‘I don’t think I’d want to live in a space that wasn’t lined with books’
Nicky Pellegrino takes a look at her bookshelf
It would be fine if they were just on the shelves but so many are piled on the floor where they attract dust-balls and occasionally topple over on to a sleeping dog. Just like me, my books live in a state of barely controlled chaos.
Most are kept in the separate studio that serves as my writing room. Half of a long wall is devoted shelving so there ought to be plenty of space. Part of the problem is that I’ve spent years reviewing fiction for magazines and newspapers. There are always novels I didn’t quite get to but plan to read in some future golden period when I have long stretches of empty time to indulge my love of stories. That golden period never arrives; the books keep piling up.
There are some I’ve kept because they help me with my own fiction. My tenth novel, A Year At Hotel Gondola, has just been published and you might imagine by now that writing would come easily. In actual fact, I find it harder than ever. There are days when I don’t seem to be able to form a sentence. When everything is clunky and wrong.
I have this small cache of books that I keep to remind me what good writing is. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, anything by Rose Tremain, Jane Smiley, Anne Tyler or Alice Hoffman.
The Conductor by Sarah Quigley is there, and novels by lesser-known writers Elizabeth J. Church and Francesca Kay, who I think understand cadence and use words wonderfully. It’s not that I’m copying these authors; I couldn’t if I tried. It’s more like a resetting of my brain. I stop struggling to find the right words, read a couple of beautifully executed paragraphs by someone else, think, “Ah yes, that’s how it’s done,” and then go back to trying to produce elegant prose of my own.
Aside from these few jewels, I’m pretty relaxed with my books. I scribble on them, give them away, lend them out, throw them across the room if something in the plot annoys me and take full bags to the charity shop up the road. I gave up being precious years ago when I moved to New Zealand from the UK and left behind every volume I’d collected.
These days all I really hoard are cookbooks. Every window ledge in the house is covered in them and there are two big stacks in my studio. It’s always tempting to buy more — food is an important element in my novels, so surely I need them for research purposes. But I’m trying to restrain myself. The one I cook from most is Jerusalem, by Yotam Ottolenghi but sometimes I’ll just pick a recipe at random from one of the others.
My husband keeps eyeing those cookbooks, the piles of novels by the bed and the explosion of fiction in my studio. He mutters threateningly about minimalism. But I don’t think I’d want to live in a space that wasn’t lined with books. I’m comforted by the promise of stories I may get to enjoy some day, and meals I might cook and eat. And if minimalism is only keeping the material possessions you really, really need, the basic necessities; well I reckon that includes books.