WHAT BOOK..?

. ..are you reading now?

I’M READING Help Yourself by Curtis Sittenfeld. This is a collection of just three short stories and it’s the first Sittenfeld writing I’ve read, and I know it won’t be the last.

They’re full of brilliant cringe-worthy characters, situations that made me wonder what I would do, and writing that is razor-sharp.

Even among just three it’s hard to pick a favourite, but I think I’d have to go for the story Creative Differences, where a young photographer gets cold feet about being included in a documentary sponsored by a toothpaste company.

I’m very excited that I have all of Sittenfeld’s novels and another short story collection still to read.

. ..would you take to a desert island?

I WOULD take We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson. I’ve read this short novel many times and each time I still find new things to love. It’s about an 18-year-old girl called Merricat who lives with her agoraphobic sister and uncle in their isolated house after the rest of their family have been poisoned.

Merricat is an extraordinary character: very odd, with strange obsessions and terrors, but also completely captivating. What’s left of the family has trouble with the nearby villagers and with a cousin who turns up unexpectedly. The whole book is dark, a little bit creepy — and wonderful.

. ..first gave you the reading bug?

I MUST have had some favourite books when I was very young, but the books I remember the most vividly and which I started reading when I was nine or ten are the Pan Books Of Horror Stories. I would buy them second-hand from a junk shop and read them in bed at night.

And then, terrified that there was something horrible lurking under the bed or behind my door, I would run to my parents’ room to sleep. It was through this series of 30 books that I discovered writers like H.G. Wells, Patricia Highsmith, and Edgar Allan Poe, and came to love the short story.

. ..left you cold?

I RECENTLY finished A Swim In A Pond In The Rain (isn’t that a great title?) by George Saunders, and it is a brilliant book. He looks at seven short stories by four Russian writers and considers them from a writer’s point of view, and how writers might be able to apply the Russians’ techniques to their own writing.

It’s based on a creative writing class Saunders has been teaching for many years. I’ve read very little Russian literature, and I found most of the stories really interesting, and how Saunders talked about them was very useful for my own writing.

But there was one, The Nose by Nikolai Gogol, that did absolutely nothing for me. In fact, I positively disliked it. Too surreal for my taste. n UnsEttlEd Ground by Claire Fuller is published by Fig tree at £14.99 and is longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021: womensprizeforfiction.co.uk.