Best books… Elizabeth Day
The bestselling author and creator of the hit podcast How to Fail With Elizabeth Day chooses her favourite books. Her latest, How to Fail (Fourth Estate £9.99) – part memoir, part manifesto – is out now in paperback
The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante, 2012-2015 (Europa Editions £12.99 each, or £49.15 for the boxset). I realise that this is four books rather than one, but I’m cheating because Ferrante needs to be swallowed up whole. I adore the forensic passion with which she writes about female friendship, rage and love, and the way in which she adopts the style of a classic 19th century novel in order to turn the male gaze in on itself.
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, 1987 (Vintage £10.99). I read this novel on my first trip to America and was blown away by the fizzing energy of Wolfe’s prose style. I was a young journalist, and
I loved the way he was able to blend the best bits of narrative reportage with the best bits of fiction to create a propulsive plot, full of colour and verve.
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2013 (Fourth Estate £8.99). Epic in scale and deeply human in resonance, Americanah is a brilliant dissection of race, class, immigration and kinship. It’s also a wonderful read.
Roget’s Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget, 1852 (Penguin £10.99). I’ve had my copy of Roget’s since I was 17, and it has helped and fascinated me in equal measure since then. I adore the richness of words and the cleverness of synonyms and I don’t think Peter Mark Roget is honoured enough for this remarkable achievement.
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain, 1933 (Virago £14.99). I read this astonishing memoir when researching my second novel, Home Fires, part of which dealt with the female experience of the First World War. There was, I soon discovered, vanishingly little written about it other than this book, which is a profoundly compelling account of the personal cost of war. (I also liked how much attention Vera Brittain paid to her clothes – some of her most enthusiastic sentences concern the particular power of a polka dot.)