WHAT BOOK?

. . . are you reading now?

THE Need by Helen Phillips — it’s about an exhausted mother of young children who works at an archaeology dig site and starts unearthing all sorts of impossible artefacts. Then, one night, a stranger with a deer head appears in her living room and starts to threaten her family.

I love a book with a weird hook, and this one is about as weird as it gets. So as soon as I read the blurb, I knew I had to read it.

I’m also getting pen to paper (or, fingers to laptop?) on book three, so I’ve been rereading The Science Of Storytelling by Will Storr — it’s an absolute must for aspiring authors, and one I return to all the time.

. . .would you take to a desert island?

I’D NEED something meaty, which I could re-read over and over again and still get something out of.

Maybe Richard Powers’ The Overstory, a book about trees (hear me out!) which manages to be so awe-inspiringly ambitious, with so many different facets and characters and things to say. It was a big inspiration when writing my new book, Small Hours, which is also all about our relationship with the natural world.

Otherwise, I would have to lean into the setting and pick something suitably Robinson Crusoe. Although never having read it, I’d choose another of my favourite adventure books — Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, about an escaped slave who becomes a Phileas Fogg-style adventurer in the Victorian era.

Finally, if I’m being greedy, I’d cheat a little and choose a collection of short stories so that I have some variety while I’m burning to a crisp on the beach. Either Stories Of Your Life And Others by Ted Chiang, or Close Range by Annie Proulx.

. . . first gave you the reading bug?

AS A kid, I was always more obsessed with drawing than reading or writing. I wanted to be an illustrator, and Chris Riddell’s gorgeous illustrations in The Edge Chronicles series by Paul Stewart were the main object of my obsession.

It helps that the books were great, too — I’ve got a little daughter now, and I’m already impatient for her to be old enough for us to read the books together.

As an adult, it was reading Andrew Sean Greer’s Less that first inspired me to try writing a novel of my own. I was really taken with how much wit and wisdom could be contained in something seemingly so simple. It was the first time I thought, ‘I’d love to try to write a book like this’. So I started writing, and ended up with Isaac And The Egg.

. . . left you cold?

ALMOST every year I set myself the challenge to read War And Peace, and every year I fall at the first hurdle — as in the first 20 or so pages. I do have my eyes (or ears) on the audiobook, though, in which Thandiwe Newton plays all the characters. It’s 60 hours long, so wish me luck.

■ Small Hours by Bobby Palmer (Headline £18.99) is out march 14.