WHATBOOK..? PRUE LEITH
Cook, writer and broadcaster
. . . are you reading now?
DANIEL DERONDA by George Eliot, which, sadly, I wouldn’t recommend. I loved Middlemarch, Silas Marner and Adam Bede — all meaty Victorian novels with cracking stories. But Daniel Deronda is driving me mad, with its pages of tedious philosophising. My husband keeps saying ‘chuck it’, but, for some reason, I always plough on to the end.
. . . would you take to a desert island?
IN SPITE of the above, I’d take another Victorian — Dickens, Thackeray or Trollope.
They might last until my rescue and, if not, I could start at the beginning again with pleasure. I’m a bit of a Trollope groupie. I’ve read 47 of his books — my favourite is The Warden, a brilliant tale about politics, snobbery, greed and self-interest. And love, of course.
. . . first gave you the reading bug?
PAUL GALLICO, I think. I remember sitting on my dad’s knee, with my brother on the other knee, all three of us in floods of tears as he read us The Snow Goose, a wartime tale of a lonely old man, a young girl, a wounded goose and the heroic ‘little ships’ rescuing soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk.
All of my childhood reading was about animals. The first book I read by myself was Jennie — also by Gallico — about a cat.
I don’t remember much about it today, except that my mother was cross because I wouldn’t come down to lunch and, when forced to, I sat snivelling at the table, unable to extract my mind from Jennie’s troubles.
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, written as if by the eponymous horse, followed. That animal was as alive to me as my brothers, and I think I loved him rather more.
My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara followed. It’s a coming-of-age tale of a troubled lad who is given a horse to look after. Flicka becomes his friend, and the making of him. More high emotion and more tears.
Even today, I think the ability to get the reader sobbing is the mark, or anyway one of the marks, of a good novelist.
. . . left you cold?
I WAS one of the finalist judges for the recent Costa Book Awards and spent a blissful holiday reading the five winning books while lying under a palm tree in the Maldives. I cannot think of a better way to spend a week.
The only downside was that Stuart Turton’s The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle left me not so much cold as bemused.
The book has had rave reviews, won the Costa First Novel Award and is a massive bestseller. But it’s a murder, mystery and fantasy thriller — all the elements I avoid in a novel.
If only I’d cared for any of the seven people whose bodies the hero finds himself inhabiting, but I didn’t. Frankly, I didn’t care for him, either, or for the oftdying Evelyn. PruE LEITH’s latest novel, The Lost son, is published by Quercus at £16.99.