WHAT BOOK?

... are you reading now?

THIS House Of Grief by Helen Garner. It’s set in Australia, the real life story of the trial of the murder of three young boys on Father’s Day 2005, when a car their father was driving went off the road and plunged into a dam. Garner sat through the first trial, the retrial and the appeal. It’s a visceral, chilling account of the legal process surrounding the tragedy and its aftermath. Garner’s writing is taut, compelling and unsentimental, but incredibly moving all the same. I would recommend anything by her, non-fiction or fiction.

... would you take to a desert island?

THE closest I’ve got to travelling is six weeks in Indonesia when I was a student, and I lugged the collected works of Jane Austen round with me in my backpack. It’s a beaten up old Penguin and I still have it sitting on the shelf. I couldn’t cope with taking that with me again, though – instead I’d like to take the collected works of Haruki Murakami. Norwegian Wood is one of my favourite books, about a man called Toru Watanabe who is looking back on his student days and his relationships with two women, Naoko and Midori. He has written around 15 novels and some nonfiction. It would be great to have the time to read through all his books properly and to get to know them as well as I know Austen’s.

... gave you the reading bug? THE Chalet School series of about fifty books by Elinor M. BrentDyer. They’re about a boarding school that was set up in Tyrol in Austria before relocating to the Channel Islands during the Second World War. Rereading them now they are impossibly moralising but as a child I thought they were amazing, full of adventures and derring-do as Joey Bettany rescued yet another miscreant from a cliff-face or frozen lake before succumbing to pleurisy for the seventeenth time. Great stuff. A bit later on, though, I got into Agatha Christie, and like every good crime writer, I never looked back.

... left you cold?

THE Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. It’s about the relationship between a child and an apple tree, in which the tree provides support and sustenance to the boy throughout every stage of his life. Apparently the author struggled to find a publisher and I’m not surprised — it’s miserable!

■ A Lesson in Cruelty by Harriet Tyce (Wildfire £16.99) is out April 11