WHATBOOK..?

…are you reading now?

LUSTER by Raven Leilani — a novel about a young black woman trying to navigate the worlds of work and love and relationships. It manages to capture a modern landscape of sexual and racial politics, while also being very funny. I love reading books with a vivid heroine at the centre — and by that I don’t mean she has to be perfect, or some stereotype of a ‘strong woman’, but just a woman who is unique, complicated and dealing with the business of being alive.

…would you take to a desert island?

My ANSWER to this used to be War And Peace, which I’ve always meant to read, but then when Covid struck and we went into lockdown I decided now — with no distractions, and with some of the isolating experience of being on a desert island — was the perfect time to read it. My Kindle tells me that I managed 10 per cent, so I now think perhaps it is not my perfect desert island book after all. Maybe instead I should take something I know I love, like the complete works of Elizabeth Taylor or Anthony Powell’s A Dance To The Music Of Time, which I could read endlessly.

… first gave you the reading bug?

THE Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe by C S Lewis. I read it when I was still young enough that the boundaries between fact and fiction were somewhat blurred in my mind, so the magical world of Narnia, accessed through the back of a wardrobe, seemed entirely real to me. It was so vivid and alive, I could see Narnia clearly inside my mind, I could feel the cold of the snow. Later, at university, a lecturer casually mentioned the idea that Aslan the lion, who dies to save the children and is then resurrected, is a clear Christian allegory, Aslan being Jesus Christ. I was astonished. It had never occurred to me.

…left you cold?

I HATE slagging off other people’s books, so I will confine my answer to the safely dead and just recall briefly the utter dread with which I approached one of my A-level set texts, The Poems Of Robert Browning. Although it makes me laugh that I can still actually quote lines from some of his poems. Maybe no reading experience is ever completely wasted, even if you don’t get anything out of it at the time. n My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend, by Tracey Thorn, is out now (Canongate, £16.99).