WHAT BOOK..? HANNAH KENT

…are you reading now?

FOLK by Zoe Gilbert. Set in the fictional seaside village of Neverness over the course of two generations, each chapter acts as a fable about the people who live there.

Lyrical and powerfully atmospheric, it’s a novel woven through with folkloric traditions and myths, where fiddles are made with the bones of the drowned, boys are born with wings for arms, and the gorse and the river hold the promise of supernatural lovers.

It’s the kind of captivating, magical writing that makes you feel like you’ve fallen into a fever. Utterly immersive. I’ve also just started To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara, which already feels like an incredible tour de force. Yanagihara is a powerhouse.

…would you take to a desert island?

PRESUMING I am stranded alone on this desert island, I would take Little Women by Louisa Alcott. It’s a book I’ve read more than any other in my life: when I was a girl, I would read it every few months. The extraordinary story of four sisters and their ordinary lives always filled me with a comforting sense of familiarity and gentle hope. On a desert island I imagine it would remind me of my own childhood and my own family. The literary equivalent of a well-loved blanket I might wrap myself in.

…first gave you the reading bug?

I COULDN’T possibly pick one book. A reading bug might begin, but it also needs to be sustained. As a young child I loved Roald Dahl, Paul Jennings, Enid Blyton, C.S Lewis, L.M Montgomery — the usual suspects for a bookish middle-class white kid in early 1990s Australia.

Fantasy written by Tamora Pierce, J.R.R Tolkien and Philip Pullman got me through my teen years, and then I discovered Virginia Woolf and Angela Carter, Toni Morrison and Thomas Hardy.

Seamus Heaney and Sarah Waters. Tolstoy and Dorothy Porter and Donna Tartt. These days I feed my reading bug with Sarah Moss, Sebastian Barry, Alexis Wright, Max Porter. It’s voracious. Ever-changing.

…left you cold?

BOTH my children were quite difficult sleepers, and I would often resort to a car drive for naps. While they slept I would quietly listen to an audiobook.

Last year I made the mistake of listening to I’ll Be Gone In The Dark by the late Michelle McNamara, her masterful account of her search for the Golden State Killer. It compelled and terrified me in equal measure, and the horror of the case was magnified by listening to it with sleeping babies in view.

I’ve never been so shaken by a book before. If any title has left me cold, it was that one. I haven’t been able to read any true crime or crime fiction since then.

DEVOTION by Hannah Kent (Picador) is out now in hardback, audio and ebook.