My earliest reading memory
My parents read me most of the Dr Seuss books. My favourite was Ten Apples Up on Top, about a lion, a tiger and a dog counting apples. I can still conjure up the illustrations, including the last one where there’s an explosion of apples all over the page.
My favourite book growing up
The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I was riveted by her descriptions of pioneer life and all the how-to information: how to build a log cabin, plough a field, make a ball out of a pig’s bladder. I suspect those books affected my approach to my own writing of historical fiction. Also I related to Laura’s bad-tempered rebelliousness compared with her perfect sister Mary.
The book that changed me as a teenager
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. It was the first book I read as a teenager where I thought, “I am reading about the world, and it is a strange, hard place that needs fixing.”
The writer who changed my mind
Toni Morrison, with Song of Solomon, when I was 20. It combines gritty realism with magic realism in a way I hadn’t thought possible. I still remember how I imagined the opening scene, where a man jumps from a building wearing blue silk wings; it was so visual and vivid, it was like Morrison had placed a camera in my head.
The book that made me want to be a writer
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler. I read it when I was still at university. After so much studying the classics as a literature student, it was a relief to read about this Baltimore family and be reminded that profundity can emerge from domestic detail. I didn’t have to be like Dickens or Shakespeare – I could be like Tyler.
The book I came back to
Many years ago I read all of Virginia Woolf’s novels in order. I did fine until I reached The Waves, when its experimental stream of consciousness defeated me. I have been bracing myself to try again, as I feel I should be more open to different forms of writing. I can’t help feeling it will be like taking medicine – I won’t like it, but it will do me good.
The book I reread
I don’t reread books. There are so many books in the world and so few reading slots left in my life that it seems wasteful to use one on a book I’ve already read. Having said that, I would be curious to reread Anna Karenina and The Portrait of a Lady; I read both when I was in my early 20s, and suspect I’d respond to them very differently now.
The book I could never read again
I loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a teenager, and have no intention of ever ruining that magical experience by rereading it.
The book I discovered later in life
Dorothy Whipple’s They Were Sisters, about three sisters trying to deal with one’s abusive husband. Written in the 1940s, it has a surprisingly modern feel about it. It’s so good I’m now on a Whipple kick, with the help of Persephone Books, which has republished most of her work.
The book I am currently reading
Cuddy by Benjamin Myers. My next novel is set in Northumberland and I wanted to read his take on Saint Cuthbert, patron saint of the north-east.
My comfort read
During pandemic lockdowns I found reading books set in the earlier 20th century were the most comforting, perhaps because they seemed a long way from our reality. What helped the most: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim, The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff, The Feast by Margaret Kennedy, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.
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