WHAT BOOK?

. . . are you reading now?

I’M CURRENTLY half way through Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. What a delight it is! I’m finding it hard to put it down.

I love Dickens, and by transposing his classic book, and probably my favourite of his novels — David Copperfield — to presentday America, Kingsolver achieves the impossible, and makes the novel her own.

It’s a relentless narrative, gripping, moving, and as powerful a story as anything Dickens ever wrote. It’s also an inspiring novel about storytelling, and a hugely impressive imaginative exercise.

. . . would you take to a desert island?

THERE is no question. It would always be Wise Children, by Angela Carter. Apart from Carter’s brilliant writing — it’s so evocative, you can taste and smell every page — I think this is the most joyous book I have ever read.

It was her final novel, written soon before she died tragically at a too-young 51. And in it, she imagines an old woman, an exdancer, born on the wrong side of the tracks, telling the story of her adventurous life, and the intertwining story of a theatrical dynasty in London.

Nothing gives me more pleasure, or makes me happier to be alive than reading this book.

. . . first gave you the reading bug?

I FIRST read And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie when I was about 12 or 13 years old. It was the first adult book I ever read, and I stayed up all night reading it. And then I couldn’t sleep because I was so scared. It was a delightful kind of fear.

It began an addiction to thrillers, and I proceeded to spend all summer reading every Christie I could get my hands on, devouring them on the beach.

I made up my mind then and there that one day I would try to write a book like this. Now, if I’m ever in a reading slump, I know that Christie will pull me out of it and inspire me, as she always has done.

My new novel, The Fury, is, in many ways, a direct response to And Then There Were None. There is something so enchanting about the set-up: diverse characters trapped on an island, a murder, and an unguessable outcome.

It’s a real challenge to try to take on this sub-genre, and I have probably had more fun writing it than anything else I’ve written.

. . . left you cold?

I’M A BIT embarrassed to admit this, but I have tried to read Dracula, by Bram Stoker several times, and I have never got through it.

I love the premise obviously, and the iconic characters. But I find the way the novel is written, through letters, telegrams, diaries that go on and on, rather tedious.

Probably my expectations have been built up by all the movies, which focus on the scary bits, which are few and far between in the novel. But I am sure I will try to read it again, and hopefully next time I will succeed!

The Fury by Alex Michaelides (Michael Joseph, £18.99) is out now.