. I found myself on a most unexpected island, aged 45, and in recovery after surgery I needed to hear that beguiling voice again, that make-do and optimism in the face of the void.
• Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, shortlisted for the Booker prize, is published by Oneworld (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
