ON MY BEDSIDE TABLE

Penelope Lively

Much-loved novelist Penelope Lively has written over 50 books. She’s appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival* on 23 March. ◆ MIDWINTER BREAK by BERNARD MACLAVERTY is a quiet, beautifully written novel that packs a tremendous punch. It’s about a middle-aged couple taking a holiday in Amsterdam and it encapsulates within their few days away an entire marriage and two people with major problems. ◆ To celebrate the centenary of women getting the vote, Penguin asked me to pick two novels by women that I’d like to see back in print. I chose BIRDS OF AMERICA by MARY MCCARTHY; she’s one of the big American writers of last century but has all but been forgotten. The central character is a young man who’s worried about what it means to be American and the impact of environmental destruction – curiously relevant to our times. ◆ In MR LEAR, JENNY UGLOW writes very elegantly about the life of the artist and writer Edward Lear and his lifetime spent travelling the world. ◆ I don’t actually like historical novels, but I make an exception for writers like JIM CRACE who has discovered a new way to write about the past. HARVEST is about a village where the way of life of the villagers is being destroyed. It’s a story of exploitation but also courage in the midst of that. ◆ THE WAKE isn’t for the faint-hearted! It’s written in a wonderful language invented by the author PAUL KINGSNORTH. It’s the story of an Anglo-saxon farmer whose land has been taken from him and how he forms a little band – you’d probably call them terrorists these days – who go off into the woods and carry out subversive acts against the Normans.