4 days ago
12
My earliest reading memory
Apparently I taught myself to read when I was three via the labels on the Beatles 45s we had: I remember the moment of recognising the words “I” and “Feel” and “Fine”. It took a bit longer to work out the word “Parlophone”.
My favourite book growing up
Sister Vincent taught primary six in St Joseph’s, Inverness, and was a discerning reader with very good taste, plus the kind of literary moral rectitude that meant she removed Enid Blyton from the class library because she believed Blyton’s books were written by a factory of writers. In 1972 she and I had a passionate argument when the class was choosing a book to be read out loud to us and I championed Charlotte’s Web by EB White, with which I was in love. Sister Vincent put her foot down. “No. Because animals speak in it, and in reality animals don’t speak.” I recently reread it for the first time since I was nine, and it moved me to tears. What a fine book, about all sorts of language, injustice, imaginative power and friendship versus life’s tough realities. Terrific. Radiant. Humble.
The book that changed me as a teenager
Liz Lochhead’s Memo for Spring. One evening when I was 16 I babysat for our marvel of an English teacher at Inverness High School, Ann McKay. Raiding her bookshelves I found a book so slim it had no spine, just hinges, and was by a woman who was young, Scottish and a poet (at this point in time a rare combination). The poems in it were so good, gripping and clear, written in a kind of Scottish English I knew was close to my own, but I’d never read in any book. I read it twice through that evening then Ann lent me it for a week. It filled me with excitement and hope.
The writer who changed my mind
See above. Liz Lochhead. She changed what was possible – for so many of us.
The books that made me want to be a writer
Reading certain writers does this for me on a continual basis. Muriel Spark. Toni Morrison. Morrison’s oeuvre is a sustained and courageous masterclass in how the aliveness in writing shifts the energy in life, and Spark’s Loitering with Intent, like all her books, will never fail to send me on my way rejoicing.
The author I reread
A lot of Simone de Beauvoir’s writing came into affordable paperback translation when I was in my very early 20s. Back then I read everything I could get. Recently I’ve loved re-encountering her fiction. I think her novels are outstanding, especially Les Belles Images (1966), a coruscating postwar satire on the performance of happiness. Also, I never stop rereading Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a book that’ll always remind its readers to stay fluid and adaptable regardless of crazed changing times.
The book I could never read again
Never say never. I promise I’ll try Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Villette again, just not right now, OK?
The writers I discovered later in life
Vladimir Nabokov. What sheer shining joy. Fyodor Dostoevsky. Where have I been all the years? Henry James. I read The Golden Bowl in the garden one summer not long ago and found myself running down our garden path shouting out loud to my partner: “Sarah! Sarah! The golden bowl is broken!”
The book I am currently reading
Liadan Ní Chuinn, Every One Still Here. These stories about Ireland and recent history face up to the truth of lives in a way that very little new writing I’ve read does. In doing this they change and recharge the potential of the short story form. Two have already become some of my favourite stories ever.
My comfort read
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. A piece of perfection composed of loss, light, clarity and good nature – a book so trim that it fits easily in the pocket of a jacket yet contains much of everything in life that really matters.
