WHATBOOK..?
...are you reading now?
DUCKS, Newburyport, by Lucy Ellmann — the stream-of-consciousness memoir of a middle-aged woman in the American Midwest told in one very long sentence.
The narrator, a former college teacher, has survived cancer and retreated to her kitchen where she bakes pies and mulls over her life, her children and the world.
Her ruminations are interrupted occasionally by passages told from the perspective of a mountain lion. This extraordinary, funny, intriguing book won last year’s Goldsmiths Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
It’s a long book — at slightly over 1,000 pages more than twice as long as the average novel — and though its length has troubled some reviewers, I do not want it to end.
...would you take to a desert island?
I SUPPOSE I should take a survival guide with me but I’ve never been very keen on that kind of book. What I’d really like is another really long book like, say, The Complete Works Of Sue Townsend.
Unfortunately, this exists only in my head as far as I know. I’m imagining it will begin with The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ (first published in 1982) and include the seven further Adrian Mole volumes and Townsend’s six other novels, including The Queen And I and The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year.
Sue Townsend was one of the UK’s most celebrated comedy writers and though I’ve read every book already, I’d be delighted to gasp and nod and laugh out loud all over again.
...first gave you the reading bug?
I’M NOT sure a single book got me into reading, but I think it was being surrounded by books at home, visiting the library and seeing role models reading and talking about books that caught me.
I remember reading Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell, at a young age and being affected by the happy/sad moments, but mostly intrigued that the story was narrated by a horse.
In terms of reading avidly, I’d say it was the James Herriot series of vet books, starting with If Only They Could Talk that really gripped me. From there I moved on to other funny, character-driven books by the likes of P.G. Wodehouse, Muriel Spark, Jerome K. Jerome and Nancy Mitford, and clever, funny verse by people such as Spike Milligan and Pam Ayres.
...left you cold?
I’M NOT desperately keen on practical survival books (see above) where men in camouflage shorts pretend they need to collect condensation in leaves, make shelters from tree fronds and hack at undergrowth — or they’ll die. People have given this kind of book to my son from a young age (though never to my daughter) and they leave me feeling exhausted.
REASONS To Be Cheerful, by nina stibbe (Penguin, £8.99), has been longlisted for the Comedy Women in Print Prize 2020. The shortlist will be announced on June 8. For more information, visit comedywomeninprint.co.uk