The novelist on her love for Hilary Mantel, being unable to finish A Little Life, and the book she always gives to visitors
The book I am currently reading
Motherwell by Deborah Orr.
The book that changed my life
Joseph Heller’sCatch-22, which I read when I was 15, was the patient zero of my passion for very dark, very funny novels. It wasn’t till a recent reread that I realised how radically it was structured.
The book I wish I’d written
A High Wind in Jamaica, written by Richard Hughes in 1929, must be the darkest, most hilarious book ever written – about a bunch of abducted children who casually destroy the lives of their hapless captors. Englishmen of a certain age think it’s a jolly adventure lark about pirates, but it’s not. I wouldn’t let a 14-year-old near it.
