Where’s your bookcase located and what does it look like?
This bookcase takes up one wall and both alcoves of our front room. There are over-spills in other parts of the house, but this is the mother-ship. My partner files books methodically – by subject and then by author. I stuff them in any old how, anywhere I can find a slot or, if I can’t find one, on top of books that are already there. So no tension there or anything.
What kind of books will definitely not be found in your bookcase?
Self-help. I like the thought of them and if a friend has found their life turned around by reading one, I want to hear about it – but only in a few summarising sentences. Usually, the title tells me everything I need to know. (“A Good Enough Parent… “ “Making Friends with Anxiety”… “Eat Seeds For a Healthy Life”)
What author have you discovered and loved recently?
I really enjoyed My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante – terrifying and gripping.
Where is your favourite place to read?
The bath, in bed, on a hammock in the shade on a hot day: they all rank pretty high. But my favourite place is the top front seat of the 319 bus.
Can books change lives? If so, which one changed yours?
My tutor asked me and my fellow student that on our first day. I couldn’t think of anything. She said, “Richard Holmes’s Biography of Shelley” and I wanted to crawl under a stone. Now I can say probably lots of books have changed my life – most recently Rosamund Lupton’s 2010 Sister, which set me on the path to writing thrillers by showing me you could write about fear and dread and horror without being interested in dead bodies.
What’s the book you’d choose as your Desert Island read?
Such a hard question. It would have to be Jane Austen because of the writing and the restraint and the knowledge of human nature. Persuasion because of the most wonderful and most muted love scene ever written.
What book did you give last as a present and to whom?
Lorrie Moore’s collection of short stories Who Will Run the Frog Hospital to a friend who is ill and needed something to dip into.
What are you reading now?
I’m reading Gill Hornby’s latest, All Together Now, which I am lucky enough to have in proof. And Aristophanes’ Lysistrata because I’ve promised to help my son with his GCSE course work.
What are your top ten books?
- I Capture the Castle: Dodie Smith
- The Grand Sophy: Georgette Heyer
- The Rachel Papers: Martin Amis
- Persuasion: Jane Austen
- Our Mutual Friend: Charles Dickens
- The Talented Mr Ripley: Patricia Highsmith
- The Black Prince: Iris Murdoch
- Brother of the More Famous Jack: Barbara Trapido
- The Secret History: Donna Tart
- The Line of Beauty: Alan Hollinghurst
What’s your most treasured book on your bookcase?
I have one first edition which is The King of A Rainy Country by Brigid Brophy, which she gave me when I interviewed her: I love it mainly for its 1956 cartoon cover. But my save-from-a-fire book is Knots, Splices and Fancy Work by Charles L Spencer (1938) which belonged to my father, a naval pilot who died just after I was born.