The best books I never wrote

Catherine Robertson talks us through the books she wishes she’d written.

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

First in the Gormenghast trilogy, this is a masterpiece of dark weirdness. It is bitingly funny and deeply moving, and features one of fiction’s most compelling villains, the ambitious, flawed Steerpike.

I also love that Phil Judd lifted the first lines of the Split Enz song Stranger than Fiction from a review of this book: ‘‘Stranger than fiction, larger than life, full of shades and echoes.’’

Ignore the bad TV adaptation. This book’s eccentric brilliance will linger with you forever.

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Until recently, I didn’t know that Stella Gibbons wrote 22 novels after this standout debut, which rightly has become a classic of humorous prose.

It is a perfect satire of the earnest, rural-themed novels of the

1920s. City girl Flora Post is forced to reside with her Starkadder relatives, the most famous of whom is Great Aunt Ada, who saw something nasty in the woodshed. Flora vows to civilise them all, to amusing and satisfying effect.

A gem.

Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

I read this book in one sitting, and then insisted my husband read it, too, even though he usually prefers books about cycling.

The essay I wrote in 1984 about Ted Hughes’ Crow poems came in handy, as Crow himself

arrives on the doorstep of a man whose wife has just died, and helps the man and his two sons manage their grief.

Despite that surreal premise, the book is grounded, funny and poignant. Small and beautifully wrought.

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

‘‘Tonight will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining.’’ That line still makes me shiver.

This is the second in a series of five extraordinary young adult books that bring myth and Arthurian legend into today’s

world, and chart an epic battle between the forces of the Dark and the Light. For me, it’s one of the best written, most gripping books ever. I return to it regularly, for my own pleasure, and to study how Cooper does it.

Dinner at Rose’s by Danielle Hawkins

Genuinely funny writing is rare, so when I discovered Danielle Hawkins, I cheered. She is a genius humorist and, even better, a New Zealander, who lives on a farm and doubles as a rural vet, as you do. This is her first book, but I could have chosen any of her three recent novels. Her writing is loaded with excellent comic lines, intelligence and compassion. This book, in particular, might provoke a few tears. Discover her for yourself right now. No1 bestselling New Zealand author Catherine Robertson’s new novel What You Wish For (RHNZ Black Swan, $38) is out on January 8.