ANNE TYLER

The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize winning author has published a tender new book about family

Your books reveal the extraordinary nature of ordinary lives. Is French Braid in the same territory?

Yes, that’s a theme I can’t seem to get away from. I think it’s because ordinary lives often require their own sort of endurance, and endurance is something that interests me. Is there a book that made you love writing?

I remember that when I was in college, I dreamed of writing another Catcher in the Rye. (Nowadays, I can’t even read it.)

What’s the best book you’ve read? The answer to that changes about once a month! Right now, it’s Julie Otsuka’s The Swimmers. At first her novel seemed plotless, but then all at once I realised what she was getting at. It was a revelation. A book that had a pivotal impact on your life?

Eudora Welty’s collection of short stories, The Wide Net, made me realise for the first time that the unremarkable people all around me could be fit subjects for literature. The book you couldn’t finish?

For the first year or more of the pandemic, I found myself unable to finish almost any book. I knew it wasn’t the writers’ fault, it was mine. I just felt too distracted. A book you wish you had read but haven’t got to?

I have been told all my life that the Bible is great literature, but every time I try to read it, I seem to find my mind wandering.

The book you are most proud to have written?

At the moment, I’m feeling particularly happy with French Braid. I’m not sure how I’ll feel a year from now.

Your earliest reading memory?

My mother read The Wind in the Willows to me and my brother when we were just four and three, and I still remember the sound of his teeth chattering when we reached the chapter about the Wild Wood.

Your favourite place to read?

A recliner chair in my living room that looks out over my backyard. I like to see the birds and the occasional fox when I glance up from a page.

What book do you re-read?

When I was a child I used to say I’d read Little Women 23 times, although that was probably an exaggeration. In adulthood it’s been Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, more times than I can count.

What books are on your bedside table?

No books at all, but a stack of The New Yorker magazines. I like to dip in and out of short pieces when I’m trying to fall asleep. What are you writing next?

I have no idea! When a new book of mine is coming out and I’m forced, therefore, to talk about my writing, I suddenly become self-conscious about the whole process. I’ve learned not to even try to write then.

French Braid, by Anne Tyler: Penguin, $30