MY LIFE IN BOOKS: ZOE MILLER
Zoe Miller lives in Dublin with her husband and has been writing since childhood. The Birthday Weekend is her latest release and she now has 13 books published by Hachette Books Ireland, including The Perfect Sister and The House in the Woods.
The books by your bedside? I’m lucky to have a big basket of current reads including fiction, non-fiction, poetry and essays. At the moment I’m engrossed in an advance copy of Martina Murphy’s gripping The Bone Fire, the fourth in the DS Lucy Golden crime series. Mary Oliver’s Devotions is a permanent fixture I dip into regularly. Reading her beautiful poetry calms me at a time when the daily news is so catastrophic.
The first book you remember? Good Work Secret Seven by
Enid Blyton from the magical Inchicore library. I devoured it. In awe at the power of words to draw me into a world of mystery and adventure, it set the seeds for my writerly dreams. I spent my childhood scribbling in the back of school copies, often under the classroom desk.
Best book you’ve read this year so far?
Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, which I could hardly bear to put down, a relatable portrayal of the best and worst of everyday humanity, eviscerated with the most precise yet gentlest of scalpel touches.
Favourite literary character? Scarlett O’Hara – a bold, feisty, vibrant yet vulnerable woman, who scorched her presence across every page of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.
Your comfort read?
Recently I’ve gone back to one of my teenage favourites, Elizabeth Goudge’s heart-soothing Damerosehay trilogy. But my main comfort read over the last year has been Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything: Notes on Hope. Short and sweet, it’s an honest, uplifting read about finding glimmers of hope in a bleak and uncertain world, which I’ve read and re-read.
A book that changed your life? The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron gave me the confidence and permission to see myself as a creative artist and commit to writing a novel. I return to it regularly for a top-up.
The book you couldn’t finish? Alas, I have a shelf of halffinished books, but it’s me, not