My earliest reading memory
When I was eight, my mother bought me Stanley Bagshaw and the Short-sighted Football Trainer by Bob Wilson. I grew up thinking he was the same Bob Wilson who played in goal for Arsenal and presented sport on ITV. That wasn’t true, but it has never dampened my appreciation of this brilliant rhyming picture book, which ought to be reissued to inspire more kids to read. My sons adore it.
My favourite book growing up
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck had a profound effect on me in secondary school. I was amazed by how vividly a writer could evoke a landscape in words. It was also the first novel that moved me to tears, and stories that can do that will always stay dear to me.
The book that made me want to be a writer
Around the age of 20, I had a bout of illness that left me bed-bound for a few weeks. I was feeling pretty low. But it was during this time that I read Mr Vertigo and In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster back-to-back, having devoured The New York Trilogy earlier that year. These were books that made me ache to write fiction of my own.
The book I came back to
I tried to enjoy Gilead by Marilynne Robinson as soon as it was published, and then a few years later when I came home from studying in Canada, but I could never quite appreciate its viewpoint. The religiosity of the narrator’s voice was difficult for me to connect with. It was after I became a father that I picked it up again, and John Ames’s letter to his young son resonated fully.
The book I reread
I don’t tend to reread novels, but I often go back through short stories. The collection I’ve revisited most in the past 20 years is Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer. I always share her story The Ant of the Self with my undergraduate students at the start of term. It’s a near-immaculate piece of work, about (for the most part) the complexities of a father-son relationship, and I’ve almost committed it to memory.
The book I could never read again
John Fowles’s The Magus is so clever and engrossing, but it has one of the most frustrating endings I’ve encountered. Fowles himself was dissatisfied with how he resolved the intricate threads of its plot and composed different versions for updated editions. It’s perhaps the only book I’ve ever loved so much that I had to throw it at the wall for disappointing me.
The book I discovered later in life
Corregidora by Gayl Jones. A short novel from 1975 that unravels a character’s inherited trauma and depicts her haunted consciousness through time to devastating effect. The fluidity of its movement from present to past is so purposeful and affecting.
The book I am currently reading
Bad Attitudes by Agnes Owens. I’d never heard of this author before (my fault), but she has an extensive backlist to explore. This is the point from which I like to begin a novel these days.
My comfort read
Tobias Wolff’s Old School is a literary blanket I have wrapped around myself at many stages of my life. Quietly beautiful and insightful. Same goes for Mildred Pierce by James M Cain. I never thought I could be so invested in the success of a 1930s chicken and waffle restaurant, but I was and always will be.