MY LIFE IN BOOKS: KRISTIN HANNAH
Kristin Hannah is a lawyer turned New York Times bestselling author based near Seattle. Her book Firefly Lane was adapted by Netflix, starring Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke, and was aired last month. Her most recent novel, The Four Winds , is published by Macmillan Books.
Books on your bedside?
I currently have a huge stack sitting right here, waiting for me, but I’ll name just a few: Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger, The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse, Win by Harlan Coben, and Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar. I collect books obsessively. There’s nothing I love more than strolling through a store, choosing books I’ve never heard of and buying second copies of those I adore.
The first book you remember?
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl was the first book I checked out of the library on my card. Of course, I read many, many books before that one, but it’s Charlie that stays with me. I remember being amazed by the story of the boy who won the golden ticket and how it changed his family’s life.
Your favourite literary character?
There are so many characters that are near and dear to my heart, as beloved as my best friends. I will go with Sam Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings. I read it every few years, and I first read it when I was 13 years old. I love all of the characters, but it is Sam I remember most fondly: Sam, for his honesty and his honour and his courage.
Your book of the year?
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. There were so many from which to choose, but this is the novel that stayed with me long after I finished it. It is the story of two boys in the American South of the 1950s, who end up at a terrible boys’ home. There’s cruelty and injustice and racism, but in Whitehead’s nimble hands, this novel is ultimately both uplifting and emotional. As both a reader and a writer, I was awed by the power of his novel.
The book that changed your life?
There have been a lot of books that changed me and the way I see the world but the one that actually changed my life was a how-to book about writing: Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V Swain. That book showed me the path to writing fiction. For years, I referred back to it time and time again, and within the pages, I found the way to write my first novel, and then my second, and so on.
The book you couldn’t finish?
With apologies, Moby Dick.
Your Covid comfort read?
When I was at rock bottom and had trouble falling into a book, I went back to a long-time favourite. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It is a sweeping, romantic story, set in Barcelona after the war, and told in Zafón’s beautiful, evocative prose. And what reader doesn’t love any novel that gives an impressionable young boy the chance to choose any book from the Cemetery of Lost Books and change his life?
The book you give as a present?
Whenever anyone I know has a baby, I always give a hardback copy of The Velveteen Rabbit. Even now, all these years later, this is a book that touches me every time I read it. I have included it in several of my own novels because the story touched me so deeply.
The writer who shaped you?
There are many writers who have impacted me as a writer, but it is Pat Conroy who somehow showed me the kind of novels I wanted to write — big, lush, emotional epics that are both sweeping in scope and intimate in tone. I also love and admire the way he sets up time and place. His settings are as magical as his prose. Reading a Pat Conroy novel is like going back in time and living another life.
The book you would most like to be remembered for?
The Four Winds. I think it is my richest, most accomplished novel to date. I believe that Elsa Martinelli is the best character I’ve created so far.