WHAT BOOK . .? GRAEME MACRAE BURNET

Booker-longlisted author

. ..are you reading now?

I’VE recently read Catherine Simpson’s wonderful memoir One Body and Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five, about the lives of the victims of Jack the Ripper, a brilliantly researched and compassionate work which greatly enhances our understanding of the lives of ordinary women in the 19th Century.

I’m currently reading Catherine Belton’s Putin’s People — a demanding, but engrossing and necessary read, and Milan Kundera’s classic Czech novel The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, which is thought- provoking, structurally inventive and quite sexy.

. ..would you take to a desert island?

IT WOULD probably be sensible to take a book on foraging, fishing or how to build a shelter, but it would have to be Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime And Punishment. To the uninitiated it might seem a bit intimidating, but it’s a book brimming with life, with a gripping plot and vivid, memorable characters. And given that I suppose I’m going to be stuck on the island for a while, it’s also a book that deserves and rewards re-reading.

...first gave you the reading bug?

TWO really: first of all The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger. I discovered this at secondary school and was immediately captivated by the opening lines. Until that point I had no idea that novels could be about someone like me, but the sardonic voice of Holden Caulfield totally captured the feelings of alienation I felt as a sulky teenager — it spoke to me!

Shortly after that, I read The Outsider and was blown away by the terse, unadorned style of Albert Camus’ prose and by the detachment and impassive attitude of the central character, Meursault.

Until then I thought literature was all about metaphors and poetic language.

These two books definitely stirred my desire to write, and looking back I still see how they have influenced my work.

. ..left you cold?

LOTS leaves me cold. Sometimes that’s not the fault of the book. It might be that it’s just not for you, but I’m unlikely to persevere with something I don’t think is well-written — it can be hard to turn off your novelist’s editorial brain.

I’m not sure I could be so rude as to publicly shame another living author’s work, though. But of the classics, I have to admit the idea of some really hefty tomes like War And Peace or Finnegans Wake definitely leaves me cold. I recently struggled to work up any interest in a Jane Austen novel and I’ve never finished Marcel Proust. But these confessions are almost certainly a poor reflection on me rather than the works themselves!

n Graeme macrae Burnet’s latest novel, case study, longlisted for the Booker Prize, is out now in paperback (saraband, £9.99)