My life in books MONICA ALI
With her new novel, Love Marriage, out this month, Brick Lane author Monica Ali shares the books that have shaped her
THE BOOK CHARACTER I LOVE THE MOST IS…
Emma Woodhouse, the protagonist in Jane Austen’s Emma, gives me enormous joy every time I’m in her company. She is ‘handsome, clever, and rich’ and has an awful lot to learn. Austen has great fun at her expense, but we come to love her as a character, flaws and all.
MY FAVOURITE BOOK AS A CHILD WAS…
The Muddle-headed Wombat.
I remember discovering the adventures of Wombat and friends (Mouse and Tabby Cat) at about seven, in the local library, and howling with laughter. Wombat is kind but muddle-headed, which gets him into all sorts of scrapes.
THE CHARACTER I RELATE TO THE MOST IS…
The characters in Hey Yeah Right Get A Life, by Helen Simpson, whose struggles with marriage and child-rearing are painfully funny. A great book transports the reader into completely different lives. When I read Chekhov, for example, I ‘relate’ to his characters as deeply, or more deeply, than anything contemporary.
THE ONE BOOK I THINK EVERYONE SHOULD READ IS…
A House For Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul, because it is the best tragi-comedy ever written. It’s also a sideways look at colonialism, race and religion. And the story of one man’s struggle to carve out, against the odds, his own place in the world.
MY FAVOURITE LINE FROM A BOOK IS…
‘In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.’ The opening line of the novel The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, by Carson Mccullers, is wonderfully intriguing. It casts a spell right away.
THE BOOK THAT HAS GOT ME THROUGH A DIFFICULT TIME IS…
The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Five volumes of sprawling family saga, from the 1930s to 1950s, in which to lose myself. Howard is a sharp observer of human drama and psychology, and she writes about pain, loss and longing superbly.
THE LAST BOOK THAT MADE ME CRY WAS…
A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee tells the story of a man’s love for a Korean ‘comfort girl’ during the Second World War, when he was in the Japanese army stationed in Burma. ‘Comfort girls’ were sex slaves, raped every day by soldiers. Simultaneously brutal and unbearably tender.
MY ALL-TIME FAVOURITE BOOK IS…
Impossible, really, to choose just one, but today I will say Anna Karenina. It’s a book that keeps giving, no matter how many times you read it.